How does one ascend to Godhood in your world?

And don't just come to complain about mechanics you don't like

لا إله إلا الله محمد رسول الله

Level 20.

You become so known that people actively pray to you and that you've left enough of a mark that you won't be forgotten after a while like everyone else when you die.
Saved the kingdom? I suppose you'll be remembered but will people actively pray to you?
Did you save the kingdom by fist fighting a dragon in an epic arial battle? You'll probably never be forgotten and the common rabble might either attribute you as a certain god or a wholly new god.
Its tricky. You got to do something that will have you remembered and prayed to but you also have to make sure they remember you correctly otherwise you could just become another face or avatar of a god or a wholly different being altogether.
Some cities have minor gods just for them and its not uncommon for gods of war of neighboring nations to duke it out in battle.

My world was actually a prison for elder gods formed by a powerful wizard gifted the power to do so by the gods. He hangs out in the north where he sleeps until something goes wrong and he can come interfere. There is nothing beyond this prison, and leaving the prison world requires getting the permission of the wizard.

To effectively become a god you pretty much just have to wake up the wizard and bully him to do your bidding, and that just wouldn't end well. You could probably get passed the torch as the warden somehow but I didn't codify it.

That's stupid.

>You become so known that people actively pray to you and that you've left enough of a mark that you won't be forgotten after a while like everyone else when you die.
This is something similar to my setting

All gods are entirely invented by the people that worship them, but that doesn't make them any less powerful. Genuine prayer uses a fraction of the magical energy that exists in all living things, and when enough people pray along the same lines the combined energy can coalesce into an actual god.

Families that have a revered ancestor can actually summon their ghost through prayer, tribes can have patron demigods, and entire nations can have truly powerful gods (although it becomes more difficult the bigger they get, since people won't all really be praying for the same concepts).

In the same way, great heroes can ascend to godhood if people keep praying to them after they die

By killing one of the gods around, somehow. Since the absence of even one god will risk an armageddon, you will instantly lose your mortal body and ascend to godhood, regardless of if you want to become a god or not.

There are a fixed number of divine beings in the world, each governing a specific aspect of reality and wielding a certain amount of divine ranks. When a deity dies, its domain passes on to a suitable heir. Quasi-deities are more likely to be chosen than mortals, and persons with a personality and lifestyle appropriate to the domain inherited are more likely to be chosen than those without such a personality or lifestyle. (Quasi-deities are persons with some divine traits but not true deities yet.)

Good-aligned deities tend to groom heirs, because they care about others and are concerned about what would happen to their followers if some idiot inherits their power. Evil-aligned deities do not care as much because they know that any suitable heir would kill them if they had the chance. Neutral deities might go either way. While deities do not die of old age, they can be killed. This happens often enough, and none of the original deities still wield their mantles today.

Apart from a deity's death, the only other way to create a deity is to discover and define another feature of reality. This is no simple task: you can't simply declare yourself the god of calculus or whatever, because this new domain must be exhaustively defined at the magical level. In game terms, someone must invent enough new spells related to the new concept for each spell level. Note that being the person who invented those spells is no guarantee that you would become the god who rules them: it still goes to the most appropriate heir by personality and power, which may or may not be you.

Dead deities still keep some relevance, as their ghosts retain some of their power. Especially powerful dragons and outsiders have some of the powers of a deity, and are worshipped as such.

In summary: kill a deity, or get groomed as a deity's heir, or define an aspect of reality, or become a powerful outsider or dragon, or simply be the right person at the right time.

By becoming a spider.

This is because for some reason, being a god is synonymous with being a spider. Just as water is by its very nature wet and fire by its very nature causes burning, spideryness and divinity are intrinsically linked. Thus, all gods in the setting are spiders.

To become a god, you must become a spider, and vice versa.

No one has any idea why this is the case though, and the existence of ordinary spiders all over the place with no apparent agenda or consciousness of their own is a source of great confusion. The fact that the few direct answers from the existing spider gods about the matter seems to indicate they have no idea what's going on either only serves to complicate things. Many scholars and theologians have gone mad trying to figure out just what the fuck the deal is.

