One theory is that the developers were trying to ride the wave of the SNES release of Final Fantasy 2 (really FF4 simplified), which features a paladin protagonist, in the US. So, they changed the game's title for the US release. (Japanese title is Lennus, which happens to be the name of the world the game is set in.)

Worth noting that, in the intro to Paladin's Quest, you are a student in a magic school, but then you accidentally unleash a machine that destroys the school and causes other havoc. (This happens so early in the game that I don't consider it a spoiler.) That doesn't sound like a very paladin-like introduction. (Then again, FF4's intro isn't very paladin-like, but the protagonist isn't a paladin at that point.)

In terms of ranged balance, the Ultima games, particularly 3-5 and to some extent 6, are not like this. In particular, you can *either* move one square *or* attack, and ranged attacks can hit at a distance, perhaps across the entire battlefield. (Ultima 5 limits the range of many ranged weapons, but the strongest one has no range limit, *and* it has infinite ammo (Ultima 5 being the first game in the series to track ammo) *and* is light enough for a mage to comfortably equip.)

Then again, the Ultima series isn't known for its game balance. Ultima 3 has the most in-depth and balanced class system in the series, and that's not saying much.

In the "D&D" (which includes Pathfinder) branch of things, Ranger's weird. It's now the "warrior of nature/hunter/beastmaster" archetype, but, when it pivoted to that, it left an as-of-yet unfilled gap behind it: the "Aragorn" archetype: combatant who also gets some non-fighting skills and is a smart/charismatic leader-type warrior.

EDIT: Rangers can still be rather good! I'm just commenting about the often-missing role, since ranger moved so hard into "nature".

We're talking about Eye of the Beholder though, which is based on AD&D. Rangers are a subclass of fighter with tracking skills, animal empathy, low level of druid magic, and was already leaning towards the nature warrior thing even if not as heavily as with later editions.

Sorry if it sounded like I was trashing the Paladin class. What I meant was that they're just so exceptionally good in Strahd's Possession that you're putting yourself at a serious disadvantage if you don't have one in your party. If you're playing this game right now and don't have a Paladin with you, delete your save and start over to rectify that because they are just that good to have with you. Most of the time though, there's enough of a mix of things in terms of enemies that you're not putting yourself at a disadvantage for picking some other class instead.

Wondering how a "Traditional Ranger" archetype would work. (Thinking Pathfinder 1e here.) Basically, it would lose many of its nature related features, including animal companion, and possibly be limited in favored enemy selection (maybe just what AD&D 1e calls "giants"?), but in exchange would get those abilities you mention and would be able to cast, to a limited degree, both druid and wizard spells.

On the other hand, I have been thinking of replaying Ultima 3 (again), and that game uses the "jack-of-all-trades" approach to the Ranger class, one that's also seen in the Might and Magic series. Although, I notice that, in these games, compared to more specialized classes they give up more on the casting side than on the fighting side.

Then again, I would be interested to see how a "jack-of-all-trades" class would work in modern D&D or in Pathfinder mechanics. Give the class decent fighting ability, decent casting of both arcane and divine spells, and some thief abilities, and you might have a class that's worth playing for characters who favor diversity over hyperspecialized builds. (By the way, Pathfinder 2e's main methods of character customization favor builds that are more diverse and less specialized; with several feats a character of an arbitrary class can eventually get 8th level spell access by level 20.)

To be honest, that's kind of how I treat the class in general. Archery focused fighter with rogue elements and a bit of druid on top.

And that's why I find class restrictions in RPGs dumb. If you have an idea for a character, you have to pick a class that "fits" if your idea isn't strictly conventional, or multiclass if it doesn't. Or pick an entirely different system that will allow it, but then that means you're out of luck if your tabletop groups won't adopt it.

Actually, other than The Elder Scrolls, a western ARPG and Minecraft (which was based on Rogue), they tend to suck in general. If you understand the triangle-system that most RPGs go on, you'd know that they were mostly meant to be weak to tanks but strong against mages. So they should have good survivability against magic while dealing out shots that will quickly deal with mages (depending on the system). So their leather should be enchanted and it should have high magic defense, low physical defense. Bows should do medium physical damage. They're supposed to suppress mages. The problem is, they never seem to give them the damage.

Mage classes have a similar issue where they get nerfed to hell and back. It would see this always comes from either the customer or the developer not understanding how to balance the classes because they're unaware of the triangle-system. They get that there should be differences, they get what those differences look like, but they don't have a clue how to compare. Things usually end up favoring your knights (tanks: given high damage physical weapons along with their high defense armor).
Yeah, and something needs done about max level partis [/sarcasm]

This is the trap TES fell into, and mages are broken in Skyrim, and not in an "easy to win" kind of way. They sought to control the issues of crafted magic and now mages don't have good high level options without mods (which is why there's so much hate for vampires in skyrim, because that favors magic). Instead, players should challenge themselves. If you're overleveling yourself to have all the best spells, you're going to wipe everything.

But, hey, if you need to deal with it, you could always find a way to make the neglected aspects more important. Make something suck half your MP, then give them something that regetns 10 MP per turn. Now they're going to use base and -ara spells, since that's all they'll have the MP for.
Well, the idea of a class is that your character has a role on the team to fill. Complaining about this is akin to complaining about players in a sport not able to play different positions. It's inherent in the name "Role Playing Game." Now i know that some RPGs lost sight of this by being single player nd not giving you AI allies to work with, but without a team your "role" of your RPG is already in violation of the genre. RPG does imply creating a team, even if it's one other character. Of course, being able to break out of your class a little isn't a bad idea, but even in games like Skyrim you find that if you break out of your class too much you get punished, which i think is a good way to deal with it. Players should learn and know their role before abandoning it.

