I literally had Ao make some guy the "god of underdogs" because the mfer challenged Bane to a duel and handed bane his only weapon saying "You'll need it."

The guy died, but Ao thought it was funny and ascended the guy to "the one who overcomes all odds". Now Bane and him are arch-enemies both by personal beef and divine nature.

"Everybody wants to be the boss until it comes time to do boss shit."

I’m surprised there was no mention of Kua Toa. These fish people are really good at creating gods. Their power of belief is much greater than most creatures, and performing awe inspiring feats in front of them can spawn a tiny new god. I imagine a person could hijack the process and use a fish person cult to speedrun their immortality.

"Mom says it's my turn to sit on the throne of apotheosis!"

Cleric: You're not ascending to godhood, you're just dehydrated.

1:25 "She's beautiful, she's rich, she's got huge... tracts of land."

I love having my gods having a clear divide between "This is a force of nature and doesnt speak" or "This is a god and theyre a deeply flawed being"

Or "this eldritch horror ate a god and is trying to be them but with an alien understanding of their domain. Ie the godess of nature and fertility being consumed and now is a Deeplurker/aboleth horror that believes it is the god of its definition of love. So it will see all life reborn from its own flesh as one family.

In my homebrew setting, Jergal got so tired of the Dead Three ruining everything that he went to the Raven Queen and asked, "Hey, do you want to become the one and only god of death?"

The Raven Queen went "sure lol", had her followers systematically slaughter the Dead Three's followers, and now the Dead Three are mostly forgotten.

Now the Raven Queen mostly just ruins things for necromancers and does pretty much nothing else.

One of my friends always plays as a talking animal in every campaign we play in. Not a druid who's always wildshaped, just an actual talking animal.
Two campaigns in a row their first two animal players (A Kiwi Bird and a Mantis Shrimp) both ascended to godhood at the end, and now the entire group just assumes that if their next character (A Kokomo Dragon who thinks it's a real dragon) will ascend at the end of this campaign if they survive.

I prefer the the idea that achieving godhood doesn't innately make anyone stronger on its own, it simply removes the upper limit to how powerful they could eventually become. Any deity tends to need to be powerful enough to do its job correctly, but said power doesn't automatically come with the job, if some naive dryad somehow finds an easy way to become a nature goddess, her godhood isn't going to save her if Acererak decides that her forest is the perfect location for his next megadungeon

One of my player characters (Protos) was playing as the first Warforged ever created. At the end of the campaign, the pantheon recognized that the Warforged were a new race and hence needed a god to represent them. They asked the PC to take on this role as the "god of the Warforged and constructs". Upon ascension, Protos took the name "Primus".

I once had this God in a campaign who just hated it and tried to give it away, but no one wanted it. Long story short, he found out how domains work and picked a random one. His domain was cream cheese. He was god of cream cheese. This might shock you, but he was incredibly weak. However, being a god, people begged for miracles. He couldn't help them unless their problem could be solved with cream cheese. The party completed his quest, and as a reward, he tried to give them his godhood, but they thought it would be funnier if they just left and forced him to remain the god of cream cheese.

I think it’s interesting that the ascension of Iomedae from Pathfinder was considered one of her eleven most important heroic deeds she did in life. It’s a heroic sacrifice because good people don’t want power, even if they think they could use it well. Iomedae didn’t want the power, but becoming a god and filling the power vacuum left by Aroden, her predecessor god, was the best way for her to do good.

Power doesn’t corrupt, power reveals. It magnifies. In Iomedae, it revealed a woman who is flawed, as she’ll freely admit, but is utterly devoted to goodness and justice.

And then there’s Cayden Cailean, who ascended in the same* way. It revealed a chill guy who likes a good drink and hates slavery. Be like Iomedae, but also be like Big CC.

also as a god or close to it you get to say the following " What a fool you are, I'm a god! How can you kill a god? What a grand and intoxicating innocence! How could you be so naive?"

Honorable mention: along the lines of gathering followers, but kuo-toa can grant you divinity against your will through smaller numbers but more fierce, insane belief.

When you said your job is to kill them all , I immediately thought of the durge line, "They're dying for me, ALL OF THEM."

6:10 I should note that Ao only exists in the Realms, and has no bearing on core D&D lore or settings outside of the Realms.

In the forgotten realms, if you were offered the mantle of God of magic just say no. You will live longer. 😂

Speaking as someone who is religious in a polytheistic way, the older way of picturing the influence of the gods is more like you pray and make your offerings and if the god is moved to grant you favour, then the risk of failure is reduced, the odds of success are improved, and the odds that people acting against you will fail are improved. In the wine making example before 3:15 for instance, how exactly the fermentation starts was admitted to be unknown or thought to be a potential spontaneous natural process, but what you could do to make it more or less likely and likely to work out well rather than poorly was known from trial and error, praying was not among those things in and of itself, but the favour of the god could reduce the chance of failure. It’s worth noting that even if you follow a careful and scientifically tested modern process, the yeast can always happen to fail or have a mutation and end up getting a bad batch out of your wine making. The odds aren’t strong when you perform all the rituals of sanitation and using packet yeast and adding nutritive powders to the wine, but they are there, and prayer is asking something with influence to nudge the odds in your favour.

His name is actually just "Yant", but he wasnt very well-known so everyone who met him would say, "Yant, is it?" And he would say "Yes".
Over a hundred year long game of Telephone, everyone just thinks his name is 'Yantisit' now, and because everyone believes it, it became so.

Thats the headcannon Ive just decided on, anyway.