Baneguard

A baneguard is an animated skeleton, usually human, raised by priestly magic as a guardian and indistinguishable from a normal one until combat begins. The clergy of a tyrant god devised the spell; since that god's fall, priests of many evil and some neutral faiths have learned it.

Silent but intelligent and malicious, a baneguard acts on its own judgment. Once per turn it may blink as the wizard spell for as long as four rounds, but the effect must run unbroken, and after it stops the skeleton waits a full turn to use it again. Every third round it can loose a two-bolt magic missile, 1d4+1 per bolt, from its fingertips or any other bony extremity, at one or two targets within 60 feet.

It fights with any ordinary weapon, usually a sword or mace, or a bony fist for 1d6, and can use magical items that need neither a command word nor living flesh, so potions and ointments are useless to it. It is as vulnerable as any skeleton to holy water, fire, spells and edged blades, may retreat if orders permit, and turns as a wight.

Baneguards have no society and simply obey. Evil priests use them most, along with neutral ones who serve death gods and have bones to spare.

They do not eat, have no ecological role and no natural range; they are found wherever their makers station them.

A 6th-level necromantic priest spell: range touch, casting time 9, duration special, no save. It gives one inanimate skeleton, Medium or smaller, malicious intelligence, making a single baneguard per casting. The guardian acts the next round and attacks without special commands. Components are the priest's holy symbol plus no fewer than 20 drops of any true dragon's blood.

Some baneguards wear black, ghostly armor through which the bones show, with red flame burning in their eyes. These direguards have AC 6, see invisible things and turn as wraiths. Their spell, create direguard, is the same but 7th level, with a one-round casting time. Each is worth 1,200 XP.