Other People's Magic

When discussing clerics the other day, I made an incidental comment about warlocks and how it seemed cumbersome to distinguish them from a plain Evil Cleric. But that was a little shallow and I had better go into greater depth.

Originally:
Wizards cast "arcane" spells. The rules for memorizing and casting are borrowed from Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories. (Dying Earth is important Appendix N stuff. Highly recommended.)
Clerics cast "divine" spells. This offered a clear distinction between two different flavors of spellcasters.
In AD&D:
Wizards were then allowed to specialize in schools of magic, Clerics altered their spell list based on the domains of their gods.
Druids are basically clerics, but their spell list is a mix of arcane and divine spells.
Bards, paladins, and rangers can cast spells for being special.
In 3E:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters, but their power goes off cha and not int. They have better firepower, while a wizard has a potentially wider arsenal. With them comes the idea that you don't need to understand magic to use it.
In 3E splatbooks and later editions I haven't played:
Warlocks. They get power from entities outside themselves, like a cleric, but use a different spell list. 5E has wisely removed the distinction between arcane and divine spells, and has substituted spell lists by class.

This is all clear as mud. My compulsion is to "fix" it. New Feat: (A lot of grognards and old-schoolers seem to dislike the Feat System for its complexity. I tend to think that it is more elegant to have perhaps four base classes which are thoroughly customizable, than to have over a dozen classes which have only fuzzy distinctions from each other.)

Metamagic Feat; Spell Granting
Benefit:
You may gift a certain amount of your periodic spellcasting potential (spells per day) to another intelligent entity, to use at their discretion. Spells granted are subtracted from the Grantor's spells per day. The Grantor may offer as much or as little of his magical capacity to the Grantee as the grantor wishes. The Grantee may then generally choose which of the available spells he wishes to prepare for a given day (if you even require spell preparation as opposed to extemporaneous casting) The Grantor is free to place conditions on the Grantee in exchange. The grantor may dissolve the arrangement at any time for any reason.
Prerequisites:
The Grantor must be intelligent and have atleast 20 HD (Making this any lower would seriously impact the setting. If your second cousin grants you spells, it would tend to undermine anyone claiming to be a transcendental being on basis of their spellgranting. But that could also be cool.)
Other Requirements:
The Grantor may only grant spells which he or she is capable of casting. (this assumes removing the distinction between arcane and divine spells. Otherwise you have the awkward question of who grants divine spells to the grantor.)
The Grantee must have the ability to cast the spell in terms of raw ability scores (10+level of spell in relevant stat for instance) and possibly in terms of class level (determining spell progression by class is a hairy issue, as each class has different progression rates! Needs standardized!) At the DM's discretion, the Grantee may be able to attempt to cast spell above his capability, but there may be adverse consequences to this.
The Grantee must perform some sort of ritual or initiation which sympathetically binds the grantor and grantee on whatever magical terms. The nature of this ceremony may be defined by the grantor.

What would this mean in-game?
Well, it kind of gets rid of Clerics and Warlocks and anyone who is casting someone else's magic. Not in the setting I mean! There would presumably still be people who go about effecting the will of otherworldly entities in your campaign world. We could even continue to call them Clerics and Warlocks. They just wouldn't need a class to define their power and role in the setting.
You know how I said that the concept of Class had to go? This is me starting that process.
(Druids are oddly unaffected by this. But Don't Worry. Druids will be the subject of the next Dull & Defanged.)

By eliminating pre-defined classes, the burden of determining which spells or domains are available falls on the players and DM, rather than the book. But it is seriously not hard to pick out a spell list.

Spell Granting also handily distinguishes between who is truly a favored soul and who is simply a member of a religious organization. Not all priests are Clerics, not all Clerics are priests.

Incidentally(read: to be discussed in another post) removing the distinction between Arcane and Divine magic pretty much wrecks the arbitrary differences between what a clerics and wizards can cast.

A madman shouts to a crowded marketplace "Alignment is Dead!"

Another benefit I see here is that it unhooks moral restrictions from class, and hooks it to the arrangement between the grantor and grantee. Take the Paladin for instance. The paladin is granted power, and the maintenance of a certain moral standard is the price for this power. This is considered to be balanced. Yet it is also a little weird. Everyone has an alignment, yet some people get goodies for it and others don't?
The reward is not really for the alignment, but for the trouble had in maintaining it, as opposed to the ease of being changeable. (Alignment also has to go. I'm just mentioning it as a placeholder.)

The issue of limiting the power this grants:
As Spell Granting is written, there is not much which prevents a character of a given level from casting as a cleric of the same level, essentially double-classing for free. Well We Can't Have That. (unless this is common in your campaign. Then it's balanced again if everyone has equal resources)

Presumably, any serious Grantor of magic power will place significant conditions of behavior or moral philosophy on the grantee. Maintaining these standards should be difficult. But this only goes so far.
On the other hand, the grantor could be extremely involved with the grantee and constantly requiring hard service from them. Spell Granting could well be intended as a temporary arrangement in dire situations, rather than as a vocation. Or it could be used as a method for Mages to give their apprentices hands-on training.)

Perhaps a tithe of experience points would balance the deficit? Play testing is the only way I can think of to dial in the right percentage of tithe though. Maybe 25% is a good start. (50% would be equivalent to the penalty of simply double-classing.) After sacrificing so much XP however, a breech of contract could leave a character terribly underpowered (which may be part of a cool story arc, or just render the character unplayable)

And there is no assumption that the Spell Granting arrangement is an instant and complete transfer. Perhaps it is a growing affinity, the capacity of which must be slowly exercised.
At the end of the day, the Grantor still has control over how much power to offer the grantee.

Magic power is difficult to gauge and distribute fairly in a game. Especially so when that power is on loan from on high. The greater power lies with the character who casts his own magic;

That would be a wizard.