Did your fantasy setting ever had a special-ops operator-equivalent?

The only equivalent is the Iron Knight. In reality its an order of knights who wear heavy black armor and are supposedly all the same guy. As such, the Iron Knight(s) has a place in all of the courts of the land and have done pretty much EVERYTHING.

This does not account for the lack of a chain of command in tactical operations.

The Crown gives orders but who develops, plans and executes those orders directly? Who is held responsible for success or failure?

Is that a legit thing? Got a sauce where I can read more about it?

BLUE STRIPES

Just some historical armies you may find interesting:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praetorian_Guard
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholae_Palatinae
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Guard_(Napoleon_I)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortals_(Persian_Empire)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushtigban
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamluk#Organization
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprichnik
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_warfare#Warrior_societies
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahomey_Amazons
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byeolmuban
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fauj-i-Khas

because of the way the kingdom is run in this setting a lot of lords have their own special forces for themselves rangers, elite soldiers, religious order, magic users its all over the place.

There's a nasty area of taiga called the Five Corners, so called because it's near the territory of four other, frequently hostile, races. The human lord in charge of defending this borderland commands an ancient order of elite warriors called the Forty-Two Teeth. Each wears an enchanted wolf's tooth on a chain, all of them together forming a complete set. Their specialty is kidnapping hostages that their lord can hold onto to ensure peace.

They are called adventurers.

When I made a bronze/Iron Age fantasy setting I wrote the "Pegasus Guard", the personal bodyguard to the Elven royal family. Most elven warriors are good, stronger than they look and all that, but these guys were like the elf version of Space Marines. They were a foot or two taller than most elves (who wee themselves about 6 feet on average), they were a bunch of swole motherfuckers who could swing their great swords with sufficient force to send even dwarven heavy infantry flying several metres in the air, and they did this while dressed in full plate with wings like the hussars, and of course, they rode Pegasi.
The only drawback was there was only about 20 of them in the world, and it was hinted to the players that there guys were essentially just the souls of long-dead elven heroes trapped inside their armour since nobody ever sa them without said armour, and the players argued a fair bit over whether they were just fantasy Wraith Guard or if they were magically enhanced normal elves.

In my setting there's quite a bunch of spec ops groups, usually are bands of nobleman that come from a house that has a long tradition of doing something.

A group is called the "Angel Guard":
They are usually veteran knights or more generally very good raiders.
Their regalia are what characterizes them mostly:
Tall winged helmets and a wing-like cloak.
Originally given their name for the fact that they acted as messengers, they later were instituted as a breakthrough cavalry unit.
They can be usually be found at the wings and in the middle of the Empire's army, where they first steamroll on the enemy infantry alongside heavy cavalry, then group up and start acting as messengers, using their superior rider capabilities to quickly relay messages throughout the battlefield.

The Empire's Hand is a group of knight-paladins that essentially work like the SS: the Emperor wills it, they make it happen
Knights in shining armour, they are equipped with the best weapons the Empire has to offer and are the shining example of the Imperial Law, in fact, they also like Judge Dredd when they are not on an official mission for the Emperor, acting as judge, jury and executioner.

On the other... "hand" the Empire's Hands are too scenic to prevent any serious activity in the underground, as in fact they act both like police and scarecrow to prevent petty criminals to do anything for fear of them.

Here is where the Black Hands come into play.
While the official Hand is a human,noble-only group, the Black Hand counts in mixed races, as it needs the very best, regardless of the race, so you may find a dwarven officer accompanied by a dark elf sharpshooter and a human ranger and an elven sorcerer.
They are the Emperor's go to when needing to deal with fantasy Mafia, and also act like the nemesis of the PCs in case they stray from the path of righteousness.

