Chaplain Rework Discussion/Suggestion Smackdown

[Sundance]

Yes this is something I felt for a long time the chaplain needed. But I do need to stress that the effects need to be minimal or situational, so chaplain doesn't become the on station wizard.

Suggestions/backing up suggestions:

Atheist:
Yes to monkey speaking, very situational.
I like the idea of smugness. Maybe not the smug emoticon popping up, but I could see many people picking atheist just to have a smug "heh" noise they could make. Think of all the times you could just say "heh" just because you could? Minimal.

Life:
I like the idea of curing heart failure (perhaps heart attacks?) and shock. Although it should be either/or. So for example if the someone is dying of heart failure and shock, and the chaplain casts his voodoo, he'll cure either instantly one OR the other. This of course may backfire, because if the person is already in deep shock, he may simply go back into heart failure again. Minimal.
Perhaps a neat thing is a sacrifice ability, where he could revive a dead player at the cost of his own life, gibbing himself in the process. Situational. Very situational.

Death:
I don't like the ability to see ghosts, although hilarious as you make it sound to be, it seems too powerful imo.
I like the idea of having a death clock, sensing if someone died. Wear a skull mask and speak "tick" into the radio, followed by a "tock" a few minutes later.
Also could sense if there's a ghost nearby. Perhaps he could also look at a corpse and tell if that person is either A) set a DNR or logged out B) is still there. This way he could see a corpse, notice the person is still there, sense the ghost is nearby and use that ability for good (such as dragging it to robotics/genetics?) Perhaps another ability tied into this is that he can tell who a corpse is if it has decayed into Unknown?
"This is Unknown.
He is bloated and rotten!
You sense that the ghost of Sundance Feely is has yet to leave this spectral plane"

I'll get back to the other ones when it's not 4am in the morning.

[salix_catus]

Here is an idea, how about making each domain relate to certain station departments? It would mean that the chaplain would help out the relevant department based upon thier religion. This could help with the shortage of ideas for some of the domains.

Put into practice
Atheism is N/A

The god of Life would be the god Medical Doctors and Geneticists.

The god of Death would be the god of the Chaplain ( so they help themselves)

The god of Order would be the god of the Command Staff, and security

The god of Chaos would be the god of Staff Assistants and Clown

The god of light would be ????

The god of Darkness would be ????

The god of Machinery would be the god of Robotics, AI and Cyborgs

The god of Nature would be the god of Botanists

Evidently there are a lot of gaps.
Here are some more domain ideas

Earth
This domain would deal with the solid state of matter.
The god of Engineers, Miners and material scientists.

Water
This domain would deal with the liquid state of matter.
The god of chemical scientists and bartenders.
Also the god of slippy floors

Air
This domain would deal with the gas state of matter.
The god of atmospheric technicians(or the rare toxin scientist/engineer who actually cares about station air)
Also the god of farts

Fire
This domain would deal with the plasma state of matter.
The god of toxin scientists and engine engineers

Electricity
All things energy.
The god of mechanics and engine engineers.

Space
Space. Gotta have space religion.
God of telescientists and space explorers.

Money.
All things trade, gold and currency.
The god of quartermasters and traders.

Other domains
God of Cleansliness - god of janitors
God of Food - God of chefs
God of Monkeys
God of Macho - Boxing, Wrestling and working out.
God of Fun/Nerds - VR, card games and tabletop games.
God of drugs - all alcohol weed and other drugs here.

[UrsulaMejor]

God of food would obviously just give you access to the drama sting

[RAWK_LAWBSTAR]

Departmental domains is just turns the chaplain doesn't add anything and coming up with little powers or blessings for all of them would be a nightmare.

[salix_catus]

Departmental domains is just turns the chaplain doesn't add anything and coming up with little powers or blessings for all of them would be a nightmare.

