Actually, I think Salem is much better at this "balance" than H&H.
Humours have harder caps than in H&H - not only you need more food event points to raise humours but also they decay faster the higher humours are. Which means that it's easier to catch up on high level players. And high humours don't give you godhood if you can't fight properly.
Another thing is how crime works. In H&H if someone broke into your camp then they could basically destroy everything at no additional cost. So they did just that. In Salem it's much harder because you have to deal with constant BB drain, braziers and having to wait for crime debuff to vanish before you can heal. It all makes additional griefing less worthwhile. Sure, it's easier to break into claim now (at least until new walls are added) than in H&H, but once it happens it's less probable that they will do more damage than stealing some stuff. Unless they raid you specifically with destruction in their mind.
I don't think there are any demi gods in Salem. There are only people with more combat skill / experience / friends and those without.