I have Silverknights, which are magic-jet-winged, golem-suited magic-rail-gun/harpoon-gun wielding dragoons with glowing metal halos hovering around their helmets.
They do jobs for the Empire in exchange for legal protection when they want to act on their own.
They just come out of nowhere in flights of 5 and fuck your entire month up, focusing on spellcasters with their 3d6+Str rail/harpoon guns, hooking them and preventing casting; if the Silverknights fail to cause a character-death I award the players extra experience as if they had fought twice.

I bet the ruler of your empire is some sort of muscle mage that fights creating planes of existence of swords on fire and just throws portals to it to his foes.

And the BBEG is some anime level bullshit

That, or you just created this bullcrap unit to mess with your players that have an all caster party

They're inspired by the Mass Produced Eva Series.

The ruler is the young princess that fought a civil war against her older brother for control of the crown. The artificer made the armor put her soul inside an animated suit of Silverwings armor to stay immortal unless it is sundered. Same difference as your thing, though.

And the BBEG is no one less than The King in Yellow himself, so also yes.

And it's really just a general-purpose party-killing engine because they don't have to focus the caster first. They could easily just say Fuck that Rogue and tow him up into the sky with their harpoon guns. I'm writing a bretty gool setting.

Nice
Those EVA were spooky as fuck the first time I saw them.
At least your pcs are lucky to know that they can bait these knight's attacks by having the caster cast

>Mass Produced Eva Series

What the hell exactly were they anyway?

Order of Swords.
(For a D&D 3.5 E6 game)

Order of Swords was established to gather most unkillable people in the Ponon kingdom so that they always will be on hand when you need to fight some nasty monsters.

Reality of E6 world is such that one demon that was able to claw his path into the world can easily kill everyone in the average sized town. One vampire can strike fear in the hearts of hundreds of people while never even being seen. And so on.

To fight such creatures you need people who simply refuse to die. The most general guideline for becoming a member of the order is to survive a fight with some monster or, at least, ten more or less normal opponents. Mortality rate for new members is still around 90-95% in the first year.

Knights of the Order basically do witcher's work but without mutations and other special advantages. Though they of course can be wizards, rangers, and other D&D classes.

Not used it an a game, but as a setting detail I like having dwarf rangers as operators types.

Expert climbers - and often cavers - to a dwarf, they act as scouts and skirmishers for a clan or fortress. Need someone to climb over a mountain or hunt in abandoned tunnels? These are your dwarves.

They're well equipped with axes, daggers (throwing and regular), climbing and often tunnelling equipment, and more rope than you'd expect. They also often also have lockpicks, garrotes, and crossbows, and may have mechanical devices like small pulleys and grapnel launchers. Depending on the general tech/magic level, small explosives and various alchemical and mundane chemical concoctions are commonly carried as well. Sometimes poisons are used, by the less scrupulous sorts.
They eschew the common heavy armour dwarves usually wear in favour of mobility, often not having anything more than a few plates (knee pads, toe caps, codpiece) and brigandine or a jack of plates, though their clothing has more pockets than you'd think possible.
One of their most important traits as scouts is that they don't stop - that dwarf constitution is put towards insane endurance. Their flasks more often have strong coffee than alcohol, and if there's alchemy in the setting for it, they'll have help there too.

They tend not to be particularly well-liked, though they may be respected - in clannish and close-knit dwarf society (as necessitated by the confines of holds and fortresses) these guys tend to be loners and outsiders - even their young dwarves tend to be as dour and grumpy as a greybeard, though there are of course exceptions.
Depending on the particular society in question they may also be looked down upon for dishonourable methods of warfare.
If a dwarven kingdom has well-guarded and fortified borders then the rangers tend to be particularly low in the pecking order, where dwarf communities with more space and fluid borders (especially hill dwarves) tend to like them more.

Pale Dragoons: elven cavalrymen armed with flintlock pistols -and carbines, mounted on unicorns that are equally as dangerous in close combat as their riders' sabres.

Imperial Grenadiers: orc elite infantry units, made up of the most strongest and daring orcs in service of the Jade Empire, armed with grenades, fusils and hatchets for close combat.

