Ravener Wizard

[Raetu]

Hey folks, I was looking through my various books for an interesting beastie to lead an undead army when I came across the Ravener.

I got to it's soul magic ability and found myself wondering:
How does the ravener's soul magic ability work if the dragon has levels as a non-spontaneous caster?

I realize the absurdity involved in giving class levels to something that is already that powerful, but the question still stands:
Does a ravener wizard/witch/cleric/whatever become a spontaneous caster? Or does it have to fly off after it fires off a few big crowd-kills to spend an hour preparing it's next few crowd-kills?

Soul Magic (Sp):

A ravener retains the base creature's spellcasting capability, adding three levels to the base creature's caster level. This increases the number of spells known by the ravener, but the ravener loses all spell slots. Instead, whenever the ravener wishes to cast any one of its spells known, it consumes a number of hit points from its soul ward equal to the spell slot level necessary to cast the spell (including increased levels for metamagic feats and so on). If the soul ward has insufficient hit points, the ravener cannot cast that spell. Casting a spell that reduces its soul ward to exactly 0 hit points does not harm the ravener (though most are not comfortable without this buffer of soul-energy and try to replenish it quickly).

[chris Marino 366]

I have run one of thous and as far as i have found out you run all magic off Soul Magic so a 9th level spell cost you 9 points a pop but you get to eat the souls of though's you kill and can have up to double your hit points in your Soul Magic

[Cuup]

I would say you spend the points from your soul ward while preparing spells from your prep-caster class. Now you're still exclusively using the Soul Ward for casting, but also preparing spells like normal. Seems redundant, though; any Ravener is going to be casting spells as at least an 16th level Sorcerer. Why not just tweak its spells known list to fit a Necromancer?