Mythology often depicted gods as "human, but bigger." Similar emotions, virtues, vices, and what not. but with more power. Special effects and global story-telling exposure has expanded the concept. Gods are often humanoid (easier for actors to portray them) and have a number of powers. The difference between them and non-divine characters is they don't have to be "balanced" in terms of other characters.
Typical god powers and traits can include:
. Nigh Invulnerability - They can get physically hurt occasionally
.Super Strength
. Telekinesis
. Shoot fireballs/lightning
. Teleportation and/or Flight
. Power to alter reality at will, generally in limited areas or in ways relating to their attunement— see below.
. Limited Omniscience: They can be aware of what's going on in a general area, but they have to pay attention to it. So it's possible to surprise them.
. Attunement to Concept: e.g. Aphrodite the Goddess of Love is attuned to love, naturally (although technically the original Greek term and name was better translated more like "lust" or "attraction", "infatuation" at most). If fewer people love, then she's weakened. If she's hurt or weakened due to some plot reason, fewer people love. Not all gods have attunements, and the level of attunement depends on the writer at the time. Which may overlap with...
.Need Prayer Badly: Their power may be directly proportional to the number of worshipers they have, or to the strength of their followers' belief.
. Complete Immortality: They usually don't age, but can be killed - although it's incredibly difficult to do so and usually takes a great deal of effort or some special item to do so. If enough people still believe in them, they may be brought back to life - although they may have lost their memories or be forced to take a new form.
. Avatars, that can reform their physical selves.
However there is a possiblity that only appear to be physical gods, but this may be deceptive — their physical bodies are mere virtual projections generated by a the world-computer. Furthermore, unless they could be wearing somekind of limiter device, their full divine power manifests so easily through these projections that they could accidentally crack a planet in half. This limiter device could make them quite vulnerable to being killed by something as simple as a sword. They have been mentioned as in mortal danger from a large physical object hurling towards them. For example, removing a limiter and takes a direct blast from Heaven's ultimate weapon and it doesn't even muss their hair. They could truly exist on a very higher-dimensional plane of existence, which would make their true selves, that monitor and keep all of existence running, literally omnipotent and immune to all 3D harm. In this context the manifestation forms without limiters would simply be a very slight adjustment of how much of that power they are allowed to use for personal purposes. Later this seems to have been diverged from, or at least not mentioned, to keep them "scaled down" and relatable.
Fri Sep 14, 2012 9:02 pm
