Comparing Divine Beings

[Quertus]

Quite often, we think of worlds in terms of the "PC-class" beings that inhabit them - the D&D Fighters and Wizards, the Harry Potter Witches and Wizards, the Marvel super-soldiers and Wizards.

But they - the PC-level beings - aren't exactly the only beings in any given world. Dragons exist in many worlds, and are often stronger than PCs are expected to be. But perhaps even more common are deities. And in fact, most worlds that have them, the deities are generally considered to sit at the top of the food chain.

So, how can we go about comparing their power?

If it helps, the closest simple question to what I'm interested in is, if you were to bet on a deity from a system being thrown into a random other system, which deity would you bet on? Which deity do you think would have the easiest time in their new home? Which deity would you expect to thrive anywhere?

[Millstone85]

As it happens, my musings on deities involve four classes of a sort.

Prime Mover
You were there when the world was not. You may have actively participated in its creation, but perhaps you instead failed to prevent it, or remained a passive observer as the primordial chaos yielded to the new cosmos. Your power used to be unfathomable, but much of it was likely sacrificed or stolen.

Cosmic Pillar
Some may call you the god of the sea, but in truth you are the sea. The creation of the world was first and foremost the story of your and your siblings' birth, and to hurt you would be to damage the very fabric of reality. Your power may be great or small, but it most definitely isn't inconsequential.

Tulpamantic Idol
The faith of mortals shapes the flow of magic, giving you power. You may even owe your existence to this phenomenon, having originally been nought but a dream. Perhaps you need to be called by name in prayer, or perhaps you are the personification of a particular ideal, philosophy or tradition.

Magocrat
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from divinity, and you are the top banana in a world full of hungry little monkeys. While there may be powers greater than yours, these seem largely unconcerned with the affairs of the world, and it is you people turn to when they need a miracle.

Multiclassing is not only possible but fairly common.

[Vahnavoi]

Taking divine beings out of their own context and placing them into other contexts makes even less sense than doing so with other types of characters, because nature of divine beings is frequently tied to fundamental cosmology of a setting.

Let me take an Atlas-type figure as an example. In their own setting, they literally hold up the sky and should they ever fail, it would have dramatic consequences. This gives them importance and, potentially, power.

You can't take that figure and put them in a context where the sky isn't something that needs to be held up and expect any of that to be preserved.

A slightly saner way to look at it is to identify which mythical archetype is being represented by a given divine being and then compare how they relate to humans and other non-divine actors in their own context. It's easiest to start with apples-to-apples comparisons, looking at different takes on same source material. For example, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Order of the Stick and Shin Megami Tensei all have Thor, God of Thunder. Out of these, the first is a sufficiently advanced alien with super strength, speed, etc. up the wazoo, but he has no clear cosmological function beyond what he can achieve by his physical feats. If he died, no human would necessarily even notice. Thunder and rain would continue to happen tomorro, because they do not really stem from Thor. The second has far less impressive physical feats and in general is not seen acting directly on the physical plane, but has a vote in literal creation and destruction of the world, and is stated to have been party to creating multiple other worlds, implicitly including worlds akin to the one where first Thor exists. If he died, not only would all his clerics notice, it would immediately unbalance entire cosmology of OotS universe. The third is relegated to a daemon - physically and spiritually incredible powerful by human standards, possibly to the degree of being immune to mundane weapons, but is fundamentally reliant on humans to exist and to keep existing in the physical world. The third Thor is, technically, not even unique - multiple humans with slightly different beliefs of who Thor is could possibly summon multiple different copies of him. His real "existence" is as the story or mythical archetype and how "true" those things are varies.

[Millstone85]

Bouncing off the Thor example, you could have a setting with three very different rain gods:

The First Rain is the primordial spirit of storms, their body made of clouds, thunder and lightning.
Thunderaxe is an immortal hero known to wander the nations and call down lightning on her foes.
Rain Amun is the most commonly worshiped rain god, born of a thousand contradictory tales about the First Rain, Thunderaxe and more.

A crossover between preexisting settings can be considered a setting of its own, where Marvel's Thor might end up becoming the chosen avatar of several more ethereal gods.

[Satinavian]

Well i would put up 3 categories :

1) The omnipotent ominiscient being. Will always win against everyone under any condition and you literally can't have two of them with each keeping their attributes.