Making them associated with different departments actually makes it easier to come of with powers and blessings. For example thinking about ideas for order is difficult. Thinking about ideas for order with the added context of it being related to command and security makes it easier.
you could have a power....
that lets you know how many are alive on the station.
that lets you label people(a la hand labeler) from a distance.
that makes written notes (that you write)appear out of thin air.
that gives you temporary telepathy and mind reading.

[BaneOfGiygas]

To those saying that the chaplain shouldn't be the station's friendly neighborhood wizard, I say: Why not? The ideas suggested in the wkzard revamp thread are leaning towards a tabletop RPG-style level progression, and since the chaplain is associated with such nerdery by way of the game room being right by his office, I think that the chaplain/wizard dichotomy is worth exploring.

I have some specific ideas rolling around for domain-related abilities, but I'm in a calculus class right now and I've been insanely busy besides, so it'll be a while until I'm able to list them out.

[Jerkops]

This is a cool idea, for some reason it reminded me of this http://forum.ss13.co/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4604 dead thread that was also full of cool ideas. Having the chaplain's domain and powers depend on his background is a good excuse to throw some RNG into the system to avoid people specifically picking abilities that will allow them to supercop station badguys.

[Frank_Stein]

This is a cool idea, for some reason it reminded me of this http://forum.ss13.co/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4604 dead thread that was also full of cool ideas. Having the chaplain's domain and powers depend on his background is a good excuse to throw some RNG into the system to avoid people specifically picking abilities that will allow them to supercop station badguys.

Yeah, I really liked the ideas in that thread.

If the domain was randomized, maybe instead they choose between different powers associated with the domain they are randomly assigned? That might give some more flexibility in deciding powers.

[NotReallyJeff]

Ok, have one more of my stupid ideas.

Base Idea:
Since the coders seem fond of power point system lately, why not give the chaplain one as well. The gist of this would be that the chaplain has an ultimate power that takes up all of their points at once, and can use more points in any of the lesser powers to beef it up a bit. Everything would be a bit different for different domains. It should also scale so that you can’t use your power more than once or twice in a round unless you really work hard for it, since the points regenerate rather slowly.

The chaplain should earn these power points at a very slow rate, unless they do their job properly. For this, I think all of the crew should get a number next to their heads called faith. The chaplain should be able to judge the average or total off all the faith points on the station, so they can see how good they are doing. Each person should be able to set it at all times, so the chaplain has a reason to preach to people. The chaplain can also increase this number by their special powers near people. These numbers should factor into how fast the chaplain gains their power points. Each domain has an additional way of earning power points faster, which should have something to do with what’s in the chapel. I also think an ultimate sort of power might be cool.

I have no idea what the code is like, so I have no idea if any of this is feasible at all.

Atheism: The points should be called smugness for this domain. I like all the fedora powers, and obviously like my suggestion earlier. I don’t think the resistances should be excusive to this domain, though. For this domain, the gimmick should be that the lower Faith number is better, since you want to destroy faith. This means that the ultimate power should be lecturing to a room, which drains faith from people/puts them to sleep. For a traitor, this should also be able to drive people into a rage (add rajaijah to their system) or make them grow a fedora and beard, and also give them access to this power, so there is a sort of zombie apocalypse of bearded weirdoes mixed in with riots.

For faster power points, watch science experiments, burn the bible, and wear the euphoric fedora. Maybe decorate the chapel with science equipment, or a telescope or something.

Life: I like the healing idea. Perhaps base the amount of damage you can heal on how many points you can put into the power. I also think that you should be able to siphon your own hit points into other people. This leads into the ultimate power idea, where you can bring one person to life, at a cost of all your points and your own life. As a traitor, you should be able to take over the body of the person you bring back to life, and get to keep all your powers (or maybe just mindslave the resurrected person).

To get additional life points faster you need to keep living critters in your chapel. And maybe some plants.

Death: My idea is basically a death chaplain is a weirdo necromancer. For something useful for death, perhaps a power to damage any critters would be useful, so you could be space adventurer. The damage would scale with the number of points used. Another idea related to dead chat is to only let the chaplain hear a random line from the dead chat that round. This means you might get something useful, but likely just useless crap. An ultimate power idea would be similar to the life resurrection, but instead you only have to give up max HP, but you end up with a peaceful revenant with the ghost of the person back in control of the body. The more HP you give up, the longer the revenant lasts, and maybe the body can’t speak unless you give up the majority of your HP. For a traitor, get rid of the HP cost, and have the revenants be your minions for evil. Perhaps require a sacrifice of somebody living for a permanent minion.

To get points faster for the death chaplain, have dead critters and other body parts littering your chapel.

Order: For one power let the chaplain see one of the red text messages, which might tell you a killer, or show you some guy fighting a monkey. I can’t think of many other ideas, but perhaps the ultimate power should cause all the items on the floor to come into a locker. A traitor version could do this to people as well, where they would be trapped.

Here you get points faster for keeping the chapel clean. Maybe get more points for making symmetric wire art.

Chaos: I can’t think of anything to add to Daeren’s ideas. That sounds good to me.

Additional point regeneration can be had by cluttering your chapel with as much random stuff as you can find. Also, wearing different clothing for different outfits should increase your point.

Light: Uh, can’t think of anything new. Emit more light by using up more power points? Just earn more points by adding as much light as possible in your chapel.

Darkness: No new ideas here either, just earn points faster by making your chapel as dark as possible.

Machinery: I think you should be able to bless cyborgs and charge them. The blessing could make them faster and work harder. I think a good final power would be to convert a dead body into a cyborg, with the traitor power obviously allowing you to convert anybody into one. Perhaps make them a syndieborg. Here you get faster points by having robots beep around in the chapel.

Nature: I would let the bless weed have a small radius which scales as the number of points you use, so at full power all the weed in the station is blessed. Perhaps the good version of Daeren’s traitor power just summons friendly bees. The point gimmick should be to have plants in your chapel, and put grass all over it.

So, this is a wall of text, and I apologize if my writing isn’t very clear. Let me know what y’all think.

[BaneOfGiygas]

I have a huge effortpost in the works with a crapton of ability brainstormings (just need to actually get around to finishing the damn thing. ) but one thing I might as well throw out there right now: Personally, I think that Nature and Life as domains have a bit too much in the way of overlap, with Life presumably being the domain of all living spirits and Nature being the domain of...living nature beings/plants? It just seems simpler to mesh the two together.

However, since Nature is obviously meant to be a counterpart to Machinery, the idea I had for a replacement domain would be Sorcery for some good ol' magic vs. machine action. I know that we want to avoid the chaplain basically being a friendly wizard, so the Sorcery domain should have as little copypasting as possible while still retaining a sort of "wizard-lite" effect. Maybe give them the ability to use a reflective surface (filled drinking glasses, glass shards, etc.) to practice scrying and get a text read-out of the rough location of the target, let them cast invisibility on themselves for brief moments of time, have them pull rabbits out of hats, iunno. Fun magic-type stuff that does as little leaning as possible towards the already-existing magic assholes we all know.

[salix_catus]

Personally, I think that Nature and Life as domains have a bit too much in the way of overlap, with Life presumably being the domain of all living spirits and Nature being the domain of...living nature beings/plants? It just seems simpler to mesh the two together.

I disagree. Nature is relating to botanists. Life is relating to medical doctors and geneticists. The domains to get rid of are light and dark. They are far too generic and can be merged with life and death.

As soon as people start thinking of domains to fit the world of ss13, rather than trying to fit ss13 into these generic domains, we'll see this idea start to make much more sense.

I want to see a chaplain preaching the god of wind and getting everyone to fart.

[BaneOfGiygas]

As soon as people start thinking of domains to fit the world of ss13, rather than trying to fit ss13 into these generic domains, we'll see this idea start to make much more sense.

Here's the problem I see with this, though. The whole point of this thread is to make the chaplain into his own unique entity as opposed to the random jobless schmuck he is now. But the direct association of domains to jobs or departments creates a design aesthetic that is very likely to just make the chaplain into a stunted, access-less variant of whatever job you're basing the domain off of. What's the point of being a Life chaplain and having generic healing powers when medbay is right over there? What's the point of being a Nature chaplain when botany's right next door?

The suggestion is not a bad one, but the issue here is one of redundancy. If there aren't unique and interesting abilities for the chaplain to acquire, then there's no reason beyond random whimsy for people to pick the chaplain over whatever job is actually associated with their domain. There's definitely no reason why domains can't be related to certain departments or fields on the station, and they will be just by nature of the domains in question, but direct association is something else entirely. Some hellacious ability design might be able to rectify this problem, but if the goal here is to make the chaplain actually useful and entertaining by his own merits, he needs to stand out. He needs to have things unique to him as opposed to slightly more magical versions of shit that other people already do.

[salix_catus]

As soon as people start thinking of domains to fit the world of ss13, rather than trying to fit ss13 into these generic domains, we'll see this idea start to make much more sense.

Here's the problem I see with this, though. The whole point of this thread is to make the chaplain into his own unique entity as opposed to the random jobless schmuck he is now. But the direct association of domains to jobs or departments creates a design aesthetic that is very likely to just make the chaplain into a stunted, access-less variant of whatever job you're basing the domain off of. What's the point of being a Life chaplain and having generic healing powers when medbay is right over there? What's the point of being a Nature chaplain when botany's right next door?

The suggestion is not a bad one, but the issue here is one of redundancy. If there aren't unique and interesting abilities for the chaplain to acquire, then there's no reason beyond random whimsy for people to pick the chaplain over whatever job is actually associated with their domain. There's definitely no reason why domains can't be related to certain departments or fields on the station, and they will be just by nature of the domains in question, but direct association is something else entirely. Some hellacious ability design might be able to rectify this problem, but if the goal here is to make the chaplain actually useful and entertaining by his own merits, he needs to stand out. He needs to have things unique to him as opposed to slightly more magical versions of shit that other people already do.

Hmm. I get what you are saying.
I hadn't explained myself well. here's where my thoughts were headed:
all the things suggested so far aren't really religious but magical. The chaplain is supposed to be about religion.
Here's a religion idea

How about the chaplains power scales depending on how well a certain department is doing?
that's like worship. different factors could come into it.
amount of damage healed/people cloned could give chaplain life points. number of farts station-wide for wind points. number of plants grown/ grass grown is nature points.

At the start the chaplain is basically choosing a target audience to preach to, in order to gain power.
and would be forced to shout at the station to get them to increase their points.
I can see this creating a lot of attention and dynamic. chaplain would become a very popular job.
this also makes the whole point system much more interesting as it is generated by the other players.
basically, chaplain needs worship mechanics to generate points and these can be provided departments related to chosen domain.

[BabaYaga]

Reading through these suggestions, I feel like we're turning a clown-tier loser job into an almighty prophet with divine powers. It's like a REALLY big step upwards and I think we should slow down or else we'll just create this unbalanced job.

I don't really have anything to contribute because I feel like no matter what we suggest in the ways of magic and religion it'll seem way too powerful and suddenly the chaplain will be the most important, most wanted job on the station as opposed to being the most ignored. The only thing I had in mind was the idea of gathering converts to the religion, except of course this sounds too cult-y and was struck down in ghostchat when I brought it up. Maybe someone can put a spin on it and make it less cult-y???

[Frank_Stein]

I don't know, I kinda like the idea a bit.

Like, converts don't have to do anything special except maybe wear a certain item. Like a particular hat.

More people wearing that hat, more powerful the chaplains powers are.