Why are Inquisitors wisdom-based and not intelligence-based? (fluffwise)

[Elvensilver]

I just don't understand why Inquisitors are supposed to be wisdom-based casters. When I first read about them, I didn't even consider that a possibility- I just assumed they would be intelligence-based. I was quite stupified when I learned that this wasn't the case.
After all, historically Inquisitors were judges in trials over heretics, and some sort of detectives to find these, too. Both of this profession strike me as needing intelligence far more than wisdom. They worked systemetically, in a hierarchy such as an order, they had rules (that is, for example, why the church for the most part didn't support neither the Malleus Malleficium nor witch burning- they thought it to be theologically unfounded).
Sure, for understanding people, discerning falsehood and the like, you need wisdom too.
But I sure would have liked to see the Inquisitor as an intelligence-based caster, to better seperate him from the cleric/warpriest/druid/whatever divine caster, because that would allow differently flavored and skilled builds (maybe with another race, too) and because it better fits the theme.
So what do you think? Why did Paizo make the Inquisitor wisdom- instead of intelligence-based? Do you agree with that, fluffwise?

[Gallowglass]

I just don't understand why Inquisitors are supposed to be wisdom-based casters. When I first read about them, I didn't even consider that a possibility- I just assumed they would be intelligence-based. I was quite stupified when I learned that this wasn't the case.
After all, historically Inquisitors were judges in trials over heretics, and some sort of detectives to find these, too. Both of this profession strike me as needing intelligence far more than wisdom. They worked systemetically, in a hierarchy such as an order, they had rules (that is, for example, why the church for the most part didn't support neither the Malleus Malleficium nor witch burning- they thought it to be theologically unfounded).
Sure, for understanding people, discerning falsehood and the like, you need wisdom too.
But I sure would have liked to see the Inquisitor as an intelligence-based caster, to better seperate him from the cleric/warpriest/druid/whatever divine caster, because that would allow differently flavored and skilled builds (maybe with another race, too) and because it better fits the theme.
So what do you think? Why did Paizo make the Inquisitor wisdom- instead of intelligence-based? Do you agree with that, fluffwise?

I feel like your idea of what the difference is between Intelligence and Wisdom doesn't fit with what the game designers idea of the difference is.

Think about the skills and what attribute they tie too. Perception, Sense Motive are both wisdom based.

Now think about your examples. A judge and an investigator. The skills that define those roles are Sense Motive (for the Judge) and Perception (for the Investigator)

In D&D, wisdom is more than just your tie to divine magic. It represents your ability to perceive the world, notice irregularities, understand psychology and interpret people's unspoken language.

For the Inquisitor, whose job is to see through lies and seek out secrets, wisdom is the obvious attribute.

I feel like, in your mindset, those kind of things are based on intelligence instead of wisdom and that's just because of your interpretation of what intelligence is vs what wisdom is. Which is fine, you can have whatever interpretation/definition best works for you. They are arbitrary and nebulous concepts, not hard defined objects. But when dealing with the game you are tied to the game designers definition in the rule-set.

[Calthropstu]

I just don't understand why Inquisitors are supposed to be wisdom-based casters. When I first read about them, I didn't even consider that a possibility- I just assumed they would be intelligence-based. I was quite stupified when I learned that this wasn't the case.
After all, historically Inquisitors were judges in trials over heretics, and some sort of detectives to find these, too. Both of this profession strike me as needing intelligence far more than wisdom. They worked systemetically, in a hierarchy such as an order, they had rules (that is, for example, why the church for the most part didn't support neither the Malleus Malleficium nor witch burning- they thought it to be theologically unfounded).
Sure, for understanding people, discerning falsehood and the like, you need wisdom too.
But I sure would have liked to see the Inquisitor as an intelligence-based caster, to better seperate him from the cleric/warpriest/druid/whatever divine caster, because that would allow differently flavored and skilled builds (maybe with another race, too) and because it better fits the theme.
So what do you think? Why did Paizo make the Inquisitor wisdom- instead of intelligence-based? Do you agree with that, fluffwise?

Intelligence is what you know. You can know all the facts you want. But what makes a good judge is his wisdom. It is wisdom that fuels judgement. It is wisdom that is able to cipher out how the laws should work together and how they need to be applied. Wisdom is your judgement, not intelligence. It is wisdom that lets you know when you are being lied to, it is wisdom to get to the truth. Intelligence just lets you learn cold facts. Wisdom gleans meaning and understanding.

An inventor would need to have both. Which is why you have so many wizards who do stupid things like summon demons to grant wishes.

