Rance Quest:Playable Characters/Guards

Guard (ガード) Rance8Guard.png
They, just like Foot Soldiers in Sengoku Rance, specialize at guarding other allies by taking damage in their place using the "ally guard" skill (and improvisations of it). They can use weapons to attack the enemy too but for the most part their speciality is tanking.

Guards are significantly improved over their Sengoku counterparts. They do not lose Guard percentage when attacking or doing nothing, and they only lose percent when their guard triggers, meaning that if an enemy attacks your Guard directly, it will not cause him to lose percentage (unless it's a particularly crippling blow taking away about 50% of the guard's Max HP). They also automatically gain defense buff upon using ally guard which persists throughout the battle.

As for offense, they can wield most weapons fighters can, but can only achieve mastery in swords and spears. And since usually they're not the powerhouse type, swords, which both reduce accuracy and are melee range only, are less preferable than spears which eventually grant them ranged attacks, allowing them to both defend and attack (often with high accuracy) from back row, freeing up a forward slot in the process which you can use to field that harder hitting fighter or sparter.

As crucial as their role is for defense, you only get a maximum of 5 guard characters by default, so each of them, whether good or lame, is invaluable to you - you'd do well to keep them alive at all costs. And if you feel the shortage is too much, you can always make custom guard characters to bolster your defenses.

Kaloria Cricket (カロリア・クリケット)
How to get: Clear quest number #20「ランス城完成」 and then repeat it. She pops up at the very end of the event the second time.

Kaloria's notable skills are Needle Shower and Hardening. The former, a utility skill, has a 60% chance to stun all enemies, so giving her accuracy/stun-rate boosting items is helpful; daggers might be a good choice. And the latter, Hardening, makes it so she only takes one-fifth the damage. However, she won't be able to move for the remainder of the battle. It's a great skill, but Kaloria won't be able to raise her guard meter any more; so use it wisely. Otherwise, she's like other guards. You may want to forgo the standard guard skills such as Initial Guard and Shield Block for increasing the count of Needle Shower though. (Hardening is already maxed.)

Kaloria also does have a long-range, physical, fire attack. But then you may want to drop Needle Shower in this case, and switch to a high-damage weapon. Needle Shower seems more handy, but pick whichever you prefer. If you do decide to raise her offense, then focus only on 火炎放射; don't bother to learn any weapon knowledge or weapon attacks.

So basically upgrade her unique skills, and/or the standard guard skills. Try to find the right balance for yourself.

Starting with more attacks than other guards, Kaloria does well when added to your exploration team. Her 火炎放射 can be used on physically resistant enemies. Giving her some spear mastery will allow her to damage back row enemies that fighters can't reach right away. Hardening, meanwhile, can be of use in boss battles where there is a chance that your frontline can be wiped out faster than your Healers can manage (such as Quest 198). Stick her in the front with Hardening will keep the enemy from reaching your backrow, giving your Healer the chance to revive your frontline.

Placing points in the white skill おっぱい, will cause a different dialogue in her H quest (quest 185) as well as her H event at Rance castle. Otherwise, it has no combat use.

Kaloria has a variety of unique skills at her disposal. She has a Flamethrower attack that deals physical fire damage, Needle Shower that can stun the entire enemy party, and a Harden skill that makes her extremely resistant for the rest of the battle, but she becomes unusable for the battle as well. It's upto you whether you'll build her to be offense oriented, stun oriented or just a solid tank who can deal a bit of damage. That she can use all 6 slots from the beginning also helps reduce SP expenditure and give her lots of skills.

Level, Stats growth/boost:

* Initial stats

Initial non-unique skills: Unique Skills:

Kouhime / Oda Kou (香姫/織田 香)
How to get: Complete quest number #41「香姫参加」.

Kou may be built in two ways, and the most common solution is to make her a defender. In this case, it's heavily advised to maintain her Oda Armor during the early levels, since Kou needs extra protection to make up for her low stats. You can replace the Oda Armor once you find something better. However, her speed will greatly suffer until then. So what's necessary is Initial Guard, and March/Priority Seating. Afterward, it's good to upgrade her Tactician Mastery. If there are leftover points, 武器壊し is decent too. Don't bother with 盾反らし since it costs 6 points on Kou. Also, do not teach her any manual buffs in this build; she's too slow for the task. And don't bother trying to poison bosses with this build's poor speed. (Bosses now have a 50% chance to automatically cure abnormal statuses on their turn. Leave the poisoning task to Rangers, or Kou's next build.)

But another method is to remove the Oda Armor (as there are better armor than it, but it's a really high DEF armor for her lower levels), and have Kou forsake any defending duties. Instead, use her regained speed to take advantage of her unique weapon, and her manual buff skills. With the combination of Spear Mastery, Kou can now dedicate herself to poisoning bosses with her unique weapon, which has a 100% poisoning rate. Simultaneously, she can now freely cast 攻撃付与全体(+ATK), and 防御付与全体(+DEF). (Pep Talk is useful too when battling bosses who debuff your party.) This build essentially turns Kou into a tactician with the ability to poison enemies. < this one is better

The Oda Armor is only great during the lower levels. You can easily find a much better armor later on to maintain her DEF to an acceptable trade off for other bonuses and retain her movement speed.

Have her learn [抜け駆け] once to offset the speed penalty of Spear weapons. If you want more speed, rank it up accordingly to your preference.

武器壊し is a yellow skill that, at max rank give you 40% chance in weakening opponent's attack.

盾反らし is a yellow skill that, at max rank give you 40% chance to negate damage. However, it cost 6 skill points to learn it, where as Sachiko only need 2. (Recent patch has increased Sachiko's requirement to 4)

Due to her "underage" status, she receives a -20% penalty to all her stats and thus is weaker than other guards. However, she also doubles as a tactician with buffing capability, and can use a unique Poison Dango weapon that inflicts guaranteed poisoning on targets, which is of paramount importance in many difficult boss battles.

