Lore - how does a mortal become a God ?

[Naanomi]

Something Ao explicitly refuses to do.

And possibly can't do. Overpowers are not just 'really strong Gods'; they are fundamentally different spiritual beings with a different Cosmological role and distinct powers. Everything that takes a God a God in DnD terms doesn't apply to Overpowers (no need of worship, no clerics, no divine realm, doesn't attract followers in their afterlife, etc).

We don't even really know if every world has one (only three seem to of the established settings, and we don't even know a name or title for the Mystaran one)... Or where exactly they sit in the Cosmological chain of commands (they appear to enact the will of the Eldest ones but... Maybe there is an intermediary between them? We know even less about the 'luminous being' that AO answers to than we do about AO; and some speculate it is just another more experienced Overpower... Whereas others think it is the Eldest One that watches over the whole Great Wheel)

[PattThe]

*mutters in spellweaver* See a certain new DM's Guild product.

Pre 5e the answer is to steal a portfolio from someone else in an explicit pantheon. Domains are fundamental properties of reality that keep unreality from destroying it over a given area where living creatures exist. If beings obtain a portfolio and are able to adopt it and enforce it (like a copyright) then they get to keep it, but in doing so that divine part of you is really kind of just running anti-obyrinth malware software that uses almost all of your RAM.

After 5e godness is probably just on a, uh, practical scale. Maybe with the commercial success of 5e has convinced the powers that be that the universe isn't all that in danger of dissolving apart anytime soon. That's just a humorous meta touch.

Also, hot tip on primordials. A lot of Toril's primordial v god divinity conversation involves Asgorath and Vortha and the Tearfall and stuff. I would like to remind people that some stories we have about ancient gods may have just been bgi space rocks hitting eachother while in extreme orbits for prolonged periods of time. Now, people convince themselves that those meteors were gods and things might change.. Not to mention time travel is canon for gods, who exist pandimensionally to whatever extent.

Thing is it's not about simply gaining followers unless those followers and the surrounding lands don't have a religious pantheon yet. And if it's not about simply gaining followers, and it's not about 'mantling' a certain aspect of cosmic order (even the bad parts of the world that we understand are preferable to the unknowable bad parts of some other world invading ours. As said Cyric stole the divine portfolio of lies was aided by his cultists to make sure that a divine court ruled him guilty, because that verdict would let him keep the portfolio- as opposed to he have believed himself to be telling the truth, the things you read on the wiki I'm tellin' ya) , and if it isn't simply about being labelled a god after the fact like the primordials (having your actions retroactively become divine by people in the future and thus bestows upon you pandimensional awareness and thus you can actually have been a god in the past even when you weren't- looking at you 'Talos') then it really is grounds for new trope making imo.

Or, you can wander off into the ethereal plane as an illusionist and then become a 'god' by creating an entire physical world to your will (akin to but not Divinely Morphic Astral Realm Traits) and live in your sim world made out of condensed proto-matter.
It's totally all real. But if you take any of it back to the prime material it will turn to nothingness. So maybe it isn't. (See the Imiskari)

[noob]

I'd say to be a god, you have to meet a few criteria.

1. You have to be able to draw on reserves of power from the worship of people.
2. You have to have responsibility for worshipers in the afterlife.
3. The ability to share some level of power with your worshipers
4. Some level of protection from just being killed by some rando.

1 and 4 are both false in most dnd lore.
1 is massively setting dependant and a lot of settings do not have it and some do have it for some gods but not all gods (ex: have evil gods with no worshippers that match up in power gods with megatons of them).
4 Gods being killed by some random people are a common occurrence and the settings where it does not happens are generally either the settings with very scarce gods(1,2 or 3) or the settings where gods are just myth and do not actually exists.
2 is generally true but there is a few settings where it is just false too.

Only rule 3 is common to dnd settings and the 3 other rules you gave are setting dependant and might be true in your setting but are not guaranteed.

[Naanomi]

Only rule 3 is common to dnd settings and the 3 other rules you gave are setting dependant and might be true in your setting but are not guaranteed.

1-3 are, more or less, defaults of the Great Wheel Cosmology; which is the 'default' assumption for DnD lorewise. Exceptions exist (settings that are not in the Great Wheel, and a few that are in the cosmology but handle Gods/Clerics differently) but they are exceptions

#4... Depends on the conceptualization. Gods tend to be harder to kill than most things in the setting under normal circumstances; but a few have been killed by nobodies in unusual situations

[Devils_Advocate]

Is there a common / standard way that one becomes a God in DnD?