[Elvensilver]

feel like your idea of what the difference is between Intelligence and Wisdom doesn't fit with what the game designers idea of the difference is.

Think about the skills and what attribute they tie too. Perception, Sense Motive are both wisdom based.

Now think about your examples. A judge and an investigator. The skills that define those roles are Sense Motive (for the Judge) and Perception (for the Investigator)
Well, I agree that the difference is a bit iffy. I mostly regard wisdom as the ability to read people (and also a bit of emotional maturity)
I do not however, agree to the notion that Sense Motive is the most important skill for a judge. That would be profession (judge)- and that involves a lot of understanding laws, knowing which applies under the given circumstances, and applying them to the particular case. There is a lot of nuanced knowledge involved. Sure, profession is also wisdom based, but in this case (and with a lot of other professions), I think intelligence is -fluffwise- more important.
Also, for a investigator, to find the clues you need perception, but then you have to correctly interpret the evidence- by skills such as Knowledge (religion/arcana/local...) If you find all the clues, but don't know that those mean that the parish has renounced your god for another, you certainly aren't a great inquisitor.

[Calthropstu]

Well, I agree that the difference is a bit iffy. I mostly regard wisdom as the ability to read people (and also a bit of emotional maturity)
I do not however, agree to the notion that Sense Motive is the most important skill for a judge. That would be profession (judge)- and that involves a lot of understanding laws, knowing which applies under the given circumstances, and applying them to the particular case. There is a lot of nuanced knowledge involved. Sure, profession is also wisdom based, but in this case (and with a lot of other professions), I think intelligence is -fluffwise- more important.
Also, for a investigator, to find the clues you need perception, but then you have to correctly interpret the evidence- by skills such as Knowledge (religion/arcana/local...) If you find all the clues, but don't know that those mean that the parish has renounced your god for another, you certainly aren't a great inquisitor.

Isn't profession a wisdom based skill?

Intelligence may be required to know the law, and "knowledge laws" would be beneficial and probably even required.

But APPLYING the law is more important than knowing it. Understanding both the law's intent and the wording. Applying it to obscure circumstances, and arriving at solutions both fair and unassailable. It is FAR more wisdom than anything else.

[digiman619]

Besides, if you want to be an Intelligence based Inquisitor there's an archetype for that. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/inquisitor/archetypes/inquisitor-archetypes-paizo/living-grimoire-inquisitor-archetype/)

[Geddy2112]

Inquisitors are much more the judges and grim noir detectives, not academic types. They go off hunches, gut feelings, reads, more than facts and figures. Their monster lore lets them add experience and practical know how to figure out monsters vs raw academic knowledge Some might be more of the intellectual, particularly the living grimoire as mentioned above.

I always thought the inquisitor was more of a divine bard: face, skillmonkey, spontaneous caster with a limited and somewhat unique spell list.

[ezekielraiden]

Ironically, the real-life judge position is in a pretty unusual situation. Lawyers working as attorneys, who are the primary source for applicants to judicial positions, need lots of Int to absorb and retain knowledge of the law, sure. All highly trained professional-degree careers do (doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers). But attorneys also need a pretty hefty amount of charisma in order to effectively carry out cases, whether prosecution or defense.

Yet as soon as you sit behind that podium rather than in front of it, suddenly you need Wisdom. Lots of it. You have to evaluate the merits. Intelligence is for calculation, but is of little direct use when you need to determine the value (in the ethics sense) of a situation or proposal. The law is not a computer program, to be passed through a discrete algorithm; it is the ruleset within which a judge must make a decision. All the Intelligence is merely the foundation, the bare minimum starting point. The foundation must be built upon. Logic is the beginning of judgment, not the end!

And an Inquisitor? They need to be able to read people. They need to know, not just the law, but the tricks used to conceal the truth, hide the evidence, dissemble the guilt. An Inquisitor is plumbing the depths of the accused's very soul, to determine whether they are innocent or guilty. The precise details of the law are less important than determining that guilt or innocence, and that requires D&D Wis, not Int.

[Ellrin]

The simplest way I break down the difference between Int and Wis in D&D/PF is this:

Intelligence is knowing. Wisdom is understanding.

Obviously a bit of an oversimplification, but I feel like it does a pretty good job as a shorthand means of illustrating the intent behind the two different stats.

[Hoplite308]

I have a feeling it's related to their association with clerics. Clerics are wis-based casters, Inquisitors use the same channels for power (if to a lesser extent), therefore they would also be wis-based casters. Other than that, instead of making them super MAD, Paizo decided to base the rest of their abilities off of their casting stat.

