Religion is a wisdom-based roll, so why wouldn't an additional lore about a god and their teachings (like Aroden Lore or Sarenrae Lore) be wisdom-based as well? Isn't that just a specific religion? Pathfinder seems to try very hard at maintaining sensibility in its RAW, even when it means confusing wording and exceptions, rather than just have sweeping rules for rules' sake. So why does this detail feel overlooked?
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I mean, I'd argue Religion being a wisdom-based roll at all is more than a little arbitrary to begin with.
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Well, Religion/Wisdom is more focused on understanding/practicing/belonging to a faith, while Lore/Int could be more focused on memorising scripture or church law for example.
It's like the difference between an ordained priest and a professor of theology - one has more of a connection to the faith (wisdom), while the other approaches it from a more analytical approach (intelligence).
The "wizards knowing more about the faith than clerics" thing is actually sort of accurate - it is actually pretty common for academics to technically know more about the bible than many people of faith, but they don't necessarily have the connection to it that people of faith do, and haven't internalized the beliefs around it or experienced the culture around it.
This kind of stuff is why I strongly advocate that you tailor what kind of information someone gets from a Recall Knowledge check to what skill they used - for example, when recalling knowledge about a famous saint, the cleric might use Religion and get more knowledge about what church texts say about that saint, while the wizard using Society might recall more about what academic history books say about that saint.
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I mean, I'd argue Religion being a wisdom-based roll at all is more than a little arbitrary to begin with.Yeah. It makes sense from a game perspective, wizards regularly knowing more than clerics about the tenets of their own faith has been joked about so much at my tables that it's become a cliche, but "realistically"--for what that's worth--it's still knowing information at the end of the day, which falls into Int more than Wis.
And if it is something at your table that you'd like to change, the book does have this to say.
If the GM deems it appropriate for a certain situation, they might have you use a different ability modifier for a skill check or when determining your skill DC.
Yeah, it's a little weird when it's gameified or whatever you want to call it, but in reality recalling information is still intelligence based in the system in general, and to be completely consistent should probably always be int based including specifically the recall knowledge part of religion. The real difference would come with experience and training, which in pf2 is signified by proficiency. The problem being that prof doesn't necessarily scale in a way that players would rationally think it would for a character, but rather scales from the skill boosts you get from leveling.
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I agree it doesn't make sense, but there's no reason to try and rewrite the Core Rulebook at this point.
The problem is easily solved from the GM side by lowering the DC when someone uses Lore instead of Nature/Religion (in addition to a lowering of the DC whenever someone uses Lore in general to encourage using Lore), or giving the recalling PC a circumstance bonus equivalent to or greater than the difference between their INT and WIS.
PFS does limit the GM's ability to do this, but PFS also gives out bonus Lores that are disproportionately used in scenarios, so I think it's balanced.
In my home games, my players will end up with both a lowered DC *and* the circumstance bonus (for a massive advantage); because the homebrew worlds are heavily tailored towards their backgrounds, in many cases I'll basically give them "one level of success better" level bonuses. It's almost like the mystery of the overgrown library was designed to have been solved by a former farmer and former librarian!
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Lores being intelligence based also allows a wizard to know a lot about undead or demons despite not having the wisdom to know better than creating undead or bargaining with demons.
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I always assumed that wisdom based monster ID checks were based off of intuition and experience (mostly because wisdom is associated with druids and clerics).
Like how you FEEL the creeping, clawing aura of an evil spirit, or the seething hatred and playful malice of a demon.
They can then just work backwards from there- they know what kind of creature it is, so they just need to remember the factoids of what it is called. It takes less detail based observation and deduction that way.
Probably because being good at almost anything benefits at least a little bit from having a handle on relevant theory.
Like religion oriented lore is being able to cite specific passages or historical contexts.
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Another thing with the variable stat part that comes to mind? While Recall Knowledge is tied tightly to int, the use of a lore in a practical sense is not.
Earn Income, for instance, may be better rolled with str or dex (for instance, you could make that argument for something like labor lore)
A GM could instead just allow the use of Athletics for Earn Income.