Are Fighters spellcasters?

[Malphegor]

I was reading the feat Spell Drain from Libris Mortis lately, and came across this:

> This feat has no effect on spellcasters who don't prepare spells (such as a sorcerer, who simply loses one spell slot for each negative level bestowed as normal) or who have no spells prepared (such as a fighter, or a wizard who has cast all her spells).

This has... Implications due to the language used... Or it’s too early in the morning and I’ve gone a little mad lately, 50:50 either way

A Fighter, according to this, is a spellcaster, who has no spells prepared.

If you can find a way to give a character with some way of casting spells that isn’t based on levels in a spell-casting class, you can probably leverage Fighter and caster progressing prestige classes to have a fighter based caster level.

Do I know of a way to do this? Nope! My first thought was precocious apprentice and Dragon Disciple but the new spell slots would work off of precocious apprentice’s rules... But they’re added to the spellcasting class, which is really fighter here? So the Fighter gets new precocious slots but they’re based off of their Fighter level maybe? Not sure.

It would be super dumb and you have no way of advancing to higher spell slots, but it’s a thing.

There are... easier ways to make a gish but I spread this wording out into the world knowing it blatantly wasn’t the RAI.

[Gruftzwerg]

It is a feat and thus not the Primary Source for spellcasting. As such it can only make specific exceptions for its niche and not create new general/global rules. Whatever the feat says, counts only for itself and doesn't add general rules.

Its:
"Specific Trumps General"

and not:
"Specific Becomes General"

[Vaern]

I'd guess it's likely a typo and they just missed a word that was meant to be there. Perhaps it was meant to read, for example, "This feat has no effect on spellcasters who don't prepare spells or characters who have no spells prepared."
It does make sense for fighters to be mentioned just to acknowledge that the feat has no effect on characters who simply do not have spells, though fighters don't have spells as a class feature and don't fit the definition of spellcasters. The reference to them as being spellcasters is almost certainly in error and was probably simply overlooked when they were doing errata.

As for getting spellcasting abilities as a fighter, any spells or spell-like abilities you're likely to get from your race or feats are going to be either fixed, tied to RHD, or based on character level. You could find a race who casts spells as a particular class to qualify for a prestige class without having any actual class levels in a caster class, but you're not going to be able to advance "fighter CL" in this way. Instead, you'd probably just increase CL and spells known/spells per day as though you had gained an additional RHD, or as though you had advanced in the class your spellcasting is based on and that you don't actually have levels in.