Drow Assassins: drow women who have watched a few Naruto episodes too many and have gone full ninja(retard). Armed with smokebombs, poisoned sickles and shurikens folded a thousand times, these drows are remarkable in the sense that they kill almost instantly, rather than drag their helpless victims into their underground torture(sex)dungeons.

Nixra Gengas: Guerillas to the core, these nixras (race of not-tiefling horned humanoids) live up to their monicker of ''genga'', meaning ''goblin'' or ''fiend'': armed with warbows and an assortment of terrifying melee weapons from claymores to poleaxes, these devils specialize in psychological warfare. Night raids, sabotage, terror tactics, ambushes, hit-and-run attacks and the like are their opus moderandi, much of their influence on enemy morale stems from their reputation as maneaters.

Raging Cocks: Human knights flying to battle mounted on trained and armored cockatrices, they're nigh unstoppable once locked in battle, and the riders are more there just to keep the hyper-aggressive feathered fiends from attacking their own troops than anything else. Some dare say that riding one of these things is a punishment intented for knights who are found lacking in courage but so far no one has provided any proofs on this.

EVAs produced with the usual super sekrit method, only that they are also programmed to do automatically thing sand thus have no need for a pilot.
Think UAVs

My setting runs the whole gamut.

>Humans
Come in illuminati fashion, controlling spread of information, riling up crowds when needed and planting spies/puppets and more standard temple knight fashion, who come in, come through, come out. There are also black knights picked from most skillful criminals, given curse that kills them and devours their soul the instant they disobey.
>Elves
Elven kingdoms are generally located on floating islands, so they employ wyvern-riding strike teams, bringing highly incendiary freedom to whatever rustles their jimmies. To say nothing on their inter-court intrigues, which means that if even just two elves are in the same room there's at least ten secret societies' interests beneath the situation.
>Dwarves
The entire species are connected to what essentially is an eldritch horror embodying the Truth. So, they always act in the open and always work thoroughly. Their idea of diplomatic assassination is a wave of very angry midgets rolling to the front porch of whatever offended them and leaving it a sand-and-blood-pancake.
>Beastfolk
The oungest of races, created by dragons out of pure concentrated butthurt at the other races and told to ruin their collective day by any means possible. Subsequently flipped dragons off and went to create their own kingdom. Now they use their enhanced physical abilities to either fend off world-ending threats (for a price) or for plain mercenary work.
...Imagine Outer Heaven, but with catgirls/guys.

The MP Evas had Kaworu dummy plugs.

>Imagine Outer Heaven, but with catgirls/guys

Brings me back memories about the CATastrophy-setting

No, because there's nothing to be told. There's no TV or internet to read the news. .

>his setting doesn't have these

That's literally what adventurers are for.

I had this setting for d&d 4e where dwarves were the resident evil empire. They had special killteams, typically led by a duergar(in this setting, duergar weren't a separate race, but instead a rare birth that was seen as a gift by the gods). But these guys were crucial in the pacification of the dragonborn's jungles.

>But these guys were crucial in the pacification of the dragonborn's jungles.
Tell me more

Halfling Deathslingers.

Like regular Halflings, but with slings.

Sort of a paramilitary group of non-magical (or at least non-traditional magic) mage hunters, they just go by skill and experience to combat magical targets since magic usage is fairly strictly regulated so these guys can cheat and get away with doing some pretty shady shit. Just to be sure, they always have someone on hand who has a very good understanding of the laws of different regions, and accopanying legal books to check.

>"Ok guys, we're going into this city state. The following magic types are banned, the following equipment are legally considered cruel or unusual, and the following statues are in place against the use of these substances. Oh and here's a list of loopholes and grey areas, note the special case for breaking and entering."

Are any of them called David, or derivatives of David?

Well I was in a campaign where the party were members of the setting equivalent to the FBI.

