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Probably a good idea.

1 (16.7%)

Not really necessary.

2 (33.3%)

I don't play Berserker so I don't really have an opinion.

3 (50%)

Total Members Voted: 6

[Smoke Mirrors]

Welcome to Fate/Mechanics Test, which is a test of a system I’ve created for running games based on the Fate series, specifically for servants. I created this system with the intent to run a game called Fate/Lost Record, but first I need to see how it works. The system is built for players to play as servants without masters, as experience with various Fate games has made it clear players don’t want to play masters, and is currently focussed on the 7 normal classes, though both masters and extra classes could be adapted in with further work. I intend to run some tests of PVP, PVE, group combat, combat against bosses, exploration, role play, and other tests that may appear to be necessary. Please, feel free to try out various things. You can design servants you would want to play in the actual game, ones you are curious about but wouldn’t normally play, or simply create servants to mess around with system mechanics, in order to see what the limits are.

The main points of a servant sheet are the Origin, True Name, Class, Traits, Mana, Allignment Parameters, Class Skills, Personal Skills, and Noble Phantasm. For Casters, there are also Spells.

For Origin, True Name, Class, and Alignment, see the sheet format.

Traits
Traits are various identifying factors of a servant, such as gender, nationality, being a member of a specific group, specific ages, if they are human or not,if they have dragon blood, ect. A list of example traits can be found here.

Mana
Mana is a combination of MP and HP. When you are attacked, mana is used up to recover your injuries, and when mana runs out, you begin sustaining injuries. Mana is also used to activate noble phantasms or spells, for casters. The amount of mana you have depends on your mana parameter. You recover 10 mana per action when not in combat.
A: 100
B: 80
C: 60
D: 40
E: 20

Parameters and Class skills can be in various ranks, from E-A, with Parameters being at Minimum E, unless allowed otherwise. Class skills can be reduced to the level of no longer being present. You have 22 points to buy parameters and class skills, with basic levels for class specific class skills given based on class, which can be reduced to increase your total points.

Parameters
You succeed at a roll that falls under a specific parameter if you roll under the number of your parameter. If you succeed, you can roll a second die, and if you roll under your parameter - your first roll, you perform a critical success.

Strength: Used for rolls related to physical power
Endurance: Used for rolls related to constitution and how much physical effort you can expend without tiring.
Agility: Used for rolls related to speedy movement, evasion, and accuracy.
Mana: Used for rolls related to spells and magic resistance. Also determines how much mana you have.
Luck: Used to determine miscellaneous rolls.

Rank	-	Flat	+	++
A	5	10	15	20
B	4	8	12	16
C	3	6	9	12
D	2	4	6	8
E	1	2	3	4

While E is the minimum rank for a parameter, it is still considered to be worth 1 point. For clarity's sake, here is the list of how many points each parameter rank costs.
A: 5
B: 4
C: 3
D: 2
E: 1

Class Skills
The effects of class skills by rank are listed on the following table. Below them is the starting level of each skill based on your class. You can take class skills that are not specifically listed for your class. A skill can boost your parameters more than a skill of that level would normally if it is made more specific. Riding (Horseback) C will provide a greater bonus than Riding C, but only activate when on horseback rather than on any mount.

