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Big Barda - PL 13
Strength 15/10, Stamina 15/10, Agility 8, Dexterity 8, Fighting 11, Intellect 2, Awareness 4, Presence 6
Advantages
Accurate Attack, All-out Attack, Assessment,
Great Endurance, Improved Initiative, Interpose, Leadership
Skills
Athletics 4 (+19), Expertise: Tactics 5 (+7),
Insight 2 (+6), Intimidation 4 (+10), Perception 4 (+8), Ranged Combat: Mega Rod 3 (+11)
Powers
Immortal
. .
Immunity 11 (Aging,
Life Support)
. .
Impervious Toughness 8
Strength of Apokolips: Power-lifting 4 (+4 STR for lifting)
Devices
Aero Disks: Flight 6 (Removable, Speed: 120 miles/hour, 1800 feet/round; Platform)
Apokoliptian Armor: Enhanced Trait 20 (Removable,
Strength +5 (+15), Stamina +5 (+15))
Mega Rod (Easily Removable)
. . Concussive Blast: Blast 10 (DC 25)
. . Flight 5 (Speed: 60 miles/hour, 900 feet/round)
. . Mega Mace (Penetrating 10)
. . Teleportation: Teleport 5 (900 feet in a move action, carrying 50 lbs.)
. . Transwarp Drive: Movement 3 (Space Travel 3: other galaxies)
Mother Box (Removable)
. .
Healing 8
. .
Intelligence: Feature 2
. .
Movement 3 (Space Travel 3: other galaxies)
Offense
Initiative +12
Concussive Blast: Blast 10, +11 (DC 25)
Grab, +11 (DC Spec 25)
Throw, +8 (DC 30)
Unarmed, +11 (DC 30)
Complications
Enemy: When she left Apokolips, Big Barda was marked a traitor by Granny Goodness, the Female Furies, and even Darkseid himself.
Love: Big Barda’s love for Scott Free means she will always be more concerned with his safety than her own.
Languages
Native Language
Defense
Dodge 10, Parry 11,
Fortitude 15, Toughness 15, Will 9
Power Points
Abilities 118 + Powers 77 + Advantages 7 + Skills 11 (22 ranks) + Defenses 7 = 220
I never really got into the New Gods in my early second-hand exposures to comics. The few issues I saw were visually interesting, but because I'd rarely see them in any order it was like coming in during the middle of the movie, and without any frames of reference like recognizable characters or settings, it failed to keep my interest. The references I've seen to it in other media (including
old toy commercials)are the only real connection I have to it, so I'd heard of Darkseid and Parademons, but even the other major New Gods were a mystery to me. Barda's my first deep-dive into the setting.
Barda was born 250 years ago on Apokalips, groomed by Granny Goodness to be a warrior and soldier and showed enough promise to lead Darkseid's honour guard, The Female Furies. She met Scott Free, who turned out to be a highborn rebel from New Genesis and they had a "lovers from two warring houses" thing, with her helping him escape to Earth but staying behind for star-crossed reasons. She eventually abandons the Furies, follows Scott (now Mister Miracle with a touring escape artist act) to Earth and marries him. While still new to the ways of Earth, she actually likes being a happy homemaker after centuries of warrioring, but still gets out to help the JLA or Birds of Prey or others with her galaxy-class combat training.
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Mechanically, Barda is obviously a heavy-hitter, but definitely favors close fighting. At PL13, she hits offensive caps both unarmed and wielding the Mega-Rod as a mace, but barely hits PL11 with the ranged concussion blasts. Close Defense hits caps, with ranged only slightly behind and F/W at PL12. (A typo in the book has Fortitude at 11 despite STA 15.)
At first glance it seems like a straightforward build, but there are a bunch of little details that just don't quite fit:
- Barda's Wikipedia entry says her strength is roughly on par with Wonder Woman's, as is her combat training. Looking forward, WW's a PL15, but Barda's Abilities are mostly similar except for drops in the PL-affecting traits, so it's possible they did start with her as a template.
- Her armor is said to increase her durability in one wiki and her strength in another. The build adds +5 to both STR and STA which is huge, and in theory should make her stronger than WW when wearing it, but that seems to have been avoided.
- Her AGI, DEX and PRE are way high considering she has so few skills taking advantage of them, but I guess she is a "god" of sorts.
- Speaking of which, her Immortal power set includes Life Support, which may be overkill. The wikis state her resistance to disease and poisons as a New God, but they don't say anything specific about extreme environments, breathing or eating. In any case, full Life Support makes Great Endurance useless, so at least one of them needs fixing, and since Scott doesn't have it and the two are similar enough to have a child, I'm gonna say LS is not right.