We spent half the game battling the local mafia until our NPC boss told us to drop it and deal with some uninteresting internal issue of the local religion.

Sling bullets can be as deadly as arrows. Assuming low levels, if your players underestimate these guys, it might be their last mistake.

The MP Evas were the Evas that Seele was building in secret to bring down Nerv's Evas after the last Angel was killed. They used the brainwaves and synch patterns of Kaworu to run dummy plugs, so they didn't require pilots, and they had S2 Organs so they didn't need umbilical cables.

more like Smoking Crack troops amiright

No, that's not an appropriate Halfling name, you Bilbo.

Slings are gimped in D&D for reasons of EGG, but I fixed that by making them do 1d6 damage as is appropriate. Combined with a 3-level prestige class designed to make slings as deadly as longbows, these CR 5-8 Halflings were a constant nemesis for the group.

It's not much worse than Sam

The city guards. All of my towns and cities have special-response guard teams that show up in droves and have (setting-appropriate) gear, training, and co-ordination comparable with FBI HRT operators.

I hate my players sometimes.

My setting has a Baltic-styled city-state that relies primarily on trade. They maintain an elite mercenary unit called the Amber Guard who conduct police work, commerce raiding, caravan escort and nighttime coastal raids on enemy cities.

My !Not Roman Empire has the Arcani, fighter/rouge combo fighters who are bruisers in melee, stealthy as all hell and able to track. I guess they count as Spec Ops

The Hunter's Guild runs a contest where the hunter to slay the most dangerous mark of the year gets free shit for the whole coming year. At first hunters were just exeptional commoners going after their local threats and the winners, most of them mangled and/or crippled, would outright retire and set up some shop with their allocades. But after some decades the hunt has become a profession with academies and corporations dedicated to seeking and training talented hunters.

Are their surgeons called the Amber Lamps?

No.

But another city-state has a mercenary group called the Amber Lances.

Based Roche

Get out, Carlos.

God you are autistic as fuck.

Look up The Trust of Zilargo from the Eberron setting. Terrifying little bastards.

>user points out lack of a cohesive command structure
>y-you guys are so autistic
You are a retard for not putting enough thought into your special snowflake OC donutsteel guard unit.

>Circles of Teleportation could also allow for rapid troop deployment, sabotage, infiltration, etc.

Fuck I need to use this.

The party's next mission, get behind enemy lines and set up a teleportation circle so the army can flank. Get hype.

Probably the winged celestials that ride into battle on allosauruses, armed with sword, full plate armor, and muskets.

I've always liked the idea of mountaineering dwarves.

Okay, but does the party have a chance to get on even footing with them? Seems like a waste to make such high-magic sort of stuff and not let the players in on it.

Since the thread is still up I'll add a little more.
They're totalitarian thought-police inquisitor types. Fanatically loyal (and tested by all sorts of psychic bullshit to prove it). If one needs a bodyguard, they hand pick one from the local cavalry regiment. If they need a translation team, they head to a (state-run) university and order the best scholars in the region to help them.

They're not universally effective, and some of the dumber ones tend to bite off more than they can chew. It's also a VERY antiquated system, because Pelagia treat patriotism and tradition like holy scripture. All of the General ranks are technically "acting generals" because a Crown representitive might choose to assume command at any point, weird shit like that.

>I figured I'd make them as foils to the party. Wandering, high-level types with bizarre morality, a portfolio of semi-related skills, a stack of magic items and not really any issue with burning a town of civilians to further some other agenda.

I'm honestly surprised I don't see this in fantasy more often.

My urban fantasy setting has a "fire brigade" that consists of a bunch of spellcasters and water/fire genasi casting "control flames" and "create water".

