So, after looking through the Salient Abilities, I've made a sort of "wishlist" of abilities that are one or more of a) easy to qualify for, b) awesome, or c) so awesome they're worth working towards regardless of requirements.
Alter Form - At first I thought this was free Polymorph, but it doesn't grant AC or ability scores. The Fly speed is nice, but see Air Mastery.
Alter Reality - 'Nuff said.
Alter Size - No reqs, Free Action, be as big or small as you like. Pretty cool.
Automatic Metamagic - This just screams "Optimigasm."
Avatar - Can you use this to give yourself infinite Divine Ranks (by having your avatars designate you as their proxy)?
Battlesense - Pretty nice.
Call Creatures - I see potential for abuse, although the HD cap is annoying.
Command Plants - Eh. Ok, I guess.
Control Creatures - I win. See below.
Divine Air Mastery - 200 ft. fly speed (perfect). The bonuses are kinda nice, but pretty situational. The "Air Sense" doesn't specify to what extent you can sense the creatures (like Blindsense? Like Blindsight? Better or worse than either?), and it has limited range.
Divine Armor Mastery - Could be useful with Mithral Full Plate, if I somehow get my fingers on it.
Divine Blast - Aside from the humorous mental image (The ray can look, sound, smell, and feel like anything), the ability to destroy prismatic walls and walls of force is pretty handy. The range is good, but the damage is rather crappy. I guess if I'm going for Alter Reality, I could take it since I'll have the prereq anyway.
Divine Earth Mastery - Looks pretty cool.
Divine Fast Healing - The req can be achieved with a Persisted Lesser Vigor (via Automatic Metamagic) per day.
Divine Fire Mastery - Most of the stuff it gives is kinda meh, but the ability to duplicate any [fire] spell sounds pretty nice.
Divine Inspiration - Could be nifty.
Divine Water Mastery - For completeness. I like the others better.
Extra Domain - More SLAs!
Gift of Life - Could be handy if humanity is dying out. Looking at it again, it doesn't specify what kind of creature it has to be, so I could use it on my divine buddies.
Grow Creature - Fun, if only for the Attack of the 50 Foot Whatever aspect.
Hand of Death - It's an at-will SoD vs. DC You-will-fail-this. Pity it's only vs. mortals. Even if they get a nat 20, they might die anyway.
Increased Spell Resistance - Exactly What It Says On The Tin. We already get pretty obscene SR though.
Instant Counterspell - I don't know if a counterspelling build would be viable. :-\
Know Death - Should be called Shinigami Eyes.
Know Sectrets - Might come in handy. I don't know why they keep putting saves on stuff that's at will anyway.
Lay Quest - Works only on mortals, but it's a freakin' Geas.
Life and Death - A prereq for Mass Life and Death.
Mass life and Death - Depopulation/Repopulation at will. Pretty much every creature on earth is within one mile of another creature. The divine rank req makes this unlikely, but it's just too cool.
Possess Mortal - Dominate on crack.
Power of Luck - Allround buff/debuff. The penalties are a little small compared to level of play, but affect a load of stuff.
Power of Nature - Can duplicate an 8th level spell at level 5. The rest is swell.
Power of Truth - Ok, I guess.
Rejuvenation - Neat stuff. The "can be killed by deities of equal or higher rank" clause is a bit of a let-down, though.
Shapechange - It's Polymorph. At will. As an (ex) ability.
Shift Form - See above.
Sunder and Disjoin - How to Be a Prick.
Supreme Initiative - Always go first.
True Shapechange - Hooah.
On Command Creatures:
The obvious route is to choose "Human" or "Humanoid (Human)" as the kind of creature to control. Most of the other gods start out as humans, so they could be targeted with it. Then there's the other 6.5 billion humans on earth. If the DM vetoes this, as he's likely to do, I could narrow it down to "Gods" or "Beings with a divine rank of 1 or higher". There's a lot less of them around, ad they're the main target I'm going for. I'd need to find a single god that's a lower divine rank than me to bypass their immunity to compulsions (removal of the mind-affecting descriptor doesn't remove the compulsion subschool, does it? Someone proving me wrong on this would be nice), and I've got myself a divine bitch. If they have divine rank 1, I can force them to designate me as their proxy and give me their divine rank. Then I can dominate the other deities that are ower rank than me and have each give me a rank. And so on, and so forth. Salient Abilities always bypass SR, so that's not a problem either.
If the DM doesn't allow that either, I can instead narrow my choice down to "politicians" or "rich lobbyists". World domination ftw.
