While reading about gods, ascension and what not, I came across an interesting thought, what could the baseline rules for followers be when devoting their faith into a character wishing to become a god. Commonly this would be a intelligent humanoid on intelligent humanoid ascension, but could it go as far as just a couple hundred rats convinced enough to worship you as a deity? Is there a certain level of intelligence a creature must have?

Just wanted to hear some other thoughts on the foundations of worship into ascension.

So - if I understand correctly, you're asking about peoples' opinions as to how they envision the meta-physics in their game world works, as opposed to how they picture the game mechanics of such a thing might work? So, "rules" in a how the world works, and not in a how the game works sort of way?

A lot of my fictional metaphysics in influenced by Neil Gaiman's American Gods - in which the Gods don't have objective eternal existence. Rather, they are beings who are created by the faith of their worshipers, and their power and continued existence is dependent on that continual belief and worship. If there were any deities who created the world, they aren't that type of being, but rather something else above and beyond those Gods.

American Gods doesn't seem to play with the concept of ascension, but I could see a variant of that ( literal! ) power dynamic being a possibility, where enough faith, belief, and worship directed at an aspiring proto-god starts to convey actual metaphysical or magical power to an individual. This would explain part of why villains seem to start cults based around themselves. Above and beyond the usefulness of having a group of utterly devoted fanatical minions, it could convey actual divine power & ability.

I could see this working on some sort of scaling capacity for faith in creatures, or a faith power rating if you will. If you want to think of it mechanically, Humanoids could have 1 point, Kobolds might have .25 points, Dragons might have greater than 1. It's not meant to be a game mechanic, just an analogy to help wrap your head around the concepts. The more total faith & belief a proto-god could have directed at them, the more developed their divine abilities are. The composition of their followers then matters. If one was worshiped by Kobolds, they'd need a lot of followers, or their abilities would be lesser than a different proto-god who had no more followers, but a better group of followers ( like Dragons, and Celestials ).

Rats? Well - there's no actual game mechanics here, but my intuitive take on it would be that if rats had any significant capacity for faith it's infinitesimal. Perhaps if you were on an alternate Prime Material Plane, inhabited solely by worshipful rats ( a decidedly odd alternate world ), you might start accruing some mild abilities.

So looping back to your question, I wouldn't picture it as being a threshold, but rather a spectrum of capacity for faith, and the number of followers needed to attain divine abilities would be inversely proportional to their capacity.

This was all very fascinating to read about, you’ve hit the mark on what I’m talking about. Thanks for your thoughts, all of this is likely to be taken into consideration!

Great thoughts Vedexent, but I would think that the amount of "faith points" would be based on the intelligence or wisdom of the creature, instead of power ability.

That would make the devotion of a 1st level wizard worth more than a 20th level fighter or barbarian.

I would think that the faith of even an immensely powerful creature (dragon) would be only an infinitesimal portion of the total faith needed to cause ascension (if your games metaphysics work that way). 

in mine, ascension is only granted via divine grant or supplantation (in other words, a gift from a god, or kill one).  But relative power and ability to influence the world is at least somewhat tied to the faith of your followers