2) Part of the fabric of the universe. These gods literally are their aspects. Having them fight each other only makes sense in forms of allegories. Removing one would change the universe into something alien and strange or even destroy it.

3.) Superpowerd "immortal" beings. They basically behave like everyone else including all the fights and drama and such.

[MoiMagnus]

As it happens, my musings on deities involve four classes of a sort.

Prime Mover
You were there when the world was not. You may have actively participated in its creation, but perhaps you instead failed to prevent it, or remained a passive observer as the primordial chaos yielded to the new cosmos. Your power used to be unfathomable, but much of it was likely sacrificed or stolen.

Cosmic Pillar
Some may call you the god of the sea, but in truth you are the sea. The creation of the world was first and foremost the story of your and your siblings' birth, and to hurt you would be to damage the very fabric of reality. Your power may be great or small, but it most definitely isn't inconsequential.

Tulpamantic Idol
The faith of mortals shapes the flow of magic, giving you power. You may even owe your existence to this phenomenon, having originally been nought but a dream. Perhaps you need to be called by name in prayer, or perhaps you are the personification of a particular ideal, philosophy or tradition.

Magocrat
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from divinity, and you are the top banana in a world full of hungry little monkeys. While there may be powers greater than yours, these seem largely unconcerned with the affairs of the world, and it is you people turn to when they need a miracle.

Multiclassing is not only possible but fairly common.

I like your classification, but I'd add "Usurper" to the list.
Your power is not actually yours. It belongs to some Prime Movers / Cosmic Pillars / Tulpamantic Idols / Magocrats. But you stole this power from them, or enslaved them to your biding, or officially claim them as yours even when you have no control over them.

Alternatively, I'd add "Lesser Divinity" which would include anyone who get his divine powers from another Divinity, either willingly, or by being an Usurper.

[KorvinStarmast]

I like your classification, but I'd add "Usurper" to the list. Hmm, as I reach back to my mythology/literature courses, this seems to touch on the Zeus/Chronos relationship, but those two also had a familial relationship as well.

As to the title question, I am reminded of the immortal George Carlin as regards comparing divine beings
My god has a bigger dirk than your god!

[MoiMagnus]

Hmm, as I reach back to my mythology/literature courses, this seems to touch on the Zeus/Chronos relationship, but those two also had a familial relationship as well.

Indeed, though the main inspiration I had was the worldbuilding of our current GM (which might be canon d&d4e? not totally sure about that) of the gods no knowing how the universe actually work since it was created by the primordials, which after the gods vs primordial war were enslaved by the gods in order to "keep maintaining the universe".

[Millstone85]

Indeed, though the main inspiration I had was the worldbuilding of our current GM (which might be canon d&d4e? not totally sure about that) of the gods no knowing how the universe actually work since it was created by the primordials, which after the gods vs primordial war were enslaved by the gods in order to "keep maintaining the universe".In 4e's core setting, Nentir Vale, the Mortal World is actually under the control and care of a third faction: the Primal Spirits.

These spirits are in a sense the unintended children of gods and primordials, having formed from the mixing of their spilled essences as they wounded each other. And the spirits ended up having greater control over the Mortal World because they are at one with it, their physical forms being the forests, the lakes, etc.

Now they tolerate the gods' influence, but most often force them to intervene through proxies such as clerics or paladins. And they are on even worse terms with the remaining primordials, who had originally grown bored with their creation and decided to clean the slate so they could start over.

That's just the Mortal World, though. The Astral Sea remains the turf of the gods, and some primordials still shape realms in the Elemental Chaos.

[Mechalich]

Taking divine beings out of their own context and placing them into other contexts makes even less sense than doing so with other types of characters, because nature of divine beings is frequently tied to fundamental cosmology of a setting.


This.

The term 'divine being' is generally meant to imply a fundamentally different class of being from the 'mortals' or even the 'immortals' in a fictional setting. Exactly how that difference is assigned varies immensely across settings due to differences in cosmology and can't be really used for cross comparison.

It is also important to differentiate between beings which actually are fundamentally different in some cosmological fashion and those that are simply pretended to be. It is extremely common, especially in modern fantasy, for there to be beings that call themselves gods and force other people to call them gods, but who happen to just be really powerful versions of otherwise ordinary beings.

