Becoming an (Effective) God

[Esprit15]

So, I'm in a game, and near the end there is a very real chance that I'll be able to acquire some divine ranks (we'll be delving into moderate epic levels). I'm not a mage, and the DM is not a fan of Epic Spellcasting, as far as I can tell, so that's pretty much off the table on both sides of things.

That being said, what are some of the salient divine abilities that would be good choices? Let's assume a maximum divine rank of 5. Character is Chaotic Evil, but more of a "Why should I care about others?" type of CE, rather than "Blood for the blood gods!" type. Likely domains will be two or three out of Madness, Decay, Dragons, Chaos, Evil, Death, or something related to those.

[Gildedragon]

More important than domains are portfolios
What would they do, godwise

[Hecuba]

More important than domains are portfolios
What would they do, godwise

Don't underestimate domains: if the deity has a Divine Spellcasting class and a divine rank of at least 1, then they get spontaneous casting as an automatic action for any spell they can grant to a follower - which will include any in their domains. That means that certain domains can significantly expand the scope of automatic actions, which are already broken as fudge.

[MisterKaws]

You'll probably want to get Alter Reality, a really good way to cheese everything.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Will you be fighting gods, or mortals? If you're fighting gods, a whole lot of your abilities can simply be overruled by higher-ranked gods, so you'll want to pick strategically, picking self-buffs and utility more than targeted abilities. Non-casters really have it tough in the SDA department, too. Just look at this piece of useless junk:


The deity is the epitome of the fighter, a master of sophisticated battle techniques.
Prerequisites: Fighter level 20th, Combat Reflexes, Int 13, Dex 13, Dodge, Expertise, Mobility, Spring Attack, Whirlwind Attack, War domain.
Benefit: The deity can make an unlimited number of attacks of opportunity in one round (the deity still can’t make more than one attack of opportunity against a single opponent in a round).
As a full-round action, the deity may make one melee attack at its full base attack bonus against each opponent within reach. The deity does not incur any attacks of opportunity from this action.
In short, don't bother with any of that.

Alter Size and Alter Form are very useful.
Alter Reality is great.
Divine Dodge is good, giving a permanent 50+DVR% miss chance against almost anything.
Divine Fast Healing is not bad - it allows you to reattach limbs, as if it were regeneration. The healing isn't that much, but still 20 per turn.
Divine Celerity is useless (just haste), but is a prerequisite for Free Move, which is nice (move your speed as free action 1/turn).
Hand of Death can force a decently high SoD (20 + DVR + CHA), and also prevents resurrection of those you kill.
Increased Spell Resistance adds 20 to your SR. Normally, deities have SR 32 + rank, which is nice at level 20, but peters out quickly. Adding 20 is a temporary measure, but will hold you for a while.
Instant Counterspell does exactly what you'd espect - a free action counterspell against anything you can see (DVR 1-5 deities only get 2 special divine free actions per round, though).
Sunder and Disjoin is great for a Vow of Poverty/Peace character. Touch anything used against you in combat, and it's disintegrate and Mordenkainen's disjunction.
Supreme Initiative lets you win initiative, unless other combatants have this ability.

[Gildedragon]

Don't underestimate domains: if the deity has a Divine Spellcasting class and a divine rank of at least 1, then they get spontaneous casting as an automatic action for any spell they can grant to a follower - which will include any in their domains. That means that certain domains can significantly expand the scope of automatic actions, which are already broken as fudge.

It's not that I say domains are unimportant but that in creating a theme for a god it is good to see what the god wishes to be, what their goals and areas of influence are, and then select powers and abilities that back that vision

[Jormengand]

Don't underestimate domains: if the deity has a Divine Spellcasting class and a divine rank of at least 1, then they get spontaneous casting as an automatic action for any spell they can grant to a follower - which will include any in their domains. That means that certain domains can significantly expand the scope of automatic actions, which are already broken as fudge.

You can also cast all your domain spells as SLAs (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAndPowers.htm#spellLikeAbilities), which means rune+time (for stacks of time stops into however many rune/symbol spells you want to cast) is a pretty broken one. Automatic Counterspell salient divine ability then allows you to counter any spell you can grant as a free action.