So I am running a game which includes both AoR and EotE, and I am going to post this in both forums because it applies to both. I am making an encounter and I was wondering how to stat out Royal Guard and what talents to give them. I am okay on my Star Wars lore but I don't know a ton about these guys other than the wookiepeia I read. I am not 100% positive I want to use them (they will show up in response to the party unknowingly confronting a hand to the emperor). The party is strong and have earned about 200 xp so far in the campaign. I want them to be scary but I want them also to be correct since there are some starwars super fans in my group, but I don't want to ruin the surprise by asking them.

Can you help me?

Please and thank you.

The Force and Destiny beta book has you covered:

Imperial Royal Guard [Nemesis]

Brawn 3 Agility 3 Intellect 3 Cunning 2 Willpower 2 Presence 2

Soak 5

WT 16

ST 12

Defense 1/1

Skills: Athletics 2, Discipline 3, Melee 4, Perception 3, Ranged Light 3, Vigilance 4

Talents: Adversary 2, Heightened Awareness (allies of Royal Guards within short range add BOOST to Perception and Vigilance checks; engaged allies add BOOST BOOST instead), Parry 4 (when struck by a melee attack before applying soak, may suffer 3 strain to reduce damage by 6).

Abilities: None.

Equipment: Cortosis-plated force pike (Melee; Damage 6; Critical 2; Range Engaged; Cortosis; Pierce 2; Stun Setting), heavy blaster pistol, heavy battle armor.

Frankly this feels a little underpowered for me, but my players are murder machines.

YYYG is a reliable crit or 2 which seems enough for unnamed royal guards.

If you to buff them add couple of levels of feral strength and or lethal blows.

I would think royal guards would be rivals not nemesis. The Nemesis would be the guys they are protecting.

I agree that the stats in F&D was a little underwhelming. I'd give them some considerable upgrades, especially several ranks of talents from the Marauder tree like Frenzied Attack, Feral Strength and Defensive Stance. 2-3 ranks in Bodyguard is a must as well.

I would think royal guards would be rivals not nemesis. The Nemesis would be the guys they are protecting.

I feel the same way, but in order to have the Parry talent they need strain to use it properly. Unless one wants to have them as a rival with an increased soak they need the limited resource of strain. Which is why I think they are a little underwhelming as a nemesis level threat. Mind you there is generally more than one too.

The one thing I would do is add a Body Guard talent to the guards. It will reduce as the guards are eliminated. But the more guards the more the upgrades.

Something like this...

• I fleshed out their armour a little more, beefing it up.
• Added the Body Guard talent.
• Bumped their Willower to match Stormtroopers which these guards are usually drawn from.

Imperial Royal Guard

Duh, simply adding the Body Guard talent to each guard does the same. Adjusted the stat block.

I agree that the stats in F&D was a little underwhelming. I'd give them some considerable upgrades, especially several ranks of talents from the Marauder tree like Frenzied Attack, Feral Strength and Defensive Stance. 2-3 ranks in Bodyguard is a must as well.

I'd be wary of putting too much in there. They should be a threat but not an overwhelming one. Two guards with Body Guard and the big baddy's Adversary talent can add up to a nice amount of upgrades keeping your BB nicely protected while these guys deal with threats while still standing. That's not even counting other npcs like stormtroopers or such.

I would think royal guards would be rivals not nemesis. The Nemesis would be the guys they are protecting.

[...]

The one thing I would do is add a Body Guard talent to the guards. It will reduce as the guards are eliminated. But the more guards the more the upgrades.

[...]

Or give the guy or gal they are guarding the "Imperial Valor" ability.

I would think royal guards would be rivals not nemesis. The Nemesis would be the guys they are protecting.

[...]

The one thing I would do is add a Body Guard talent to the guards. It will reduce as the guards are eliminated. But the more guards the more the upgrades.

[...]

Or give the guy or gal they are guarding the "Imperial Valor" ability.

Absolutely. It is nice that there are more than a few ways to beef up protection of your big baddy without always doing the same thing like beef up their stats and such. Adversary, Body Guard, Imperial Valor, Squadron rules, increased attributes. You can model an NPC in a way that fits their flavour. You can even combine abilities.

I agree that the stats in F&D was a little underwhelming. I'd give them some considerable upgrades, especially several ranks of talents from the Marauder tree like Frenzied Attack, Feral Strength and Defensive Stance. 2-3 ranks in Bodyguard is a must as well.

