Villager Guards
by lullaby
Villager Guards gives some villagers in a settlement a fighting role, so they defend the village instead of only trading.
What it does
Guards defend villagers. Villages spawn two kinds of guard, archers and swordsmen, and both pick up weapons, armor and totems. A fletcher villager that turns into an archer drops its bow when it dies, and a weaponsmith villager that turns into a swordsman drops an iron sword. Some villagers become guards naturally and lose their trades, so the change is worth noting for a settlement with an active economy.
Server owners can control the conversion without editing the jar. The mod ships a datapack that randomly converts villagers into guards, and it can be added to a world that has already been created. Two tags let a datapack exclude a villager from natural conversion or stop a guard from attacking a given entity, so owners can tune which entities are protected.
Only the server has to run Villager Guards; players may leave it out, and the server can run it alone. Files are published for Fabric, Forge, NeoForge and Quilt, and the latest build is 1.2.0+mod for 26.3, released 2026-10-07. Builds cover 1.21 – 26.3, and the mod is open source under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later.
Key features
Archer and swordsman guards
Guards appear in villages as archers or swordsmen and defend the villagers around them.
Weapon drops from converted villagers
A converted fletcher drops a bow and a converted weaponsmith drops an iron sword when it dies.
Datapack-driven conversion
A bundled datapack converts villagers to guards at random and can be added to an existing world.
Protection tags
A natural spawn tag keeps a villager from converting, and a target bypass tag stops guards from attacking chosen entities.
Gallery
Compatibility
Latest build for each game version and loader.
26.x5 of 5 versions with builds
1.21.x12 of 12 versions with builds
Only full game releases are shown. This mod publishes no snapshot builds.
How it compares
Guard Villagers (Fabric/Quilt) is client and server, is released under the MIT License, and is published only for 1.21.1 on Fabric. Knightllager is client and server, open source under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 only, and covers 1.21.1 on Fabric. More Villagers: Re-employed runs client and server, uses a custom license, and covers 1.21.1 – 26.3 on Fabric, NeoForge and Quilt. Villager Villager Guards is server required with client optional, so the two sides are not the same.
| Mod | Loaders | Game versions | Environment | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Villager Guards | Fabric, Forge, NeoForge and Quilt | 1.21 – 26.3 | Server required, client optional | 2026-10-07 |
| Guard Villagers (Fabric/Quilt) [1.21.1] | Fabric | 1.21.1 | Client and server | 2025-09-07 |
| Knightllager | Fabric | 1.21.1 | Client and server | 2026-10-11 |
| More Villagers: Re-employed | Fabric, NeoForge and Quilt | 1.21.1 – 26.3 | Client and server | 2026-09-28 |
Questions
Does Villager Guards need to be installed on the client?
Can Villager Guards be added to an existing world?
Which loaders does Villager Guards support?
In the catalog
Villager Guards is one of 11,058 Mobs mods on ModsFinder, and one of 5,189 Mobs mods for Fabric. 8,071 mods support Minecraft 26.3.
More from lullaby
Similar mods
What the author says
Now guards will appear in the villages, there are two types, archers and swordsmen, they can pick up weapons, armors and totems! You can turn an fletcher villager into an archer by dropping a bow at him and turn a weaponsmith villager into a swordman by dropping a iron sword at him.
Official listing
- Modrinth page
- modrinth.com/mod/villager-guards
- Owner
- lullaby
- Published
- 2025-01-30
- Updated on Modrinth
- 2026-10-07
- Facts verified
- 2026-10-15