The biggest problem is that developers look at the damage that various classes can put out, try to balance that, but ignore the resource cost that mages typically have and that fighters don't. For a game to be balanced, attacks that cost resources need to be more powerful than those that don't, or else attacks that cost resources aren't worth using. Given that mages, to do decent damage, need to spend resources, this ends up hurting mages significantly.

Worth noting that this tends to be an issue in high-attrition games that aren't designed with high-attrition games in mind. For high-attrition to work, attacks that cost resources need to be strong enough that, when used properly, they allow you to avoid having to spend as many resources recovering from combat, or dealing with things the player might not be able to recover from (like being sleep-locked, or having a character killed or level drained). When that balance is not followed, mages become useless.

(Also worth noting that, if you make it easy to restore MP, or do something like having MP (and HP) fully recover after every battle, you're now looking at a low-attrition game, and such games are very different from a balance perspective. A developer who makes this decision needs to pay attention to the ramifications that decision has throughout the game's design.)

(There's also the occasional game that gives physical attacks resource costs. SaGa Frontier 2 is an interesting example, where it's harder to recover your physical attacks than it is to recover spells, resulting in a situation where spells are what you use when you want to conserve resources, and physical attacks (if you manage to learn high-end ones) are what you use when you are willing to spend resources to do more damage.)

Hang on ... you're saying Minsc sucks? :-O

"Go for the eyes, Boo! Go for the eyes!!"

If the game has a single PC, I'm all for being able to do everything, in fact am always frustrated when that's not the case and there are restrictions and limitations. In party-based games, makes more sense for each character to have a more clearly defined role, but even there, assuming it takes quite some effort to get a character to master the skills for one role, if a player is willing to put in all of the additional effort needed to master multiple roles, whether for the single PC or for each party member, I say let them do so. Likely means turning the mid-game into quite a chore in exchange for an easy late game, but should be player's choice to make.

I wouldn't know. I always play Baldur's Gate 1 using a 5-person fully created party, and occasionally 1 NPC to fill the gap (usually a mage). I like to create my own characters, so thank you very much NPCs, your services are not required.
I do not cheat, I simply use the multiplayer game feature which was there at launch, which gives full control on party creation.

I agree with dtgreene, and also with kohlrak further down the thread who made an excellent analogy to players in team sports.

In games where there is only 1 character you control, like Ultima Underworld, sure, I love my axe wielding, plate armor wearing Druid with maxed our spellcasting skills and rudimentary dex-based skills.

But in games with 6 characters,you will face many situation where :
Who is the person with the highest physical strength to bash that wall?
Who is the person with the strongest spells to teleport me around or to kill that physically immune monster?
Who is the person with the best lockipicking skills to open that lock without triggering nasty explosions?
Who is the person who can resurrect 2 people who were just reduced to ashes in my last fight?
Who is the person who can hit that far away dangerous target with near perfect accuracy and damage?
Who is the person who is best equipped to fight undead?

If you included a typical RPG ranger, you will reach the end game, see that he never stood out from all these 6 questions, and then ask yourself:
What did my ranger do all game? He never stood out. Sure, he helped my knight kill stuff, he helped my mages and clerics with his low level healing and utility spells, provided additional long ranged fire to my dedicated archer, and he sometimes could pick locks (maybe) when a better thief wasn't available. And sometimes he could summon cute furry animal friends, who could be useful for only 1 thing: to die in 1 hit from those giant maul wielding ogres, providing some distraction from my knight who, as a result, suffered 10 less points of damage in that fight.

If *that* character is the one who is dead, who else can resurrect them?

I generally like to have 2 characters who can revive for this reason alone.

In Final Fantasy 3's 3D remake, I like to have both a Red Mage (jack-of-all-trades, for endgame can do decent damage and has access to Curaga and Raise, so can revive a dead character (with 1 HP) or effectively heal the party) and a Devout (not good at fighting, but the best choice for healing) in the same endgame party. You have the dedicated healer, as well as the balanced attacker who can spend a turn to heal if needed. (Other classes I like to use are Dark Knight (doesn't compete with Red Mage for endgame weapons) and Bard (I really like this iteration of the class.)

(Worth noting that this doesn't hold for the original version, where the party of 2 Sages (can cast every spell, and is the best at using them) and 2 Ninjas (best fighting job in the game, and the only one that can throw shurikens) is the best endgame party.)

Those situations don't always come into play. For example, you might be able to get away without lockpicking and open the lock, trigger the trap, and then heal afterwords.

In the case of a physically immune monster, what matters isn't who has the best spell for damaging it, but rather how good your party's magic offense, as a whole, is. Therefore, having multiple characters who can cast attack spells, even if they're not pure mages, can be useful.

The resurrect example is another case where it helps to have a backup caster, as I mentioned, though usually Rangers don't get access to that spell. (On the other hand, I have seen that spell available to Final Fantasy'sRed Mages (aside from original FF3), Dragon Quest's Heroes (not the game with that title, but the Hero class/character in the main series), and even Wizardy's Lords and (when present) Valkyries.

Also, sometimes a more balanced character can get unique options. For example, in Might and Magic 3, only Druids and Ragners can cast the Walk on Water spell, which is very useful given that the world is (as its title suggests) a bunch of islands separated by water, and since their spells are otherwise not that useful, it makes sense to take a Ranger for more physical damage.

Depends on the game... sometimes you are correct, but other times you really need the best and high end damage spell... for instance in MM2, stole golems barely registered any damage from my paladin, cleric, and archer's weaker damage spells, only my sorcerer dealt reliable damage, so in those particular fights I would have much prefered to have more sorcerers for their implosion, inferno, mega volts, etc.