Skill	E	D	C	B	A
Magic Resistance	+1 to your roll under number for Mana when rolling to resist Debuffs or Spells	+2 to your roll under number for Mana when rolling to resist Debuffs or Spells	+3 to your roll under number for Mana when rolling to resist Debuffs or Spells	+4 to your roll under number for Mana when rolling to resist Debuffs or Spells	+5 to your roll under number for Mana when rolling to resist Debuffs or Spells
Independent Action	+1 to your roll under number for Endurance when rolling to resist damage.	+2 to your roll under number for Endurance when rolling to resist damage.	+3 to your roll under number for Endurance when rolling to resist damage.	+4 to your roll under number for Endurance when rolling to resist damage.	+5 to your roll under number for Endurance when rolling to resist damage.
Battle Continuation	The first time in each combat your mana reaches 0, gain 5 mana.	The first time in each combat your mana reaches 0, gain 10 mana.	The first time in each combat your mana reaches 0, gain 15 mana.	The first time in each combat your mana reaches 0, gain 20 mana.	The first time in each combat your mana reaches 0, gain 25 mana.
Riding	+1 for your roll under number for Agility when controlling a vehicle	+2 for your roll under number for Agility when controlling a vehicle	+3 for your roll under number for Agility when controlling a vehicle	+4 for your roll under number for Agility when controlling a vehicle	+5 for your roll under number for Agility when controlling a vehicle
Presence Concealment	+1 for your roll under number for Agility when rolling to evade an attack. +4 for your roll under number for Luck when rolling to evade detection. When in direct combat, - to Strength and Endurance.	+2 for your roll under number for Agility when rolling to evade an attack. +5 for your roll under number for Luck when rolling to evade detection. When in direct combat, - to Strength and Endurance.	+3 for your roll under number for Agility when rolling to evade an attack. +6 for your roll under number for Luck when rolling to evade detection. When in direct combat, - to Strength and Endurance.	+4 for your roll under number for Agility when rolling to evade an attack. +7 for your roll under number for Luck when rolling to evade detection. When in direct combat, - to Strength and Endurance.	+5 for your roll under number for Agility when rolling to evade an attack. +8 for your roll under number for Luck when rolling to evade detection. When in direct combat, - to Strength and Endurance.
Item Construction	+1 for your roll under number for Mana when rolling to cast a spell.	+2 for your roll under number for Mana when rolling to cast a spell.	+3 for your roll under number for Mana when rolling to cast a spell.	+4 for your roll under number for Mana when rolling to cast a spell.	+5 for your roll under number for Mana when rolling to cast a spell.
Territory Creation	When not in combat, you can declare one non hostile area. When in that area, you gain 5 mana every action.	When not in combat, you can declare one non hostile area. When in that area, you gain 10 mana every action.	When not in combat, you can declare one non hostile area. When in that area, you gain 15 mana every action.	When not in combat, you can declare one non hostile area. When in that area, you gain 20 mana every action.	When not in combat, you can declare one non hostile area. When in that area, you gain 25 mana every action.
Madness Enhancement	+4 to your roll under number for Strength, Endurance, and Agility. -4 to your roll under number for Mana and Luck. +20 to your mana. +10 to mana costs.	+5 to your roll under number for Strength, Endurance, and Agility. -5 to your roll under number for Mana and Luck. +25 to your mana. +15 to mana costs.	+6 to your roll under number for Strength, Endurance, and Agility. -6 to your roll under number for Mana and Luck. +30 to your mana. +20 to mana costs.	+7 to your roll under number for Strength, Endurance, and Agility. -7 to your roll under number for Mana and Luck. +35 to your mana. +25 to mana costs.	+8 to your roll under number for Strength, Endurance, and Agility. -8 to your roll under number for Mana and Luck. +40 to your mana. +30 to mana costs.

Saber: Magic resist (C), Riding (D)
Archer: Magic resist (D), independent action (C)
Lancer: Magic resist (D), battle continuation (C)
Rider: Magic Resist (D), Riding (C)
Assassin: Presence Concealment (D)
Caster: Item creation (C), Territory creation (D)
Berserker: Madness enhancement (C)

Divinity is also listed in the same section as Class skills, but is not decided by the point buy system, but rather based on the true name of your servant.

Rank	Requirement	Effect
A	Avatars of a god or demigods who became deities after death	+25 Damage
B	Pseudo servants of gods, demigods who are very involved with their parents, and Pre-Ptolemaic Pharaohs	+20 Damage
C	Demigods who are distant from their parent, children of minor gods, figures heavily related to Jesus, and fallen deities.	+15 Damage
D	Descendants of gods, people who will achieve divinity in the future, children of a god and a monster, figures distantly related with holy figures, and Ptolemaic Pharaohs.	+10 Damage
E	Those with unrecognized or intentionally reduced divinity	+5 Damage

Personal Skills

Personal Skills act as passive, situational boosts to abilities and parameters. They are defined by the player, though balanced by the GM. Personal skills provide an advancement to your parameters in certain situations, such as an increase to strength when fighting enemies of a certain type, or increased agility in a certain terrain. You have 3 personal skills. A skill can boost your parameters more than a skill of that level would normally if it is made more specific. See the example sheets for examples.

