Hiya!
Lets go with... no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, sorta yes, no, no, yes he does/is if this is what you go by.
Pull out your Monster Manual II (yes, the AD&D one) and flip to page 91 for what "The Prime One" is. Everything after that, from other editions? As far as I'm concerned it's all bovine droppings. This was one of the MAIN things that kept ticking us off about 2e when they started rolling stuff out for it...and it got infinitely worse with 3.x. The designers "got lazy". They pulled a "hollywood", so to speak. Rather than take what was already there and use it as a bedrock to create NEW things...they took those things that made up the bedrock of "AD&D" and changed them. Why can't designers leave well enough alone and just build off of what was 'canon' before? Why take something that was already cool, and try and "fix it" to "make it kewler, like with lazer catz! pew pew pew!!!". :rage:
Primus was not a "god". He was...you know what? Here, straight from the AD&D 1e MMII:
"Primus is the ruler of all the planes of Nirvana. Primus, and Primus
alone, sets the order, writes the laws, and establishes the rules and
regulations. All others carry out the plans and obey the rules of Primus.
Failure to meet this powerful creature’s standards means a return to the
energy pool at best as a monodrone"
That's "The Prime One". When/if he is destroyed, a new Prime One is formed, typically from a Secundus I would assume, and everything below that sort of gets promoted to the next higher 'form'. Rinse, repeat. So, in a way, Primus
is more powerful than a god in the sense that if he is killed on his home plane of Nirvana (Mechasomethingorother now?), "he" is reborn when the Secundi (there are 4 of them) have to choose a new Prime One. Then...POOF! He's back. Sorta. If Zeus is killed on his home plane...that's it. Game over. He doesn't get to "come back", and nobody chooses a new "Zeus"; some other Greater God/dess just tries to assume the role I guess. Probably quite the upheaval!
So, yeah, I'm going with "No, because all that listed in the books after AD&D MM2 is just propaganda, tall tales, epic songs, and hearsay". But you could go with "Yup. He's the super-duper god! He's like a Greater God, but turned up to 11!". It's your campaign, after all.
^_^
Paul L. Ming