There's also necromantic law enforcement, who use zombies to restrain violent offenders. Because really, what improvised tavern-brawl weapons can really HURT a zombie?
The other law enforcement group just flenses you where you stand and lets the necromancers clean up your bones. They're less 'law enforcement' and more 'sword of damocles' for anyone who causes too much trouble.

in The Dark Eye there's the Imperial Garethian Information Agency (Gareth = capital) which does pretty much what you'd expect.

Adventurers.

Or Death Knights.

If you mean extremely quick deployment squads, no.

If you mean small forces that do odd jobs like flying in gryphons at the aqueduct to interrupt the water to the besieged, as well seek and draft prophets and seers into the defense of the empire, yes.

Sanctioned Adventurer Companies, paying taxes through their unique form of corveé, questing for the good of senate, crown and all else.

The last group was one of those.

Aramon has a number of Man At Arms paid directly by the king and who are usually minor nobles or commonborn in origin, but not recruited among the big players of the Game. This guys are called simply the king's men, and since they lack a proper name, at least known to the general population. A common misconception is that the King's Men only protect the royal palace and the figure of the king, as well as his family, as warriors and knights. But actual knight's of the King's Men are a small portion of their whole effective. They are closer to the KGB or a political Inquisition, though more low-key. They actively investigate, infiltrate other powerful families and report back to the king, have informants in every town of note and a few minor villages who keep their ears open and secretly inform the King's Men of any rebellion, threat or plot, as well as keep them updated in interesting events they might otherwise miss. Without fast means of communications, that intel is all sent to a small Prision in a rocky island, which works as the King's Men center of command, though most people believe it to simply be a prison to political prisioners. it's both.

The King's men have spies, rogues and proper fighting men to act as bodyguards and shock troops. But what fits best in OP's question is the commandos. In times of war or when things might get heated, the king's men uses experienced wilderness specialists with military training to wreak havoc on the enemy infrastructure and keep them busy. Burning food depots, inciting peasants to rebel, sapping bridges, capturing enemy figure heads and even doing assassinations. The King's Men don't really exist in any way as an organization formally stablished, but the Head Warden of the Hagsmouth Prison is usually the 'leader' of the organization, though he he has no authority over the portion of the King's Man that serve directly under the Captain of the Royal Bodyguards. The King himself almost never even hear about what his men do.

I based one off the crusaders of Zakarum from Diablo3

>The Nameless Order

only 300 can exist at a time, and when one man dies another picks up his gear and carries on his legacy

Their as close to paladins as you can get in the setting, but instead of serving a god they just ruthlessly hunt down evil

Aside from that their only big standpoint is that they don't really fall under any jurisdiction or law, if one of em declares something evil, then it's evil and killed. Kings n leaders don't get much sway over em

Why would the powers that be tolerate it? I mean, its a army of 300 elite fighters who can at any point turn around and slay someone / break something on a whim without the constraints of an organized religion to direct them. It's like 300 loose canons

In a high fantasy setting I'm currently running the king specifically keeps 'agents' to perform clandestine operations around his nation. Honestly they're more like the SS mixed with special-forces skills rather than a crack team, but the point is that they're high specialized, stealthy, and can hit hard and get out. If they were put into frontline sustained combat, they wouldn't last much longer than anyone else just by virtue of the entropy of war. However, being used to perform assassinations, infiltrate communities, perform ambushes, and similar tasks is what they do well. With magic being fairly accessible in this setting, the agents use various destructive and stealth magics, as well as being experts at stealth and blade weapons. They're highly trained and very strong, but not undefeatable by any means. All it takes is the tactics to counter them.

Basically before the countries organized, a massive near world ending calamity occurred that the original 300 stepped forward to face and eventually stop. So now their respected as a sort of figurehead

Plus they follow some pretty strict self doctrines and rarely if ever misjudge an "evildoer" though that doesn't mean countries don't get pissy with em now and again

When that happens they usually just proclaim that area moot from their protection and leave it be, but only if it ever escalates to that point, which tends to be rare

It's kinda like the grey wardens or witchers, but with less monster blood pumping through their veins