Admittedly the boundary can blur somewhat, especially in science fiction which can throw around superintelligences that reason faster and extend senses further than anything normally contemplated in human imagination. A Culture Mind, orbiting a planet in a GSV with all the capabilities attendant to that, isn't a deity, but it can absolutely perform all the actions attributed to one, up to and including creating an afterlife for everyone on the planet to live in.

[Vahnavoi]

Sufficiently advanced technology is its own boogeyman. To paraphrase one classic sci-fi story:

Humans built a computer capable of answering any question. Upon completion, they turned it on and asked: "Is there God?" The computer answered: "There is now."

It's not super obvious if you don't dig really deep into philosophy of science, but something like aforementioned Culture Mind or other monistic superbeing does suggest certain metaphysics and cosmology are true to exclusion of other possibilities. Or, to use another series for comparison, Schlock Mercenary has Dark Matter Entitities: unseen creatures capable of throwing planets around if they feel like it. They are so big in size that some fantasy settings would have trouble fitting one and really do not make a single bit of sense transplanted into a setting without outer space and gravity obeying field theory.

[Quertus]

Hmmm... "If my setting is the size of the head of a pin, in all likelihood, you wouldn't make any sense in it."

So it seems that the primary "stat" for a deity, in this context, is one of "Applicability": how readily can the deity in question be made sense of by other realities.

A deity who is bound to a setting-unique concept is not Applicable (Portable?).

Of course, The Open Door kinda disagrees with that notion, as rather Warp-dependent "deities" (very much a "category 3", "Formed by the beliefs of mortals" style of deity) run amok in theoretically Warp-deprived (Warp-free?) settings. Shrug.

Now, I may be wrong, but I expect that the big fish will be the "category 1", "I created the universe" deities.

Which... might often overlap with the "omniscient, omnipotent" deities. Which really aren't terribly interesting in the context of this conversation, IMO, aside from a nod to the Playground standard, "No Infinite, No Arbitrary". If they're truly infinite, you can't really compare them, and they aren't terribly germane to a "Comparing Divine Beings" thread, except to say that they're at the top.

Are there any interesting omnipotent, omniscient beings in the RPG / fiction realm? I'm kinda drawing a blank here, actually.

Just how powerful are the various "I created the universe" deities? If two of them got bored with their creations, and wandered, and met each other, how would they compare? How many settings are sufficiently fleshed out to answer such questions?

[SimonMoon6]

Just how powerful are the various "I created the universe" deities? If two of them got bored with their creations, and wandered, and met each other, how would they compare?

That's assuming that they can leave the universe they created. It's possible that they can't leave or they would have already left.

I mean, there's Azathoth who dreamed all of the universe into existence. Should he ever wake up, this universe will vanish. It's not clear where he might go after that or if there is anything else beyond this universe. But it's also hard to say how powerful he really is (despite having been given game stats occasionally) since he's asleep, with various servitor-beings playing flutes to keep him asleep.

But a lot of these gods deliberately created their specific universe because there wasn't anything else and there was nowhere else to go.

What I get curious about is universes that have multiple deities and pantheons that are responsible for creating the universe. So... who really did? Or maybe it's all just false propaganda. Like, both the DC and Marvel universes have the Greek pantheon, the Norse pantheon, and many others. Each of those pantheons have their own creation story. But they can't all be correct.

Or, as someone mentioned earlier, the myth of Atlas holding up the sky so that it doesn't crash back onto the Earth and kill everyone... but we know that that's not how the sky works. So, when Atlas is in a world where people know how science works (such as the DC Universe where he's one of the six guys who gives powers to Captain Marvel via the magic word "Shazam")... was any of his mythology actually true? And if not, what's the point of him?

[Spore]

For RPG stories, deities are more or less plot devices, not characters anymore. They are as powerful or as weak as the writer deigns them to be. Sometimes bested by powerful heroes, sometimes enough to hold the apocalypse at bay. And there were many wars as a result of comparing deities, and still no one has found an answer, pointing at the possibility that comparing deities is stupid.

[Lord Raziere]

What I get curious about is universes that have multiple deities and pantheons that are responsible for creating the universe. So... who really did? Or maybe it's all just false propaganda. Like, both the DC and Marvel universes have the Greek pantheon, the Norse pantheon, and many others. Each of those pantheons have their own creation story. But they can't all be correct.