I'd be wary of putting too much in there. They should be a threat but not an overwhelming one. Two guards with Body Guard and the big baddy's Adversary talent can add up to a nice amount of upgrades keeping your BB nicely protected while these guys deal with threats while still standing. That's not even counting other npcs like stormtroopers or such.

I think I see where you're coming from, but I disagree (about the "not overwhelming threat" part, that is). I think that's exactly what Royal Guards should be: an overwhelming, immediate threat. If there are two kinds of Imperial troops that should be genuinely scary (and reserved for high-XP play) it's Royal Guards and Storm Commandos. Whenever PCs run into either of these there should be a distinctive feeling of, "holy crap we're in for a fight now!".

This is just my personal opinion, mind. I'm not trying to start any kind of argument about how badass one type of NPC is as opposed to another type of NPC. But in my campaigns I like for these two types to be very special and dangerous opponents.

I've used Royal Guards in a test session during the FaD Beta, and they ran fine as written. The only change I'd make is mouthymerc's suggestion to increase their Willpower to 3, but that's largely it. Imperial Valor works quite well to cover a Royal Guard suddenly putting themselves in the way of an attack targeting the person they're guarding without having the GM need to worry about tracking if the Royal Guards used Bodyguard this turn or not.

As was noted, they only reason they're a Nemesis-tier adversary is so that they can make viable use of the Parry talent, which was also done for the IG-100 Bodyguard droids. I've tried using Parry on Rivals, and unless you really load that Rival up on Parry (5 or more ranks) or give them a strain threshold (which largely pushes them into being a Nemesis anyway), it's not really worth it, since the Rival is at most going to only reduce the damage taken by a couple of points due to suffering strain damage as wounds.

I think too much weight was given by the fanbase to the term "Nemesis" that lead a lot of us to thinking that the only time Nemesis should be applied is when it's the major villain of either a story arc or the BBEG of the entire campaign. Going by the Force and Destiny Beta, it seems that for the writers, the term "Nemesis" is more akin to "this opponent is extremely capable and much tougher than your run-of-the-mill bad guys."

The reason I like adding Body Guard is so that you don't need to always have Imperial Valor on the BB.

The reason I like adding Body Guard is so that you don't need to always have Imperial Valor on the BB.

The one issue with using Bodyguard is that all it does is make a specific NPC harder to hit, while effectively removing the Royal Guard's maneuver each turn and burning even more of their strain, either 1 point simply from the talent or 3 points from both the talent and taking a second maneuver. And if the specific NPC already has ranks of Adversary, you run the risk of making that NPC too difficult to land a solid hit on as well as upping the chances of a Despair.

Yes, the GM can choose not to use the Bodyguard talent, but at that point it circles right back around to "if you're not going to use it, why is it there?" The Order 66 podcast hit the nail on the head (I feel) in their discussion of creating NPCs that you don't want to stack too many things into an NPC, especially if they're an unnamed adversary.

And ultimately, if you want to have the Royal Guards be "defending" a particular adversary, just give that adversary a rank or two of the Adversary talent to account for them having bodyguards. Has the same net effect (specific NPC is harder to hit) while not adding extra bookkeeping to the GM's plate or restricting what the Royal Guards can do in a given turn.

It's an option, to be used or not be used. Some people don't always want to use the same options be they Adversary, Imperial Valor, Squadron Rules, or what have you. And some GMs on here have to deal with tricked out player characters; min maxed monsters. So making the specific NPC harder to hit through individual or a combination of effects is an actual result wanted by some for various reasons. Nobody says you have to use it nor include it. It was just my take. There is no right or wrong way.

The Bodyguard talent is something a bodyguard uses on their principal when trying to get them out of a dangerous situation as quickly as possible. It's not meant for them to be standing next to the guy while shooting at other characters.

Say, as an example, that a group of Rebel PCs are going after an important Imperial target, like one of Palpatine's advisors. The PCs make their move, and while two of the Royal guards engage the PCs in combat the other two guards grab the advisor, spends a manoeuvre to use Bodyguard 2 on him, and use the rest of their round to hustle him away. That's 4 difficulty upgrades to anyone trying to hit the advisor. Now if he also has a rank or two in Adversary and maybe the Dodge talent as well, it's going to be near impossible for anyone to hit him enough times before he's out of the room/situation/whatever.