[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That seems like an appeal to your own assumptions about what gods ought to be like, more than an appeal to how the gods actually act. I've read quite a number of versions of the Norse myths, for example, and they seem consistently to portray a Thor who's nowhere near IQ 16; "not known for trickery or wisdom" is an understatement. What incidents from legend show Thor doing things as smart as an IQ 16 human would, or Freyja being at IQ 18, rather than their being at IQ 8-9 and 10-12, respectively?

There was the "Thor engages in a riddle contest with the lore of the Nine Worlds with the Dwarf Alviss tho wants to marry his daughter Thrud, which lasts until the sun rises and Alviss turns to stone" incident which shows a more patient and cunning Thor, likely from a Norwegian or Icelandic source (Odin, being an import from Lower Germany to Denmark and Sweden didn't have much of a following in Norway and almost no actual presence in Iceland, at least according to The Mythology of All Races, vol 2: Eddic).

Still, Thor in the myths isn't stupid, just direct. I'd give him IQ 12 + a Talent, actually, with Loki at 15-18.

Come to think of it, I'd probably give most gods a Talent to cover their mythic portfolios rather than boosting their IQs to superhuman levels. The Mesopotamian, Aegean, Celtic, and Norse deities were all quite human in their personalities and reasoning capabilities; the Egyptian gods may be a higher IQ than most, and I haven't studied the Hindu, Chinese, Japanese, and Indochinese mythologies enough to comment. (What I've found of Inca and Mesoamerican mythologies I've read have been hit with a heavy 17th Century Christian bias that I really can't tell what the myths were.) Either way, Talents give the gods higher IQs in their schticks without making them all-knowing.