Faith and Arcane

In the interest of procrastinating my upcoming assignments, I wanted to elaborate on something I posited on another website: replacing Intelligence and Wisdom with Arcane and Faith.

What this means:

  • Arcane is your hyper-specific magical and occult lore. It's your time spent reading giant tomes and dusty grimoires bound with hopefully-not-human leather. Arcane is your mathematics degree, rather then having any direct bearing on like, general knowledge.

  • Faith is your blind trust in a cosmic path through the universe. The more you believe in something, the more real it is. If enough people believe in you, you too can play God.

Reasons I like this:

  • De-emphasizes character intelligence. You (the player) are clever. Don't feel like you need to roleplay otherwise because of stats. I think people already know this, but I like to see it reflected in game terms.

  • Works well with od&d. Prime requisites map cleanly onto character classes. Wisdom becomes the Cleric ability. Intelligence becomes the Wizard ability.

  • Creates a clear spellcaster dichotomy. If I was expanding classes beyond the core three, I would make it so arcane casters use a spellbook, while faith casters prepare from a fixed list.

  • Makes me think of Dark Souls. 

I also feel like this is fairly applicable to other classes, despite some restrictions. If I were to add Druids, I would make them also be a Faith class. I kind of like the idea that Thieves could be an Arcane class, to emphasize the uncanny nature of their abilities.

I'm not sure if this dichotomy really has room for more modern intuitive/bloodline casters, such as the 5e sorcerer. I don't know if that feels like a limitation to me or not. I also kind of enjoy the idea of a faith-powered sorcerer.

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