> True. I'm not suggesting that gaining W6 or whatever makes you a diety.
> Greg's comments on heroes a while back (gain great power, find worshippers,
> get them to continue to worship you after you pass on) means there is more
> to it than this. But the first stage is gain the power. And even ignoring
> the 'become a god' idea, the character still has the power to go up against
> gods. Or are you suggesting a cap at some level? I can't see that being
> anything other than arbitrary.
I'm suggesting a sort of "fuzzy cap", and/or, "fuzzy consequences" for going beyond a certain point "incorrectly". i.e., either "you're trying to become a god (or god-like), you gotta do it right", or "well, you've become a god now, this is what it's like...". i.e. relating someone's ability levels to their place in the cosmos that that would imply.
This is probably better illustrated at the "heroic" level, though. Normally people with skills in the W4+ range will have got them by explicit HQing. But what if you simply practice a lot, like the old Carnegie Hall joke? Does this mean you can be an 'ordinary guy', who just happens to have heroic abilities? I don't think so: if you don't interact with the heroic, the heroic will come interact with you, to paraphrase Greg (paraphrasing Jung?). You'll effectively end up "involuntarily HQing", to establish and to maintain your "place in the world" with such hideous abilities. (Yes, this is a "simulationist" argument, but one of a sort explicitly made by HW itself.)
Likewise, you can't "just" be a 'hero' with god-like abilities: they have to have some 'meaning' in cosmological terms. Thus if you try to get [ability] 10W6 from a bunch of penny-ante quests strung together, assuming the rules were to suggest such a thing, then 'the cosmos' would start to kick back at some point: you'd fine the quests increasingly difficult to complete at those 'levels', or else you'd find yourself into 'deeper' "more appropriate quests". Or else, having achieved these ability levels, you'd find yourself bound by the consequences of your "accidental apotheosis" in ways you didn't expect, due to not having done it by a recognised, and hence more predictable, route.
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