Noble Phantasm
For simplicity, all players will have 1 active noble phantasm. Noble phantasm rank is independent of the point buy system. Your noble phantasm is activated by paying mana. Higher ranking noble phantasms are able to have more effects or do more damage, but also cost more mana to use. Noble phantasms are capable of doing a variety of things, such as buffing allies, debuffing enemies, summoning mounts or objects, etc. Something summoned by a noble phantasm will have a mana total acting as HP. This total must be 20 less than the cost of the NP, but further effects can be used to increase the total.

Rank	Cost	Bonuses
A	50	+4 Effects or +80 Damage
B	40	+3 Effects or +60 Damage
C	30	+2 Effects or +40 Damage
D	20	+1 Effects or +20 Damage
E	10	1 effect or deal 20 damage

Spells
Spells are essentially minor noble phantasms for Caster class servants. Spells may perform up to 2 effects and use mana to activate. The roll for a spell’s successful activation uses a servant’s Mana stat.

Rolling
Rolls use a roll under system. After you roll, you can roll a second time using your original roll under number minus your first roll as your new roll under number. If your second roll is also a success, you have rolled a critical success. In contested rolls, whoever rolls the most successes wins. If both parties roll an equal number of successes, the party with the higher remainder succeeds.
IMPORTANT: A huge thanks to Takosher. No matter how much of an insane mess this ends up being when players start to test the system, it would not have gotten far enough to have players mess around with it without your help.

[Smoke Mirrors]

Example Sheets and Sheet Format
You may use example sheets for testing.

Spoiler: Saber (click to show/hide)

Rama

Spoiler: Archer (click to show/hide)

William Tell

Spoiler: Lancer (click to show/hide)

Leonidas
Ereshkigal

Spoiler: Rider (click to show/hide)

Achilles

Spoiler: Assassin (click to show/hide)

Hassan of the Cursed Arm

Spoiler: Caster (click to show/hide)

Asclepius
Medea
William Shakespeare

Spoiler: Berserker (click to show/hide)

Frankenstein
Tamamo Cat
Asterios

Spoiler: Sheet Format (click to show/hide)

Origin (Player): [The story the servant comes from as well as the player they belong to]
Name: [The servant’s name, feel free to tack on a title as well if you like]
Class:  [Pick one of the 7 main classes. If you want to play an extra class, you can talk to me, but it’s unlikely without good justification]
Alignment: [D&D alignment]
Mana: [Decided by your servant’s Mana parameter. See OP for details.]
Traits: [See OP]

Appearance: [Describe what your servant looks like with enough detail for others to describe them when they’re encountered in the RP]

Parameters:
Strength: [A servant’s physical power ranking. Used for rolls related to physical power]
Endurance: [How durable a servant is. Used for rolls related to constitution and how much physical effort you can expend without tiring.]
Agility: [How fast a servant is and how quickly they react. Used for rolls related to speedy movement, evasion, and accuracy.]
Mana: [How much magical power a servant has. Used for rolls related to spells and magic resistance. Also determines how much mana you have.]
Luck: [How lucky a servant is. Used to determine miscellaneous rolls.]

Class Skills:
[Make a list of class skills with rank. See OP for your starting rank of class skills. Divinity is also placed in this section, see OP for if your servant has divinity and what rank. Follow the format below.]

Name (Rank)
Effect:

Personal Skills:
[You have 3 personal skills. Please list your chosen skills with rank and effects. It’s preferred that you use canon skills where possible, but if you can’t find something that covers what you’re looking for you have permission to invent things, just run them by me first. Either way, please describe how the skill functions with this servant]

Name (Rank)
Description:
Effect:

Name (Rank)
Description:
Effect:

Name (Rank)
Description:
Effect:

Noble Phantasms:
Name (Rank) Type
Cost: [See OP]
Description:
Effects:

[BlackPaladin99]

so how do we create a character.

