Imperial Royal Guardsmen

By bblaney001, in Star Wars: Age of Rebellion RPG

Ok I want to make a even more proficient Imperial Royal Guardsman, sorta like Kir Kanos and such.

What would you upgrade over the normal Imperial Royal Guardsman

Mind you he would not a unique character, though he would be a limited character

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/star-wars-imperial-assault/products/royal-guard-champion-villain-pack/

That is my inspiration

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edited by bblaney001
Added clarification

I don't have the normal guard stats in front of me, but I probably wouldn't use them as much more than a reference anyway.

There's really only one place where a villians' numbers matter: The encounter you face them in.

So start there. What's the location you'll face him? What features does it have? Which player/players will do so? What abilities do they have, what are their weaknesses? How long should the encounter run and what's the intended ending?

From there I'd start looking at the Inquisitor rules in FaD. Probably not follow them verbatim, but that would be my foundation. I'd make a point of looking at the answers to the above questions to make the character work in the encounter, make him strong where the players are weak, but also ensure he's not invulnerable. I'd also look at ways to make the character easy to run. If it's cold there, he's got insulated armor. If it's dark, he's got night vision. Anything so I don't have to remember setback dice or whatever.

If I had the player's sheet, or a copy there of, I'd then sit down and rolls the dice a few times, make sure the probabilities work out.

So sit back and design that initial set piece.

"The Jedi fights him on the roof of a ruin on Rhen Var while the other players fight off a phalanx of Snowtroopers until the pilot can pick them up."

The Entire Party faces him on the rim of a volcano along with a platoon of flametroopers while trying to disable the McGuffin device before it causes the Volcano to erupt."

The Not-Jedi fights him on the catwalks below an offshore platform in the middle of a hurricane while trying to get to the other side."

SWCE6-FC.jpg

Imperial Sovereign Protector

Brawn: 4, Agility: 3, Intellect: 3, Cunning: 3, Willpower: 4, Presence: 2

Soak: 6, Wounds: 18, Strain: 15, Defense: 2/1

Skills: Athletics 3, Discipline 4, Melee 4, Perception 3, Ranged (Light) 4, Resilience 3, Stealth 2, Vigilance 4

Talents: Adversary 3 (upgrade difficulty of combat checks against this target thrice), Force Rating 1, Parry 5 (when struck by a melee attack suffer 3 strain to lower damage by 7), Soft Spot (after a successful combat check with a non-starship weapon, flip a destiny point to add 3 damage to hit)

Abilities: Dark Side Force User (uses dark sides results on force checks), Force Power: Move (strength 1, range 1, control)

Equipment: Cortosis-plated vibro-doubleblade (Melee; Damage 6; Critical 2; Range [Engaged]; Cortosis, Defensive 1, Linked 1, Pierce 2, Vicious 1), Heavy blaster pistol (Ranged [Light]; Damage 7; Critical 3; Range [Medium]; Stun setting), Cortosis-reinforced heavy battle armor (+2 soak, +1 defense, Cortosis), Royal Guard TIE/in Fighter

Not too sure this is what you're after and since I just thought of it now I haven't had the ability to playtest it obviously, but it's similar enough to what I have employed in a knight-level campaign a while back that it should be a relative challenge against a knight-level party with lightsabers. The Imperial Sovereign Protector are the Imperial Royal Guard's elites, requiring not only exceptional conditioning but rudimentary force potential. In addition to guarding the Emperor they also defended important locations such as the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, the Imperial Citadel on Byss and the dreadnought Eclipse .

Edited by BipolarJuice

Pretty good job BipolarJuice.

The only part of that stat block I question is the Cortosis quality on the armor. With 5 ranks of Parry and a pretty solid strain threshold, melee-based Breach weapons (such as lightsabers) are going to have a fairly difficult time doing more than chip away at this adversary's wound threshold, especially if they're in a one-on-one fight. Between the high wound threshold and considerable soak value, taking one of these blokes in a duel is going to quickly become a chore for most PCs as this adversary can effectively bump their soak vs. melee attacks up to 13, turning what should be an exciting battle into a bore-fest, especially with having to get through three ranks of Adversary and defense ratings.

I can actually agree with that but I never underestimate the ability to PC's to slaughter even a dangerous opponent. While an undoubtedly powerful foe, without assistance and only having legs as mobility it will still die quite quickly if any player had even thought about min-maxing their combat abilities (and I've yet to GM for a party where there was not at the least a single player who did so). It might be that I design things a little bit too much based on my own experiences, idk. If you really want you could either cut down parry by a single rank (bring it on-par with the normal Imperial Royal Guard or remove the cortosis on the armor but I feel as if either those options would end in a foe that would be too squishy to be a real challenge to a knight-level party.

So here's the thing, is that something like this probably shouldn't be a serious threat when going solo against a group of Heroic/Knight Level PCs. Heck, even Inquisitors built using the F&D guidelines can get stomped on by a party of Heroic/Knight Level characters. A Royal Guardsman is themselves only a threat individually to an inexperienced party, and by around Knight Level the PCs should only be having serious difficultly when they're facing multiple Royal Guards.

As is, a PC with a heavy blaster rifle and a solid skill rating (Agility 3, Ranged: Heavy 3) at short range and having used Aim is likely going to chew this guy up and spit him out, cortosis armor or not. To say nothing of a PC with Move simply using that power to either drop something very big on the ISP or simply flick the guy away so that he can go be annoying somewhere else; one Strength upgrade and two Range upgrades will let a FR2 character simply relocate this guy anywhere at long range and effectively removing this adversary from the fight, all without needing to do a single point of damage.

The only thing the cortosis quality on the armor does is specifically say to those players with lightsaber-wielding characters "screw you and your fun, here's a major opponent that you pretty much can't hurt at all using what your character is supposed to be good at." Meanwhile, the PCs that explored other combat options (like Autofire or two-weapon fighting) are just going to have grand ol' time lighting this guy up as the cortosis quality to them is meaningless.

Very nice, I like it. Thanks

Also I'd use one of them as part of a group of specialists.