The Royal Guard is a general purpose military branch of the Zyrian armed forces. The Royal Guard consists of the best of the best from all four other branches, characterizing the branch as a diverse legion of troops in all fields of combat. The first component of the Royal Guard is the Royal Wing, the king's best hand-picked personal entourage. The second component is the Noble Ops, a covert and a deployable Royal Wing branch.
Lastly, an unofficial subset of the Royal Guard is the Legion Praetorians.
A member of the Royal Guard never "dies." Their methods of resurrection is similar to an adventurer, but their body and equipment remains. They will eventually return but to an available body with data and memories available up to their death.
Tips for using the Royal Guard in your session:
- Referring to them as guards is a loose term. The Royal Guard is made up entirely of soldiers picked from the Grand Army. Yet they are stronger than an average soldier by far with better training. This includes training in magic.
- A Royal Guard unit would be at least a CR 6. One can take on a mid-level adventurer should they fight it smart. However, other units are quick to respond. A squad of Royal Guards can be a tough encounter even to mid-level adventurers.
- Noble Ops are a covert group. They stick together and are rarely outsmarted by an entity. While not as hardy as a Royal Guard unit, they are very hard to catch and find. If they think something is not going their way or their cover blown, they will fall back immediately as they are not ones to stick around to find what will happen.
- A Praetor's raw strength and power is equivalent to the king. In essence, if encountering all eight it would almost, if not entirely, will guarantee death.
- Think fantasy special forces in general, and the CIA for Noble Ops.
Abilities and Equipment:
- The Royal Guard are outfitted with the best weapons and defenses available. The Noble Ops are equipped with the state-of-the-art weaponry and gadgets.
- The vast majority of the Royal Guard will be equipped with some form of enhanced armor, notably breastplate armor, with an average AC of 17. Though, officers would have better armor as they can be afforded with greater defense.
- Not all units are magic-based; like the Army, they will deploy gadgets and military weapons to help combat encounters.
- There aren't many stat blocks in the DMG that can represent a Royal Guard unit, since they are trained to have high STR & INT values (DEX & INT for Noble Ops) while also being well-versed in melee combat and magic. Because of these dangerous features, be careful not to overtune them. Remember: their strength doesn't come from raw individual power.
- A common way to fix this convention is to have some spells be casted by a group of Royal Guard squads (or more specifically, have an Initiative round where spell effects occur). This way, you don't need to worry about twenty separate soldiers each firing off Magic Missiles on their round.
Not the Grand Army:
- Despite being the fifth branch of the armed forces, the Royal Guard rarely if ever sees action unless needed in times of crises or if war is declared.
- Noble Ops aren't your typical covert ops. They aren't sent out unless instructed specifically by the king himself.
- Praetorians are not sent out to fight; the Praetorians defend and protect the queen. There are never more than eight Praetorians at a time.