How integral to the identity of the Ranger class is the use of a small repertoire of magic?

Although a no-magic ranger should be an option, I see the ranger's spells as part of being self-sufficient.
Learning a little bit of utility magic related to your job makes you so much more productive, it's insane that 99% of NPCs can live their entire lives without even seeing any magic!
>muh rare talent
>muh years of study
Oh, I just hit level 2! I multiclass into wizard and learn magic overnight :^)

Ranger has always been a kind of dumb archetype.
Same with any fighter variants like barbarian or monk.

Very little, especially if use of magic can be obtained outside of classes.

Shit. The fact that the ranger has magic is a bummer. The class was never good, and relying on magic makes it even worse.
He was suppose to be a special kind of fighter, a mishmash of fighter and rogue, and instead he is poor man's druid the bugaloo.

The real problem with rangers is one of role.

Are they just fighters specialized with a tiny taste of rogue skills, a focus on ranged weapons, and some exploration abilities? A jack of all trades doesn't really fit into modern min-maxing party dynamics.

The most important trait of the ranger in fiction is that they negate certain types of challenges and don't always show up. So they can guide you through the darkest wilderness, but then they run off and you're further into the dark than you would have gotten without their help.

In D&D and most RPGs that take from it, the Ranger class is "whoops we forgot to make archery a first-class citizen everywhere else." Though magic hybrid characters smooth out the game a lot, I can't really complain about any excuse to include one.

By not hiding 100% of magic behind wizard spells while leaving the rest of the world 100% mundane.

>Oh, I just hit level 2! I multiclass into wizard and learn magic overnight :^)
>not making multiclassing a quest onto itself

Level-by-level multiclassing is a horrid mistake and an abomination.

I made it work in my homebrew. Turns out the secret was to allow people to take levels in "found a bitchin' sword" or "motivated by revenge" in addition to things like ranger and wizard.

I mean, that and balancing class levels against each other instead of just trying to balance class vs class.