Well, "common" and "standard" are sort of relative terms. With all due respect to the Believers of the Source, the vast majority of mortals probably never become deities. Whether a majority of those who do become deities do so "in the same way" depends on how things are categorized: e.g, ascending to godhood by killing a god and receiving godhood as a divine gift are both "obtaining divinity from a pre-existing deity", but by different means. No event is exactly the same as any other event, but any two events with the same sort of result most likely achieve that result through the same sort of means in some sense, if you get abstract enough.

What should I be reading for 5e info on this stuff?

I have no official sources to point you towards, but I think that it's worth noting that if you want to understand what's going on the campaign you're playing in, you should seek out information in that campaign. There are several reasons for this:

1. Making in-character decisions based on out-of-character knowledge, i.e. metagaming, is often frowned upon.
2. How Dungeon Masters approach various elements of settings varies more for some setting elements than for others, and I get the impression that this is a high-variance element, with opinion long having been divided on e.g. whether or not gods and even archfiends should be entities of pure DM fiat. Various official sources may have weighed in on one side or another at various points across various editions, but it's likely that your DM isn't particularly concerned with what WotC most recently said about any of this.
3. 5th Edition seems to have opted to leave a lot of things for the DM to decide, and this is probably one of them. I doubt that it provides much more than suggestions here. Which is to say, I strongly suspect that the 5E answer to this is "It's up to the DM".

[subtledoctor]

I feel like some things have been overlooked. I feel like having an outer-planar realm is quite important. We have been told that worshippers’ belief fuels divinity, without ever getting an explanation how. Pardon the Planescape in me, but an obvious possibility is that in the outer planes, belief equals power. So if you can funnel those worshippers’ belief to the outer planes, it can be converted into power. Maybe quite easily. Maybe even automatically. But presumably (?) you need a proper domain in which that conversion can happen.

Once you have a domain and tons of worship energy being directed there, a couple things fall into place:

- Since the outer planes are literally the afterlife, the souls of your worshippers will naturally tend to gravitate to your domain. This gives you access to useful things like servants and champions.

- In your domain, you control everything. This is where gods are really “godlike.” They can exercise power elsewhere, but only to a more limited degree.

- Your domain can attract a conduit, through which you can channel power back to the Prime as followers’ spells. In the context of D&D this conduit is a rather important part of being a deity. (Though maybe this comes first, and in allowing for the transfer of worshippers’ energy, it us what allows you to establish a domain? I’m not sure of the cause and effect here.)

As for how you get from mortality to deity, there’s no set path. Most deities are ascended mortals, so it is surely possible. Basically you have to become the stuff of legend. Amassing power and/or immortality helps... but is neither necessary nor sufficient. (See e.g. the dragon of Athas, or Orcus.) Becoming legendarily mighty or skilled is good, and then using your might or skill alongside or on behalf of a pantheon, and maybe you get a hand up to demigod status. Then you need to grow the legend, attract worshippers, get yourself a domain, and get yourself a conduit. In these various ways you need to interface with the vary structure and fabric of the universe.

Of course that is all fantastically difficult, which I figure is why we get examples of people trying to cut corners by killing other gods, stealing worshippers, stealing domains, etc.

[Unoriginal]

I feel like some things have been overlooked. I feel like having an outer-planar realm is quite important. We have been told that worshippers’ belief fuels divinity, without ever getting an explanation how. Pardon the Planescape in me, but an obvious possibility is that in the outer planes, belief equals power. So if you can funnel those worshippers’ belief to the outer planes, it can be converted into power. Maybe quite easily. Maybe even automatically. But presumably (?) you need a proper domain in which that conversion can happen.

Plenty of gods don't have an Outer Planar realm, or don't even live in the Outer Planes.

As for the "explanation how", it's simply part of the divine nature.

Most deities are ascended mortals, so it is surely possible.

In Nentir Vale, possibly. Not in most settings.

Not that ascended-mortal gods are rare, it's just there is a *lot* of gods, so the "most deities" is a huge number.

[Naanomi]

Plenty of gods don't have an Outer Planar realm, or don't even live in the Outer Planes.

With very few exceptions, Gods above Demipower rank have a Divine Realm *somewhere*... In many ways it is just as much a part of them as Gods as any body they might have.

Most are on the Outer Planes, but you are right they can be elsewhere... Several on the Inner Planes, one in the Negative Energy Plane, a few in the Ethereal, one one the Astral, and a few on various Prime Worlds... can't think of any offhand that are tucked in more obscure Cosmological places beyond that though (or at least not that are still Gods)

[Millstone85]

Most deities are ascended mortals, so it is surely possible.

In Nentir Vale, possibly. Not in most settings.

To my knowledge, only one Nentir Vale deity is an ascended mortal.

Divine Power page 43 describes the Rise of the Raven Queen. She was a sorceress whose soul shined so brightly in the afterlife that Nerull, god of death and the dead, made her his consort. She then killed her husband, becoming the new goddess of death.