- she has a lot of devices and there's some unexpected overlap between them. The MRod has Flight (I think a function of gravity control?) but the Aero Disks are better flyers, so maybe stick to fighting with the rod? It also has Transwarp Drive that does the same thing as the Mother Box; looking further it seems the Mega-Rod was once reverse-engineered to provide transwarp similar to a Boom Tube, which sounds like a Device Power Stunt to me.
- Mister Miracle's Aero Disks are faster and don't have the Platform Flaw but are Easily Removable; so you can't be knocked off them but you can be Disarmed? This could be divergent New Genesis/Apokolips tech issues, but I think it was just an oversight. I'll have to figure out which config I like better.
- The Mega Rod has other issues, like underpointing its slots for no clear reason. The Concussive Blast sets a 20p base, but everything else ends up being only 10p each. The Penetrating for the Mace Attack could be for the full 15 STR, the Teleport could go 4 miles instead of 900', and Flight (if it's supposed to be flight) could be supersonic.
- It may be because I've just done a bunch of bat-builds, but I would think at least a few of her skills should be near PL. For 200 years of combat experience, her tactics and insight are abysmal.
- And do the New Gods all speak English? Gosh that's handy. A quick look around makes no indication that there's a separate language for New Genesis or Apokolips, and no mention of any god-like ability to speak all langauges, so this is either a narrative handwave or it's too obscure for my light scanning to find.
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Big Barda (RtP PL13) - PL 13
Strength 15/10, Stamina 15/10, Agility 4, Dexterity 4, Fighting 11, Intellect 2, Awareness 4, Presence 6
Advantages
Accurate Attack, All-out Attack, Assessment, Great Endurance, Improved Initiative, Interpose, Leadership
Skills
Athletics 2 (+17), Expertise: Tactics 8 (+10), Insight 6 (+10), Intimidation 4 (+10), Perception 4 (+8), Ranged Combat: Mega Rod 7 (+11), Stealth 3 (+7)
Powers
Aero Disks: Flight 6 (Removable, Speed: 120 miles/hour, 1800 feet/round; Platform)
Apokoliptian Armor (Removable)
. .
Enhanced Trait 20 (Traits: Strength +5 (+15), Stamina +5 (+15))
. .
Impervious Toughness 8
Immortal: Immunity 3 (Aging, Disease, Poison)
Mega Rod (Easily Removable)
. .
Concussive Blast: Blast 10 (DC 25)
. .
Flight 5 (Speed: 60 miles/hour, 900 feet/round)
. .
Mega Mace (Penetrating 15)
. .
Teleportation: Teleport 10 (4 miles in a move action, carrying 50 lbs.)
Mother Box (Removable)
. .
Healing 8
. . . .
Movement 3 (Alternate; Space Travel 3: other galaxies; Portal)
. .
Intelligence: Feature 2
Offense
Initiative +8
Concussive Blast: Blast 10, +11 (DC 25)
Grab, +11 (DC Spec 25)
Throw, +4 (DC 30)
Unarmed, +11 (DC 30)
Complications
Enemy: When she left Apokolips, Big Barda was marked a traitor by Granny Goodness, the Female Furies, and even Darkseid himself.
Love: Big Barda’s love for Scott Free means she will always be more concerned with his safety than her own.
Defense
Dodge 10, Parry 11, Fortitude 15, Toughness 15, Will 9
Power Points
Abilities 102 + Powers 58 + Advantages 7 + Skills 17 (34 ranks) + Defenses 11 = 195
Here's a trimmed down version of the DCA build that uses some of my fixes. I also removed the Strength of Apokalips partly to save points, but mostly because I feel 3e lifting STR is so much more effective than it was in 2e that you generally don't need all that extra; in this case, her lifting drops to only 800 tons (roughly twice a fully loaded 747) from 12 ktons (idk, 30 planes? a small building?) so while it's technically a lot it doesn't necessarily make a lot of narrative difference.
I cleaned up her Immortal set, moved her Impervious to her armor, lowered her AGI/DEX with compensations elsewhere, upped some of her skills and Mega Rod slots. I'm hitting a wall on the Flight slot, though, because I'm still not sure what it's meant to be. One site claimed she used her Rod to speed up flight on her Disks (making that the second Movement booster use I've found) and another says "For a limited time the Mega-Rod can also increase the gravity force of an individual," which seems meaningless without context. It's probably easier to remove it entirely and just make a point of defining the Descriptor of "Boom Tube Tech" to allow for interesting Power Stunts.
This does bring up the question of PL and where characters should fit. So far the only characters in the PL13 range are Barda, Atrocitus and Bane. I could see Barda and Atrocitus squaring off in an even match, but Bane should be a smear on the sidewalk versus either of them IMO.
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