The Guardian is a role who targets a player at Night in order to protect them from death. If that player is wolfed (and depending on the setup, targeted by Vigilantes or other killers), he/she will survive. However, the Guardian usually cannot protect themselves, and in most cases only defends against one kill (i.e if multiple kills are aimed at a Guarded player, the player will still die.)

This role is usually Human-aligned.

Variations

Not all setups will disallow self-protection – this allows the Guardian to circumstantially act as a Wolfsbane.

Some setups may have the Guardian stop all kills that would resolve on their target, or stop a specific number of kills.

Guardians may or may not be told that their protection was successful (the general tendency is for the latter.)

In some circumstances, successful protections may even be publicly announced by the host, either generally (as in "There was an attempt on another's life, but it failed") or specifically (as in "Someone tried to kill Mashi, but failed!") See Kill Flavor for more details.

It is not unheard of for Wolves and the like to have Guardians in games where they are under attack by other killing parties. If you are a wolf or other evil faction in a mystery game and your team has a Guard, it is usually a safe bet that you are facing another wolf team, or lots of killing power outside of the lynch.

The Incompetent Guardian is a False version of this role; told that it is a normal Guardian, its protections always fail.

Utility and Balancing

While often criticized for the rarity of successful protections, the basic premise of a Guardian is that of a "sword of Damocles"; the mere fact that a Guardian exists acts to deter wolves making the "obvious" kill, lest it get blocked and waste a Night's effort. This may allow strong players to stay in the game longer.

In practice, however, Guardians are most effective in the role of protecting other power roles; a claimed power role is protected by the hidden Guardian, ensuring that they help the Humans as long as possible. This arrangement focuses the game more on night actions, and is arguably more powerful without cardflipping, as without a Wolf Shaman or similar role, the wolves cannot determine for sure if they have killed the Guardian or not before going in for the kill.

When including a Guardian in a game, it is very important to check for broken combinations with other power roles; these can very quickly tilt a game unfairly against wolves. The most notorious of these is the Follow-The-Seer situation, in which it is known that a Seer and Guardian in the game and the Seer claims immediately to be protected by the Guardian for the rest of the game. Another broken combination is that of two Guardians, who can constantly protect each other and thus be immune to kills for the whole game. Of course, some of these can be "fixed" on the Wolf side, such as including a Wolf Revoker, or giving them a Juggernaut/Piercing kill.

As for wolf-aligned or other such Guards, they are slightly more useful simply because they have a smaller pool of potential. Be warned, however, that there can still be undesirable combinations with other roles. For example, in a Multiwolf game, if an investigative role targeted at one specific faction is revealed, the other faction can use their Guard to protect them, making things hell for the team that role is against.

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