Chaplain Rework Discussion/Suggestion Smackdown

[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.