[Smoke Mirrors]

If you don’t know the Fate series, what you do is essentially take a literary, historical, or mythical character and figure out skills, artifacts, and such that they have, and use that to build a character. Once you have those figured out, figure out what class they should be in, Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, or Berserker. Sabers use swords, Archers use ranged weapons, Lancers use long weapons like spears and pikes, Riders ride things, Casters are magicians, Assassin rely on stealth, and Berserkers are insane. Then figure out the parameters based on their skills from the story, limited by the point buy system, and figure out what abilities and items you want to use for your skills and noble phantasm and what they should do based on their abilities in the story. Use the example sheets as examples and I’ll check it out afterwards and let you know what, if anything, needs to be changed.

[Stirk]

If you don’t know the Fate series, what you do is essentially take a literary, historical, or mythical character and figure out skills, artifacts, and such that they have, and use that to build a character. Once you have those figured out, figure out what class they should be in, Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, or Berserker. Sabers use swords, Archers use ranged weapons, Lancers use long weapons like spears and pikes, Riders ride things, Casters are magicians, Assassin rely on stealth, and Berserkers are insane. Then figure out the parameters based on their skills from the story, limited by the point buy system, and figure out what abilities and items you want to use for your skills and noble phantasm and what they should do based on their abilities in the story. Use the example sheets as examples and I’ll check it out afterwards and let you know what, if anything, needs to be changed.

>then figure out the parameters based on their skills from the story, limited by the point buy system,

The point buy system is incredibly unclear and all your example characters seem to fragrantly violate it :V

[Smoke Mirrors]

All example sheets fit within the point buy system, I customized them to make sure of it. Further, the system is pretty simple, one point buys one higher rank in a parameter or class skill.

[Stirk]

All example sheets fit within the point buy system, I customized them to make sure of it. Further, the system is pretty simple, one point buys one higher rank in a parameter or class skill.

That makes things much more clear, I was counting their personal skills.

Spoiler: Assasin (click to show/hide)

Origin (Player): Middle East/U.K
Name: Lawrence of Arabia
Class:  Assassin
Alignment: Lawful Good
Mana: 80
Traits: Male, Humanoid

Appearance: A Westerner in middle-eastern robes with a dagger in the front.

Parameters:
Strength: D 2
Endurance: C 3
Agility: B 4
Mana: B 4
Luck: A 5

Class Skills:
Presence Concealment (C)1
Riding (C) 3

Personal Skills:
Shards of Promises and Lies (B)
Description: This skill represents two pillars of Lawrence's past, his intentional embellishments of his own impressive deeds and his failed promise of a free Arab nation. He is capable of granting a boost to his allies in exchange for a promise, while his lies are more likely to be believed.
Effect: +1 to all rolls for two allies during combat, so long as it is towards a promise Lawrence made. +1 to deception.

Masochistic Constitution (C)
Description: Lawrence was known to have a taste for pain, to the point he hired soldiers to beat him simply for the enjoyment of it. While he has the body of a frail human this allows him to take more damage than usual.
Effect: Endurance is effectively B.

Desert Raider (A)
Description: By assisting in leading an ultimately successful guerilla campaign against the Ottomans, Lawrence earned the right to the Desert Raider skill. This gives him a bonus when acting under cover of darkness, especially in a desert or desert like conditions.
Effect: Bonus to agility in the dark, larger bonus to agility in the desert.

Noble Phantasms:
Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Anti-Nation) (A)
Cost: 50
Description: Lawrence gives a portion of his speech from the titular book, as nearby shadows turn into raiders and launch a guerilla campaign against the targets. Said raiders attempt to cripple the enemy by removing weapons, breaking magical effects, and otherwise reducing the target's strength while avoiding dealing an actual killing blow.
Effects: Remove all positive noble phantasm effects from enemy, remove all positive skill effects from enemy

[Smoke Mirrors]

Right, there are a few edits you’d need to make. For instance, a Rank A noble phantasm is able to have 5 effects or deal damage, so you can add more effects, though simply to keep the NP you designed from being completely game breaking, I feel you would also need to add a time limit on how long the effect lasts.

