Part 3.
So now I've staked out a few traditional archetypes, how can we actually subvert and redefine these bastards?
Immortal / Mortal extraplanar entities of great power.
The first change I'd make to how these suckers work is to give them interesting domains. A God of Fire is cool, a God of Thunder is cool, a God of Justice is cool. If you want to make new gods, give them new domains. In my own random scribblings, I created a pantheon of deities for a random mythic fantasy setting. Some of the gods included...
Llorue, God of Repose. Her domain included sleep aids, anesthesia, medicine, euthanasia and death. She opposed the undead, obviously, but her church kinda doubled as a Voluntary Humanoid Extinction Movement that sought a peaceful but very final rest for everything.
Velir, God of Servitude. Honoured by bodyguards, knights, samurai and servants. It's actually kind of rude to 'worship' Velir just due to his nature, but working in a hierarchy is considered paying respects. Velir actually used to be a god of Fellowship in the backstory, whose role was usurped by another being.
So yeah, those are my amateur attempts. Give them weird and contradictory domains. Have them uphold morals that don't align with 'normal' human beliefs and thoughts. Have, as Arnold Kemp suggested, 'foreign' angels and gods, like an Angel of Greed or an Angel of Pride, encouraging the virtues of Pride and Greed, and a Demon of Agriculture or a Demon of Peace that encourage the sins of pacifism and self-sufficiency.
If you want to use default D&D gods, go for it! Make them interesting by applying their domains constantly and always. Have Tyr bear nothing but scorn for pacifists and altruism! Asmodeus respects those who try to outwit him, and idolizes those who try! Gods of Fire may scorn burials and demand cremations, Gods of Air demand sky burials (NSFW), Gods of Nature demand their followers to lobotomize away their higher brain functions. These don't always need to be negative, I'm just a pessimistic son of a bitch.
Incredibly powerful mortals, mages or spirits.
This is almost an ideal level for your deities to be at for a sword & sorcery dungeon crawler. A 'serpent god' that draws power from the ritual sacrifices performed by their literal dozens of worshipers can be both a terrifying threat and something that can be killed by a handful of greed-obsessed scrubs with crowbars and 10' poles. The downside is that a population of gods that can be killed by the aforementioned scrubs raises a major question- namely, 'why haven't some other scrubs already dealt with these guys?'
These 'godlets' are best suited to a setting where the PCs are constantly roaming and exploring, discovering new parts of the world and new strange cults & religions. A large, established hub of civilization with temples & cathedrals built to a 'god' that has 30 hitpoints and does 8 damage is going to feel a little shallow when the party learns that Orthros the Mighty is worse in a fight than his pallbearers.
Charlatans, grifters, con-men and men behind curtains.
See above, I guess. The main difference is that you can put these guys at the heart of an established religion even if they can't fight their way out of a paper bag, and explain it as them just being really good at lying and faking miracles. I wouldn't lean too hard on frauds myself, but I'm not running your campaign, am I?
Calamari-themed eldritch beings from beyond the stars that are dead but dreaming.
Oh, these bastards are getting their own post.
God, G-d, Allah, Jesus, Yeshua, The Light, The Lord, The Tetragrammaton.
Last but not least. I'd approach these Big Boys one of two ways. First, have them be a reclusive creator god that doesn't really interfere much. Have it be up in the air as to whether they even exist! Sure, their clerics or whatever have magic, but so do the setting's wizards and sorcerers. The other option is to do a straight mythic black & white fantasy setting, and set up Big G as a counterpart to an ancient evil (or several ancient evils). Honestly I think that 'Christian God But With A Dragon Head' is probably the least interesting way to put religion in your setting, but I'm biased.
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