But not of the dead. The method of her coup involved freeing the souls imprisoned in Nerull's domain, though she intended to treat future souls just as her husband had. But the other gods intervened, denying her this power. Most of her schemes now aim to correct that.

[Naanomi]

To my knowledge, only one Nentir Vale deity is an ascended mortal.

Vecna (with a few intermediary steps between mortal and divinity). And arguably Bane

[Millstone85]

Vecna (with a few intermediary steps between mortal and divinity). And arguably Bane

You are right about Vecna, but I will indeed argue against Bane.

Dragon#372, page 26, tells how Bane "coalesced from the Astral Sea" and later "gained command over the bulk of the divine forces. Commanding not only his own angels, but those of a dozen other gods" as they sought to conquer and reshape the world that the primordials had created.

The same page also has a sidebar about how, yeah, this is not the Bane of Forgotten Realms.

[Unoriginal]

To my knowledge, only one Nentir Vale deity is an ascended mortal.

I apologize, in that case. I remember an lore video a few years ago talking about this, but either I misremember something, I understood wrong at the time, or the person making the video was wrong. Or a combo of the three.

[Naanomi]

You are right about Vecna, but I will indeed argue against Bane.

Dragon#372, page 26, tells how Bane "coalesced from the Astral Sea" and later "gained command over the bulk of the divine forces. Commanding not only his own angels, but those of a dozen other gods" as they sought to conquer and reshape the world that the primordials had created.

The same page also has a sidebar about how, yeah, this is not the Bane of Forgotten Realms.

I would suggest that is very true in a 4e Schema, but in 5e I am more inclined to link FR Bane and NV Bane... Personal preferences may vary of course and we haven't been given anything definitive on the matter thus far in 5e exclusive lore; but shared cosmology {that long predates the Gods, who dont appear to have coalesced out of any Astral Sea) seems to be the assumption (although Vecna's presence kind of always made that true?). (It is also true that there are sometimes related Gods with the same names as eachother running around as separate entities on the Planes sometimes; through various mechanisms)

[Millstone85]

I would suggest that is very true in a 4e Schema, but in 5e I am more inclined to link FR Bane and NV Bane...

That would make Bane a mortal of Toril who ascended to godhood by becoming one of Jergal's heirs, then managed to not only extend his influence beyond Toril but participate in the creation of a new world.

Or of two new worlds, if this is also the Bane of Critical Role's Exandria.

Vecna's presence kind of always made that true?

Kind of, yeah. I think 4e treated different settings as alternate realities.

For example, there was an article in Dragon#373, called Ecology of the Sharn, that described creatures coming from an alternate version of Nentir Vale where Tharizdun had won, and...

From his place of imprisonment, Tharizdun sensed the arrival of the sharns. He instantly knew these beings were of him and yet were not of him, and the paradox was delicious.

The world of the sharns, and the universe that encloses it, exists beyond the known cosmology. This universe once held its own Astral Sea, Elemental Chaos, Feywild and Shadowfell. After eons of unchallenged dominion by an alternate Tharizdun, only the mortal world remains, itself a shadowy hulk of its former self.

The same article later described the sharns of the Forgotten Realms, with the much more sympathetic role of "custodians of the Weave" until the Spellplague did a number on them. The article made no attempt to link these sharns to any Tharizdun.

[Sigreid]

1 and 4 are both false in most dnd lore.
1 is massively setting dependant and a lot of settings do not have it and some do have it for some gods but not all gods (ex: have evil gods with no worshippers that match up in power gods with megatons of them).
4 Gods being killed by some random people are a common occurrence and the settings where it does not happens are generally either the settings with very scarce gods(1,2 or 3) or the settings where gods are just myth and do not actually exists.
2 is generally true but there is a few settings where it is just false too.

Only rule 3 is common to dnd settings and the 3 other rules you gave are setting dependant and might be true in your setting but are not guaranteed.

I did say clearly that's they criteria I would use.

[Naanomi]

That would make Bane a mortal of Toril who ascended to godhood by becoming one of Jergal's heirs, then managed to not only extend his influence beyond Toril but participate in the creation of a new world.

I mean... If I wanted to do a Planescape sort of explanation it would be like... 'a mortal on one world who rose to divinity, then convinced people on another world that he helped create it'

Arguably we don't have any clear examples of Gods creating any 'worlds'... The planes largely predate them, Crystal Spheres (many of which also long predate Gods) arise by natural processes and then are shaped by further natural processes or Overdeities; Gods themselves generally only finding a foothold once creatures that can worship them take hold on the new Spheres (unless an Overdeity calls them into being)