You must come to possess Divine Essence.

There's a strictly limited amount, so you must either steal it or be gifted some by a god.

Not all of it is owned by gods though, some is sealed deep inside tombs or infused into ancient artifacts.

Becoming a god is subjective, and mostly depends upon being powerful and immortal. Many countries throughout the setting are ruled by gods, who are only different from powerful adventurers in that they live forever unless killed.

Many gods derive their power from a powerful mineral that originated during the setting's stone age. Said mineral is a psychosomatic crystal that in its unfocused state makes the dreams of the holder a reality, but its first user 'imprints' certain powers and abilities upon its originally limited potential.

Other gods are descendents of other gods. Notably, different cultures view divinity in different lights. That is, not all 'gods' view themselves as such, while other beings proclaim proudly that because they are immortal and powerful, they are gods.

I like it when it's done tooth and claw.

You can't.
They don't need your prayer.
They don't really care about their Churches.
They don't care about your feelings.

All they do is act within their nature.
They aren't even really sapient.

You cannot become one.
And in fact, you genuinely wouldn't want to even if you could.

People care enough about you to keep resurrecting you and you eventually become immortal. The process is mostly magical and revolves around the resurrection magic getting caught in your soul bits, but for some reason the actual ascension process isn't replicateable for people without a large base of followers. After that the powers are mostly the ones you had in life honed by an unlimited lifetime of godhood, being only slightly empowered by the magic of your ascension.

Killing a god is the hard part: magic that gets stuck in a soul is notoriously hard to dislodge.

To become a Power likely requires power. Few berks have done it, and there's no sure way of becoming one.

In my setting, gods, demons and mortals have different souls, so essencially, you would first have to have your soul surgically altered into an angelic one, then you need to get as strong as the current gods. Mortals have "gods" in the form of Ancestors however, who are basically beings with the power of gods compressed into the lifespan of a mortal, they shit out a couple thousand mortal races, several mythic beasts, reshape reality and then die.

They don't. Mortals can never ascend to godhood by the nature of their existence. The fact that they even have souls and an afterlife is a mercy extended by Death. There are demigod-like beings, such as the Fae, but they were made that way and can neither lose nor increase in status.

Accruing sufficient positive karma to ensure such a reincarnation.

Fucking Drow

Spirits do so by gorging themselves on whatever symbolic power they can draw to themselves, often redefining their natures and stretching their powers to the utmost to promote the domains they have. And of course another juicy source of power is the worship and sacrifices offered by mortals, which rising spirits will inevitably try to tap.
A human that wants to do so will unfortunately have to die first. Ghosts are somewhat disadvantaged in attempts to reach godhood, since their life-adapted minds are ill-suited to the rigors of spiritual existence, and many go mad. Still, it can work, especially for great kings, heroes, and revered elders who were worshipped both before and after death.

Apply a knife directly to your heart after a long pilgrimage and hope the other gods approve.

You convince a god that you are such a perfect worldly example of some characteristic or aspect that he kills you, and takes your name and likeness to represent you as a new deity.

My answer as DM :

"Gods are just very powerful outsiders.
So you don't ascend to Godhood. It's unheard of in the memory of men.
Though there might be a ritual to bend magic to your will and make you an outsider. Maybe. Or maybe not. Try to research it but be warned that countless ambitious have done so their whole life and failed.

For my current setting I use a few different methods that boil down to

Uncovering enough of the universes mysteries through meditation and years of study so that you are granted a Divine Spark by the cosmos and ascend

Kill enough shit of sufficient power and eventually uncover enough of the universes mysteries while doing so and you gain a Spark out of sheer badassery

And of course you can be granted a Spark by someone or find a spark somewhere in the world

Minor or major?

Both types depend on strong feelings towards them (not only worship), but the major have some extras.