Not how that works.

both Marvel and DC have definitive stories for how their universes are created by entities far more powerful than those guys. those pantheons are either relative small fries or results from those creation stories. like these pantheons don't even try to lie to people about how the universe was created in superhero comics, they just go "yeah mortals thought real funny stuff about us back then but how it really went is that the Source/One Above All created all things and we're just more powerful people they just happened to have made".

like there is so many levels of power above those pantheons, them try to claim anything about the creation of the universe is foolhardy or pathetic because chances are the supers around them have some way to contact them to just ask the real people in charge whether its true or not.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One conceit of my meta-setting is that every universe was dreamed into existence by a Dreamer, one of those countless entities that appeared when the Dreaming Dark dreamed the concept "I am me. Which implies that there is Other, Not Me." So the gods that created the universe? Alternately might be creations of those Dreamers or might be Dreamers themselves. Some universes are collective efforts (my take on the standard D&D multiverse); others are creations of a singular mind.

And Dreamers do wander--some are very hands-off, spinning off Dreams in their wake like soap bubbles. Others don't Dream at all; they merely wander through the conceptual space of the Dark, where distance is not measured in miles, but in metaphysics and thought. Where none have bodies, yet all are more than physical, thought made real. And some curse the brightness of existence and wish to Awaken the Dreaming Dark from its timeless dream, bringing all into itself and all into non-existence. That is the Awakener, foe of all the Dreams, corrosive and infectious thought, leaking into reality and corrupting it in its own image until everything crumbles in its wake and becomes Awakener.

[Satinavian]

Are there any interesting omnipotent, omniscient beings in the RPG / fiction realm? I'm kinda drawing a blank here, actually.No, because they make all other actors irrelevant and thus are bad for drama.
However, a lot of fiction does include them because of real world religious views of the author. There are many books introducing dieties and eventually revealing/implying them to have been the same one the reader is suppossed to know already.


Just how powerful are the various "I created the universe" deities? If two of them got bored with their creations, and wandered, and met each other, how would they compare? How many settings are sufficiently fleshed out to answer such questions?
If you compare creators, then there are many creators, who don't survive the creation or are significantly weakened by it so they can't repeat it. There are also many creators who had little control over the process and didn't intend the outrcome. I think that both are good criteria to rank creator gods.

[Vahnavoi]

Are there any interesting omnipotent, omniscient beings in the RPG / fiction realm? I'm kinda drawing a blank here, actually.

Yes there are, but discussing them in a non-superficial manner is impossible on these forums, since they are interesting due to directly tying into banned topics.


Just how powerful are the various "I created the universe" deities? If two of them got bored with their creations, and wandered, and met each other, how would they compare? How many settings are sufficiently fleshed out to answer such questions?

The power of universe-creating deities varies immensely, because the very notion of what the universe is varies immensely. Often, even positing the creator "wandering" about commits a category error, due to presuming there is something outside of everything. Other times, we can safely say the creator isn't going anywhere, because they died in the act and their creation literally rests on their corpse.

So again, you have to look at the cosmology of a setting to see if these questions even make sense. There are plenty of settings with detailed origin stories, that's not the problem. The problem is that you're taking different contradictory stories meant to explain all that there is and why is it so, and then asking "so what if these different contradictory stories were all true?"

[MoiMagnus]

Which... might often overlap with the "omniscient, omnipotent" deities. Which really aren't terribly interesting in the context of this conversation

We can still debate what we actually mean by omniscience and omnipotence.
For example with omniscience:
+ Is it "constant omniscience" (the deity actually knows everything) or "potential omniscience" (the deity has access to every information they want). In the latter, the deity can actually be surprised or tricked by a particularly clever opponent.
+ Is it "information omniscience" (the deity can see everywhere, read everyone's mind, etc) or does it include more abstract informations like "how to use my omnipotence to create a perfect world?", or moral informations "what is the best course of action in this situation?".
+ Does it include the future? In a deterministic universe the answer is likely yes, but the underlying question is "does this omniscience implies the lack of free will?".

Similarly, omnipotence can be very limited by the level of omniscience described above. An omnipotent god that doesn't actually know how to best use their power will be prone to terrible mistakes. This is in fact a very practical explanation for "why don't they solve the plot?", the deity is fearing the consequences of their own powers as their omniscience only includes the user manual for their powers but no playthrough guide on how to use them to reach the best ending.

[Bohandas]

And in fact, most worlds that have them, the deities are generally considered to sit at the top of the food chain.

