Vigilante archetypes spellcasting "as another class"

[Scott Mcgroarty]

The zealot archetype says that it casts spells "as an inquisitor". Does that mean if a zealot took levels of inquisitor they would stack for spell progression, caster level, spells know etc. Or would that all be seperate as normal with multiclass casters?

[Mimski]

Seperate as normal. "as an X" just means the spell progression and type (prepared/spontaneous) is the same. (I'm pretty sure there are even archetypes who cast spells "as an X" but with a different spell list.)

[Chess Pwn]

Nope, they are separate. We can see this since paladin channels as a cleric, but we have a FAQ telling us that the channels, along with everything, doesn't stack but are separate.

[TriOmegaZero]

There would need to be language stating they stacked for the purpose of determining spells. Casting as another class just means you reference that class for determining what spellcasting the character has based on the class requiring the reference.

[SCPRedMage]

Ultimate Intrigue, pg 56 wrote:

Spellcasting Vigilantes

The spellcasting ability granted to some vigilante archetypes refers to the text of another spellcasting class to determine how that vigilante casts spells. Unless noted otherwise, the vigilante follows that class’s rules on learning, casting, and replacing spells. It also uses the same ability score to determine bonus spells per day, save DCs, concentration check bonus, and so on unless noted otherwise.

This is all that "casts spells as" means for vigilantes; it was used as shorthand, as including full spells per day and spells known tables would have taken up too much space on the page (and thus probably mean something else would have to be cut from the book).

Also, keep in mind that while the zealot casts spells "as" an inquisitor using the inquisitor spell list, both the cabalist and the warlock cast spells as a magus, but using the witch and wizard spell lists, respectively, which would make stacking with magus kind of tricky.