Personal skills are a bit harder to judge, but I have some notes. “+1 to deception” would, for instance, be phrased as “+1 to your roll under number for Luck when rolling to deceive” and, for the “Shards of Promises and Lies” skill, given I think the closest comparison is Charisma, it would be phrased something like “ When entering combat, choose X allies. Those allies gain +1 to their roll under number for all rolls until this combat ends as long as it is towards a promise Lawrence made.” While it’s B rank, given it also gives the deception buff, it wouldn’t give the full 4 part members, I’d personally balance it as “When entering combat, choose 3 allies. Those allies gain +1 to their roll under number for all rolls until this combat ends as long as it is towards a promise Lawrence made. +3 to your roll under number for Luck when rolling to deceive.”

Masochistic Constitution C would probably be “+3 to your roll under number for Endurance”

Dessert Raider A, given it’s limitations, would be able to exceed the normal A rank +5, and I feel it would be appropriate at “+3 to your roll under number for Agility when in the dark. +5 to your roll under number for Agility when in the desert.”

What to add or modify to your NP is up to you. For the time limits, I’d go with 3 actions, or you could do it so it negates a certain type of buff, such as ignoring all endurance and agility buffs when you attack.

[SOLDIER First]

When creating a Noble Phantasm, are the choices of additional effects and additional damage mutually exclusive (as in a C Rank Noble Phantasm will either grant 3 effects or deal 60 total damage)? Or can you mix-and-match them (so that same Noble Phantasm could instead grant 2 effects and deal 20 damage, or grant 1 effect and deal 40 total damage, et cetera)? The example Noble Phantasm provided for Achilles seems to imply the latter - if I read it correctly, it has three effects and also deals 40 total damage - but I wasn't entirely certain.

[Smoke Mirrors]

It is mix and match.

[TricMagic]

Ima nap for now.

[Lenglon]

So I don't keep a close eye on the FG/RP section, mostly hanging out inside the RTD subsection instead, but noticed this in a random glance and um...

In a previous FATE-based game I ran a master, and I liked the character quite a bit but the game died due to low player interest from the other players. (Stirk was the GM for this game, he probably remembers the character pretty well.)

At this moment I don't have a on-standby Servant design, but I could adapt a character from a now-dead game into a Caster type if you need another Servant, though that's not my primary interest right now.

If you are looking for a player for a Master, let me know. I read your OP (including how you don't see many Master players and are thinking of designing a system without any), and I understand that at the moment this is just a systems test, so no pressure. and I wish you good luck.

[Smoke Mirrors]

Right, I remember that game, I was playing the Berserker class servant. I was always curious who your servant had been. I was playing Sun Wukong, which in hindsight wasn't a great idea.

Anyway, while I have had thoughts on how the system could be modified to include masters, the game I have planned to run myself after I get the mechanics tested currently has the story set up that it wouldn't have masters, and including a master would result in a significant change to the story, but if you think of a servant you want to try out, or I decide I want to test the modified version to include masters, or decide to run a more typical grail war game later, I'll let you know. Thank you for the luck.

[Lenglon]

Sounds good! and my Servant in that was run by The Ensorceler, and was the Archer class El Cid. He was following the tradition of having the Archer class not actually having any archers and had swords instead. His swords were set up where he could gift them to others and they'd enhance their abilities pretty signifigantly but if you tried to use them against him Bad Things would happen to you and he'd get the sword back.

Please PM me when you're done with testing and are ready to start designing / approving characters for the actual game even if you decide to continue with the No Masters setup. I don't watch Fg/Rp so i'll probably miss it if I'm not messaged, but I am interested in playing and will simply adapt if I can't go with my first pick of bringing back Faye.

[Smoke Mirrors]

Thank you. I do remember him having swords, and that seems like an interesting way to design the character.

I decided to start a poll for if there are enough people who are interested in playing masters instead of servants to expedite the process of figuring out how to design a master sheet. This is not a promise that the following game will include masters, just to see if there is enough interest for me to try and figure out how masters would play sooner rather than later.