So, how can we go about comparing their power?

As it happens, I'd been thinking about this a whike ago in terms of deities portfolios, and their level of influence over them. I had divided it into tiers. Trying to remember offhand, I think it was something like

1.) Emanation/Anthropomorphic Personification
The deity IS the portfolio element

(Tier 1 could potentially be divided into cases where there is no distinction, cases where the portfolio element is an emanation from the deity, and cases where the deity is the soul or spirit as it were of the element)

2.) Total Control
The deity has total control over the portfolio element, and with a word or a wave of their hand they can effortly effect a complete change in it.

3a.) Above-Mortal Control
The deity does not have total control of the portfolio element, but has greater control than what non-epic mortal magic or technology can effect

3b.) Thematic abilities
The deity has powers that are thematically related to the portfolio element

3c.) Strong interest
The deity has a strong interest in the portfolio element and has greater than mortal powers, regardless of whether or not those powers are actually connected to their portfolio

some of the tier 3 subcategories may overlap with each other

4.) Bimawen
The deity has no particular interest or influence over the portfolio element, but has come to be associated with it anyway. Perhaps they've been assigned to it by the divine higher-ups or perhaps something about them just makes people think of it for whatever reason

Going by the 3e Deities and Demigods, most D&D deities seem to fall somewhere in tier 3


+ Does it include the future? In a deterministic universe the answer is likely yes, but the underlying question is "does this omniscience implies the lack of free will?".

Also, in a universe that follows the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, perfect knowledge of the future would be significantly less helpful than in a non-many-worlds version, since it would basically just give you all the possible outcomes and their probabilities since they're all going to happen to one degree or another

[Cluedrew]

On Omni-Gods: Hard to do well because... it raises a lot of questions that don't have simple answers. Generally you need them to be effectively limited in setting. The only interactive media I can remember that had an infinitely powerful being involved had it pretend to sit out the events of the game (claiming that the mortals had to fix the problem they had to created) but later revealed it was because the big bad could destroy the world and the good god was trying to trick it into thinking it could win so it would not. And that... doesn't quite hold together because when you get infinity symbol involved things get weird.

On Leaving: Another option about why a god can't leave the world is all the ones that can already have. The ones that are left are lesser gods charged with looking after the completed world. I've actually seen that a lot of times, written it a few too.

On Comparison: When I saw the original question I remembered these old super-hero cards that had bars for power, speed, intelligence and that kind of thing. Way less descriptive than the block of text beside it, but still, what bars would we use for gods?
Power: That part stays the same, some gods are as strong as powerful mortals, others are infinitely powerful. So there is a scale there.
Domain: Gods often have a lot of power within a particular area. On the low end you have gods of a particular place or the god of the second harvest, but that grows to other that can may anything happen and grant wishes at will.
Reaction: Kind of like speed except... well speed once things start moving is usually pretty good, but it is not uncommon for gods to be fairly unresponsive, not noticing little things or being slow to react to a change.
Control: The opposite side of that power thing above? Do they have precise control over their acts or can they only do sweeping earthquakes and storms.
Presence: How broadly spread are they? Even if they aren't omnipresent almost every god has some ability to be spread out over some wider area. How big is it? Are they definitely everywhere or do they grow thin in some areas?
Intelligence: Usually so mysterious as to not be directly measurable, but if we have a way to measure, how smart are they? What sort of decision making power do they possess?
Mortality: Can they be slayed? Anywhere from being a tough mortal to as possible to kill as the sky.

[KorvinStarmast]

+ Does it include the future? In a deterministic universe the answer is likely yes, but the underlying question is "does this omniscience implies the lack of free will?". This needs to be handled with some care if you are concerned about its ripple effects on player / PC agency.

Another take on gods and pantheons comes to me from a recent video I saw on the history of Assyria, and its tie in with how Fritz Lieber posited his divine beings in Lankhmar in the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories.

In this sort of cosmology, the deities are bound to, or most closely associated with, a location rather than a domain. The 'city deities' like some of the Assyrian city deities (no further detail as I don't want to trip over banned RL topics that this may be related to) in my own experience entered the swords and sorcery genre in the guise of the gods of Lankhmar and the gods in Lankhmar (which distinction was the crux of one of the adventures that the two had).