[Lavaeolus]

Well, I agree that the difference is a bit iffy. I mostly regard wisdom as the ability to read people (and also a bit of emotional maturity)
I do not however, agree to the notion that Sense Motive is the most important skill for a judge. That would be profession (judge)- and that involves a lot of understanding laws, knowing which applies under the given circumstances, and applying them to the particular case. There is a lot of nuanced knowledge involved. Sure, profession is also wisdom based, but in this case (and with a lot of other professions), I think intelligence is -fluffwise- more important.
Also, for a investigator, to find the clues you need perception, but then you have to correctly interpret the evidence- by skills such as Knowledge (religion/arcana/local...) If you find all the clues, but don't know that those mean that the parish has renounced your god for another, you certainly aren't a great inquisitor.

My two cents, partly echoing others: in some ways the divide between Intelligence and Wisdom can be a little dodgy. Even the standard kind of truisms can be a little odd; Wisdom is understanding and Intelligence is knowledge, that's true, but they can also be used a little broader. Partly that comes part and parcel of trying to divide things into six attributes. (Willpower, force of will -- that's Wisdom, right? Except if you want it to be Charisma. In some ways this has a benefit: you can reinterpret stats a little for more varied concepts.)

Regardless: intuition is one thing listed as being under Wisdom, and more generally speaking one of the things Wisdom tends to pick up as a stat, in D&D, is observation. Now, I'll forewarn, I'm not that experienced with Pathfinder, but still, charging right in anyway regardless of any mistakes or misinterpretations.

Let's look at some of the skills governed by Intelligence, with Inquisitor class skills italicised:

Appraise, Craft, Knowledge, Linguistics, Spellcraft

And on the Wisdom side:

Heal, Perception, Profession, Sense Motive, Survival

I definitely don't think you'd be wrong to say an Inquisitor should be using Intelligence, reasoning, etc. Surely reason is paramount to a detective; it's how they jot the dots, draw conclusions from evidence, right? And indeed, they've got a hefty boost to various Knowledges. In my view at the core of the class concept, you could make an argument for taking away Craft, maybe Heal, in favour of Appraise. On Wisdom's side, 'intuition' is as mentioned also a tool in an investigator's arsenal, but what's the line between intuition and reasoning when you're thinking about a case, anyway? You can only get so far with gut impressions, surely.

But I can also see the logic in Wisdom being the backing behind it. Picking out clues from a crime scene, evaluating people -- these observational skills are traditionally treated by D&D as falling under Wisdom. For Pathfinder, the Int-based Search is now essentially under (the Wisdom-based) Perception. Early depictions of Sherlock Holmes by Doyle could be taken as someone who's pumped up their Wisdom at the sacrifice of some Intelligence; viewing the mind as 'finite', Holmes doesn't want to know irrelevant knowledge like how the solar system works, because he'll proverbially run out of space. (Though this element is, I think, dropped a bit later on, with Holmes ending up with amazing memory to go along with his over-the-top observational skills.)

And, like a lot of the things at the root of the attribute system, you can probably argue whether it's entirely fair that observation should be under Wisdom. There are skills that blur the line; Profession is learned knowledge, after all, and you could argue that it could fall under Intelligence. Hey, Heal technically rests on a lot of learned knowledge; it'd be a terrible idea to entrust your life to mine if a trained physician is standing by.

The final argument, and maybe the one most in the designer's head, you can make for Wisdom: while you could argue for flavour, Inquisitors should be distinct in how they draw their spells, by the books Inquisitors are still, not twisted by the whims of a specific player or a specific concept, generally intended to be faithful characters. Their power comes from conviction and devotion to their deity -- and in this regard, their spellcasting methods seem closer to a Cleric's than they do to a Wizard's, and ergo they should use the same stat for it.

So going back to the question proper, honestly, I wouldn't really have a problem with the idea of an Intelligence-based Inquisitor (or more generally an Intelligence-based investigative class). But I don't necessarily have a problem with Wisdom, fluff-wise.

[Endarire]

They're divine casters and divine casters don't like using INT in general.

[Gallowglass]

So going back to the question proper, honestly, I wouldn't really have a problem with the idea of an Intelligence-based Inquisitor (or more generally an Intelligence-based investigative class). But I don't necessarily have a problem with Wisdom, fluff-wise.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/investigator/

As you are not familiar with pathfinder, thought you might like to see this: A hybrid alchemist/rogue class called "investigator" that is... yes... int based. I wanted an Inquisitor/rogue hybrid class but not to be.

I want to see an investigator/inquisitor team up. "You find the guilty. I will judge them"