Charisma measures a character's personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance. It is the most important ability for paladins, sorcerers, and bards. It is also important for clerics, since it affects their ability to channel energy. For undead creatures, Charisma is a measure of their unnatural “lifeforce.” Every creature has a Charisma score. A character with a Charisma score of 0 is not able to exert himself in any way and is unconscious.
When I first started playing Pathfinder, I was dumbfounded by my discovery that Paladins had for some reason (seemingly only in game mechanical reasoning) had their primary casting stat switched from WIS to CHA. Naturally this improved them, but for the most part it never made sense to me, until I started comparing the different derivatives of spellcasting in DnD/Pathfinder and it made so much more sense to me, that I don't know why clerics didn't also receive this change.
Wisdom describes a character's willpower, common sense, awareness, and intuition. Wisdom is the most important ability for clerics and druids, and it is also important for monks and rangers. If you want your character to have acute senses, put a high score in Wisdom. Every creature has a Wisdom score. A character with a Wisdom score of 0 is incapable of rational thought and is unconscious.
Wisdom, bar the one word about willpower, is about awareness and intuitiveness. It makes complete sense for Nature casting to be based on this attribute, as ones ability to understand their surroundings and their better understanding of nature would make them better at casting things from the natural side of the divine scale.
Charisma however, is about the characters force of personality, and that attribute is the absolute most important aspect of exerting a religion or faith in the purist sense. It makes so much sense that a religious caster would be casting based off CHA that IMO the cleric should be changed, or at least tested out, to being a CHA based caster.
We also have some parallelism going here with Arcane casters being INT based, Nature divine casters being WIS based, and Religious divine casters would then be CHA based, showing how the different aspects of a character's personality affect the path that they choose to follow and thus affect what class and kind of spellcasting they use.
I have also been of the opinion that there should be a difference in how the game handles Natural casting vs Religious casting, as two separate kinds of magic, to be equal to Arcane. Arcane has to do with your ability to learn and memorize the 'science' of it all, Nature requires you to tune yourself to the world, and Religion forces you to flaunt your stances and beliefs.
That and, it also helps the cleric who is one of the worst MAD classes in the game, and allows for decent casting AND turning, where the other full casting classes have most of their main abilities based off one stat.
The change just made sense to me, idk if it does to anyone else, maybe I just sound like a stupid power gamer who wants it to be easier to max out. I also think a cleric should get 4+INT skills/level, but that's for another thread methinks.
Except the Sorcerer is Cha based so not all arcane casters go Int. so the parallelism thing is really kind of a wash.
As far as MAD-ness I'd rather the cleric just swapped turn/channel to Wis as it's a better score to have all the time as it also nets them a sizable boost to their saves which means they aren't as subject to save or die/sucks which makes them better front liners in a tussle without shuffling points out of a primary stat and into a tertiary one.
All spontaneous casters completely throw off the norm I have here. Inquisitors are WIS based, I'm pretty sure there are variants of sorcerers for them to swap their primary casting stat.
But spontaneous casters really defeat the point I'm trying to make here.
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Wisdom, bar the one word about willpower, is about awareness and intuitiveness. It makes complete sense for Nature casting to be based on this attribute, as ones ability to understand their surroundings and their better understanding of nature would make them better at casting things from the natural side of the divine scale.
I don't see there being much of a difference between 'natural' and 'religious' casting. They're both divine, because they both draw on forces greater than the character, it's just a difference of what powers them.
In my opinion, Wisdom does fine for the Religious casting for the same reasons you listed for Natural. Wisdom, to me, is more of an experiential stat, and the listed examples in the description make sense for such divine casting - Willpower (to channel the power of their divine source), Awareness (to understand/grasp it), and Intuition (to act in alignment with the powers they draw on).
Charisma however, is about the characters force of personality, and that attribute is the absolute most important aspect of exerting a religion or faith in the purist sense.
Continuing from above, Charisma does not strike me as important for such casting. You don't need to be an evangelist (not the archetype, but the definition) to receive/wield power from a deity or any other divine source. You just need faith and reverence in that power.
What you do need Charisma for is exerting your own power. More on that below.
We also have some parallelism going here with Arcane casters being INT based, Nature divine casters being WIS based, and Religious divine casters would then be CHA based, showing how the different aspects of a character's personality affect the path that they choose to follow and thus affect what class and kind of spellcasting they use.
I have also been of the opinion that there should be a difference in how the game handles Natural casting vs Religious casting, as two separate kinds of magic, to be equal to Arcane. Arcane has to do with your ability to learn and memorize the 'science' of it all, Nature requires you to tune yourself to the world, and Religion forces you to flaunt your stances and beliefs.