An implication of this is that if a city falls, or another "place where a deity is a part of it" gets destroyed (e.g. lava flows into an arboreal settlement with such a deity due to a volcanic eruption or fire elementals running amok) those deities go dormant, or, they simply disappear into the mists of time/the ether/somewhere-somewhen-else.

Ages ago we had a DM who - inspired somewhat by Lieber's take on this for Lankhmar - decided that his world's deities were location based. Clerics serving those deities were much stronger when closer to home. If they went out traveling or adventuring they had to bring True Relics of their city deity with them or their power would attenuate in a roughly 1/r scheme (with r= distance from city in leagues). (yes, we were engineering students, why do you ask?)

I've not seen any other DMs do that, but it was a novel take on RPG deities that we certainly enjoyed. Stealing holy relics was, needless to say, a semi profitable (if extremely dangerous) business. It got one of my thief PCs killed, but it was also the kind of mission that was so hard to resist since buyers for such relics offered huge rewards...

[Quertus]

On Leaving: Another option about why a god can't leave the world is all the ones that can already have. The ones that are left are lesser gods charged with looking after the completed world. I've actually seen that a lot of times, written it a few too.

That... explains far too many worlds, I think. :smallfrown:


On Comparison: When I saw the original question I remembered these old super-hero cards that had bars for power, speed, intelligence and that kind of thing. Way less descriptive than the block of text beside it, but still, what bars would we use for gods?
Power: That part stays the same, some gods are as strong as powerful mortals, others are infinitely powerful. So there is a scale there.
Domain: Gods often have a lot of power within a particular area. On the low end you have gods of a particular place or the god of the second harvest, but that grows to other that can may anything happen and grant wishes at will.
Reaction: Kind of like speed except... well speed once things start moving is usually pretty good, but it is not uncommon for gods to be fairly unresponsive, not noticing little things or being slow to react to a change.
Control: The opposite side of that power thing above? Do they have precise control over their acts or can they only do sweeping earthquakes and storms.
Presence: How broadly spread are they? Even if they aren't omnipresent almost every god has some ability to be spread out over some wider area. How big is it? Are they definitely everywhere or do they grow thin in some areas?
Intelligence: Usually so mysterious as to not be directly measurable, but if we have a way to measure, how smart are they? What sort of decision making power do they possess?
Mortality: Can they be slayed? Anywhere from being a tough mortal to as possible to kill as the sky.


That's... huh. Regardless of how relevant that list is to deities, it's shockingly similar to a list I've been working on for evaluating mortal beings.

To reuse and redefine a term I used earlier - related to Portfolio Domain, perhaps - is the idea of Applicability. If you're looking at the Divinity of Disease, but they're entering a realm of sentient crystals with no discernible metabolism, or a realm of thought-forms, their power/divinity/Domain isn't useful / valuable / relevant in that realm. Whereas (in the former realm, at least) the god of Shiny is sitting pretty. :smallbiggrin:

[Bohandas]

I mean, there's Azathoth who dreamed all of the universe into existence. Should he ever wake up, this universe will vanish. It's not clear where he might go after that or if there is anything else beyond this universe. But it's also hard to say how powerful he really is (despite having been given game stats occasionally) since he's asleep, with various servitor-beings playing flutes to keep him asleep.

I think you're conflating Azathoth with Mana Yood Sushai (the creator/destoryer from Gods of Pegana who was lulled into eternal sleep by Skarl The Drummer to prevent him from unmaking the world he made) and/or the Red King (who allegedly dreamed both Wonderland and Alice into existence).

Azathoth was partly inspired by Mana Yood Sushai, but AFAIK the similarities end at him being a supreme god of destruction who is constantly accompanied by musicians. IIRC he is neither a creator god, nor in a (semi-)eternal sleep

[Vahnavoi]

That's... huh. Regardless of how relevant that list is to deities, it's shockingly similar to a list I've been working on for evaluating mortal beings.

What about that is shocking? A good chunk of divine beings from myth and legend are anthropomorphic or animalistic and thus described in the same terms as living beings. The distinction gets blurred from the other end too due to speculative fiction giving "mortals" all kinds of traits that in old myths were reserved to divine beings. Neither "gods" nor "mortals" are well-defined natural categories that hold when applied across settings with conflicting metaphysics. Just think of the Thor example again. Or Hercules. Deities and demigods in myth, appropriated as superheroes in modern times, put next to characters who have similar powers but justified through something other than divine origin.