I always liked the idea of Gods being immortal and extremely powerful, but not invincible.

A mortal with enough skill, magical knowledge, artifact, weapon, etc, would kill a God and take their place.

You gather belief, faith, and strong emotions from your followers and consecrate your ascension with a blood sacrifice. It doesn't necessarily have to be religious faith or belief either; if enough people trust you strongly enough, like a heroic general and an army of men utterly devoted to him, you can become a god.

Chances are you're not going to become a God proper in my setting due to the fact that they're a specific kind of creature and race, though elementals eventually mature into them. That said, the gods are not infinite in power, and with work and time you could probably reach power levels equal to them, or even greater than them. See, all Gods are within the setting are the spirits of the planets and stars, not in a metaphorical or philosophical sense but in a literal sense, as anything with enough mass has a chance at spontaneously developing spiritual sentience. Gods are what happens when this occurs in planets and stars, and they reproduce through elementals or outsiders, which eventually gain enough mass to become planets themselves, "budding" and detaching from their parents. The confirmed Pantheon of Gods turns out to just be the divine spirits of the star system the main setting world is located in. So, if, for some reason, you gain the power to become a global threat, chances are you're already on the power level of many gods. Have that kind of power, and a few other perks to keep yourself alive long enough, and you might as well be a god, you just won't be a God god. Unless you pull cloning shenanigans and make a planet of nothing but you. Then you could be a God god.
Also, don't rely on belief to become a god. Belife as it turns out is a form of spiritual vampirism inherent to all life, even divine, and focusing it en-mass to a soul as small as a mortals would bey worse than lethal, literally destroying the soul.

You need to link your magical essence to worship, sacrifices and prayers in your name. A lot easier for spirits or "magical" beings in general than to pure flash and blood creatures.
Normally it has a feedback so worshipers in time can reshape their god. Pretty common for well established religions. Mortals and gods are mostly completely unaware of this side effect however.
Thats for most common type of god anyway.

You don't.

>لا إله إلا الله محمد رسول الله
خطأ بموضوعية

A couple methods. Though none are easy and in 9 years have only had 1 guy attempt (which is why I even made a few methods). First method and perhaps the easiest (relatively speaking). Is to convince a god to grant you a bit of their divine spark and allow you into their dominion. Option 2. Kill a god or steal the essence out of one after someone else kills it and backstab them while they're recovering, though this runs the risk of angering that God's allies. Option 3 (the Hardest one). Locate the cornerstone of the Prime Material plane where it touches the infinite void. Get past the keeper of the stone, the first Dragon whose known as Grandfather and wields a power outside of the gods and near their level. Then have your mind survive the journey to the Stone, where upon the Instrument of Creation rests and play the correct series of notes to ascend to the heavens. The wrong notes obliterate the one foolish enough to try. And there are many different songs for the Instrument. The vast majority of which are known only to the Gods and a few of the Elder beings on the planet. AND THEN you must convince people to worship you otherwise your spark will wither and fade along with you.

Well. The hierarchy of Divine Beings is laid out as such: At the top of the pyramid you have The Nine. The ultimate Divine Beings. Under each of The Nine are nine Iolites. Effectively demi gods, the Iolites are next in line for godhood. Under each of those nine Iolites are ninety nine Greater Archons, basically really strong angels. Under each of those Greater Archons are nine hundred ninety nine Lesser Archons, weaker angels. Under each of those Lesser Archons are nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine Incarnates, which are every mortal creature that inhabits the earth. Effectively everything that is alive is god-blooded.
SO. How do you become a god? Well. You've got to work your way up that pyramid son. Every time there is a vacant space somewhere on that pyramid, someone has to ascend to the next level to fill that space, and so on and so forth down the pyramid, until all spaces are filled again.
It's going to take some time my child.

It just so happens, that in the current campaign I'm running with this system. There are two empty spots. I have some NPCs shooting to fill them. But the players want to stop those NPCs from doing so. I guess they'll have to ascend first. Fun stuff.