I think the Parallelism comes in a different form - For the most part, yes, Arcane casters are based on Int because it is the ability to cast based on the 'science' of it, as you say. Religious and Natural are not really separate though. As I said above, I think it's more the fact that they rely on wielding forces that the character does not particularly have control over. In the same way a Religious caster does not need to preach of their Deity everywhere, a Natural caster does not really manipulate the forces of Nature so much as they work with the 'Spiritual' (read: Divine) powers behind Nature, if that makes sense.
In general, the way I see casting stats broken down is:
Intelligence serves for the 'science' of it, as you said.
-Wizards are all about being smart and learning how to wield such magic. They need to be precise and exact with their actions/etc. in order to make things work correctly (Magi fall in this category as well).
-Witches feature a more ritualistic theme, but the basic premise is the same as wizards, they do their casting in a specific way and it has a specific effect.
-Alchemist... I don't even think I need to go into this. The entire idea behind the class seems to be SCIENCE!
Wisdom based casting draws on powers greater than the caster, commonly deities or in the case of Druids and Rangers, Natural spirits and such.
-Clerics need to be able to understand (such as through Wisdom) their deity and be able to wield the power given to them (such as through the Willpower clause in your quoted description). Likewise, Inquisitors, despite being Spontaneous, are very closely tied to their deity, so they fall into a pretty similar category as the Cleric.
-Druids and Rangers need to understand the natural world and be able to channel the powers of Nature. It's pretty similar to the same way Clerics/Inquisitors fuel their casting, just with a different source (Natural powers rather than Deific powers).
Finally, Charisma-based casters have a more instinctive/primal way of doing things. Their power is their own, not given from some higher power, or a calculated response to a set of actions.
-Sorcerers wield their inherited magical power, by exerting the sheer force of their mental 'strength' (force of personality = Charisma) to manipulate that magic. (Summoners and Bards pretty much fit into the same category here, with moderately different sources for their powers, but the same general idea.)
-Oracles do pretty much the same thing, even though their casting is Divine. They aren't tied to any particular deity to receive their powers, it's a matter of their own strength/power as to what fuels their spellcasting.
-Paladin is actually the most difficult to fit into this, but their power is not just a matter of a deity - it also comes from their own uncompromising moral code. They need to follow that moral compass in their actions, and it's not just their deity that grants them their powers, but also their own actions/outlook, so I can understand Charisma serving to power their casting, since it, at least partly, comes from themselves... That said, I'm less sure of how to make this one make sense though. Charisma and Wisdom both seem like they could make sense for it.
Anyway, that's all simply my personal evaluation of the casting stats. Take it as you will :)
Edit: Made several changes.
Personally I think all magic should be charisma based, it works well with the way UMD, and SLAs work, for wizard it is required to have proper understanding of spellcraft to learn spells but I do not see the need for super intelligence, the knowledgeable wizard is a trope, but that does not equal super intelligence, simply having access to knowledge skills and spellcraft enforcing a decent intelligence will fit that nicely.
Clerics, should use charisma for similar reasons. I'd still take bonus spells from wisdom and intelligence if I wanted to change how things are done though, but use charisma for the rest.
EDIT: a, in my opinion, fortunate side effect is that spontaneous casters tend to have more bonus spells since they can focus on their casting stat more easily.
If I were to inplement any change like this, I would have Wisdom affect spell duration, Charisma affect save DCs, and Int affect bonus spells. Martials have to rely on 3 stats after all.
I don't like the premise of this, so I am going to hide it.
I don't think I can reason with the OP. I won't try.
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Spontaneous casters are essentially 'doing it wrong' from the perspective of original classes; they're relying on pure personal energy (Cha) to gain access to powers that are normally acquired only through devotion or study.
Hmmm, I would say that , which by definition is what a Sorcerer and Oracle have.
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These divine vessels are granted power without their choice, selected by providence to wield powers that even they do not fully understand.
Charisma measures personal magnetism. Intuitively for me, personal magnetism sprouts from the development of who you are. Wisdom measures awareness and intuition, but nowhere does it make reference to self actualization and the ability to portray your inner self. That is reserved for Charisma. And so, I don't see why Wisdom is a better stat for Oracles, Sorcerers, and Creatures with SLA's.
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Wisdom strikes me as the ability to perceive something deep within yourself; to listen to what the hidden spark of divinity is telling you. The name oracle implies some sort of mystical knowledge or insight - wisdom seems more appropriate to me than charisma.
For clerics, I think there's some case to be made for charisma because they're taking a more established doctrine and bringing it to the world; how well can you express your faith?