It's worth noting that the armor she comes with is extremely strong but also reduces speed by a whopping 15 points, so combined with her Poison Dango weapon (which is considered a spear and also decreases speed by 5) other characters will be taking 2-3 turns for every one of hers, so it should probably be removed unless you want to use her passives only.

Level, Stats growth/boost:

* Initial stats

★Stats reduced by Immature trait

Initial non-unique skills: Unique Skills:

Mouri Teru (毛利 てる)
How to get: Check all green star events in leftmost square in the quest "Majin Kaito"(quest number #71　「魔人カイト」), the last will be Teru, an event will happen. Complete the quest for her to join.

^Only one green star is necessary - the one before the leftmost, which blocks the road, it is near some stone.

Teru is essentially a Guard, but due to her weak magic defense growth it's really not advised to use as her one unless you can compensate with items or are up against only physical enemies.

Or, to take advantage of her Counter, use her as if she's a Fighter who can guard allies from time to time. Sort of like Leila in Sengoku Rance who doubled as a Warrior and a Footsoldier. Take note that her Counter will not activate when guarding allies and her attack growth is low compared to Fighter class. Stick to characters like Sachiko if you desire a pure defender.

If you find a Crystal Armor with a Growth attribute, stick it to Teru. At 1000%, her Magic defense should be on par or even the highest among your guards, though her Physical defense will take a little hit. A good trade off that makes her a respectable guard. The scary elder Mouri sister carries all her traits from Sengoku Rance - she has a counter skill which is otherwise exclusive to sparters, and while her physical defense is respectable, her magic defense is abysmal. Unfortunately, the fact that counter will not trigger unless directly targeted (i.e. hits taken due to ally guard don't trigger counter) makes her much less useful than she could have been.

Again, she's one of only 5 guards (excluding customs) that you'll ever get, so try to make the best of her. Giving her a ring or a Crystal Armor, preferably with growth/growth R, will help negate her magic vulnerability.

Level, Stats growth/boost:

* Initial stats

Initial non-unique skills: Unique Skills:

Rocky Bank (ロッキー・パンク)
How to get: After beating quest #17「土壌汚染をなんとか」 once, try it a second time. There will be a new green exclamation mark event to the left of the map. Trigger it, then complete the quest. Rocky will join you.

Rocky is a Guard without any quirks. He doesn't have Sachiko's attack penalty, Kou's speed issue, or Teru's paper-thin resistance. However, he doesn't have Kaloria's unique skills either. He may be boring, but it's his good point.

However, to get extensive use out of him, his level cap must by raised at the shop in Quest #64. Visiting the place after leveling him fully will increase his level cap by 5 each time, and will stop after he reaches Level 59. If you want a Guard for Quest #135, then simply increase his level cap only once; he'll be perfectly at Level 24 then.

For skills, give him the standard Guard skills such as Initial Guard, Shield Block, or Strengthen HP.

His level cap can be raised by +5 several times by triggering a green event near the southeast corner of second area (shop with no random encounters) of #64 and any other quest which gives you access to this area (such as #93) while he's at max level. '''WARNING: This will cause the quest to fail immediately so when you want to raise Rocky's level cap, deliberately head towards this point only. '''

Still probably the most generic of guards, but given how few of them you get (excluding custom characters), you'll want to make use of him.

Level, Stats growth/boost:

* Initial stats

Initial non-unique skills: Unique Skills: None

Sachiko Centers (サチコ・センターズ)
How to get: Initial character.

Recommend skill :Initial Guard(初期ガード)--16SP

Shield Deflection(盾反らし)--14SP

Persevere (踏ん張り) (Lv 25)--2SP which help keep her alive from a fatal hit

Compulsory Education (義務教育)--3SP to ★★ as it's need for quest #29 to boost her Recovery skill to next rank. This recommended setup will use 35SP.

Build memo : only guard with 20% hp recover when gain turn (5% before quest 29;10% before quest 156). Her defense and recovery will be showing off if you put her in action with initial guard, since her speed is not quite fast enough to gain turn before some monsters. And do not forget to max the yellow skill, damage decrease and activate it in her activate skill. Due to her stat design, Sachiko will always have half the attack strength of other Guards. So it's not recommended to give her offensive skills under such penalty. Upgrading her HP is wise too, and especially so because of her regeneration ability.

Optional skills (if you have leftover points) are resistances to--in order of priority--lightning, fire, and darkness. Weapon Breaker (武器壊し) is handy too, but doesn't activate if Shield Block does first. Her weak point is the fact Hiroshi-kun cannot be removed.

NOTE!!! H'ing her in Rance's Palace will give you the same HCG with a different background.

It is worth considering raising her Stun Resistance (as with all guards) via M items, as Stun status allows enemy attacks to get past your guard's defense. More so with Sachiko, as she cannot buff the stat with an accessory due to Hiroshi-kun

If investing in weapon mastery for a Guard, spears may be more feasible than swords, due to penalty to accuracy of swords and the fact that not all swords are available to Guards. A couple of stars should be sufficient (without investing in spear attack red skills), giving your guard flexibility to strike from the backrow, and allow another frontline fighter or a mace-wielding Healer to join the fray. Later on, when attacks start to miss a lot upgrade to 3 stars or boost accuracy in some other way.

Fixed Equipment:

Hiroshi-kun (+20 resistance, -30 evasion, +5 defense), can be upgraded to Hiroshi-kun Kai that gives +100 defense instead of 5 by quest #156

Level, Stats growth/boost:

* Initial stats

★Actual stats due to Hiroshi-kun item

Initial non-unique skills: Unique Skills: