How to make a fate RPG enjoyable?

[Temennigru]

I will be GMing a fate (type moon) rpg using pathfinder soon. The story will be that of fate/grand order, in which the players will be part of a special mage task force charged with maintaining humanity’s timeline intact.

My plan is to have the masters be lvl 5 and the servants have double the level of the master, while having enemy servants always be lvl 20.

I will be using the spheres of power system for magic, and have some homebrew rules for servants and their connection with their masters.

So my question is, how can I make the campaign enjoyable if the players will have a low level character they created and a high level character they didn’t?

[Man_Over_Game]

For those that didn't quite understand the request, Fate is an anime in the Type-Moon universe, basically revolving around summoners conjuring powerful Servants (Summons, monsters, people, anything that serves and fights, really) to do their fighting for them in a battle-royale kind of competition that decides the universe. Highlander, with pets.

Could totally be off, just Googled this stuff in the last minute because I had no idea what it was.

[Temennigru]

For those that didn't quite understand the request, Fate is an anime in the Type-Moon universe, basically revolving around summoners conjuring powerful Servants (Summons, monsters, people, anything that serves and fights, really) to do their fighting for them in a battle-royale kind of competition that decides the universe. Highlander, with pets.

Could totally be off, just Googled this stuff in the last minute because I had no idea what it was.

That was pretty close actually. Fate is a universe where mages summon heroes of the past or even well known ficticious characters to fight for them. These are called servants and are often much more powerful than the mages.

Each mage gets one servant, but I’m thinking of giving one additional servant after each chapter to each player to keep things interesting, and let them choose one to take with them.

The original fate series is a battle royale setting, but in fate GO the characters are part of a time police organization.

[Rhedyn]

I will be GMing a fate (type moon) rpg using pathfinder soon. The story will be that of fate/grand order, in which the players will be part of a special mage task force charged with maintaining humanity’s timeline intact.

My plan is to have the masters be lvl 5 and the servants have double the level of the master, while having enemy servants always be lvl 20.

I will be using the spheres of power system for magic, and have some homebrew rules for servants and their connection with their masters.

So my question is, how can I make the campaign enjoyable if the players will have a low level character they created and a high level character they didn’t?

Well no you aren't.

APL+4 CR encounters are extra challenging. If you have a 4-6 group size of middling optimization, level 10s cannot fight a fully geared level 20 with any hope of winning. Even if you had 12 highly optimized level 10 servants, they will still get crushed.

My suggestion: Leave the masters at level 5, they will be irrelevant baggage but that is fine. Have the servants be level 12 and enemies CR16-18 (where you start with 16 and the big finally is a level 18). If your party is 7+ players go for CR 17 to 19 enemies. And make sure to follow WBL. If they are PC classed enemies with NPC gear then decrease their CR by 1 (so a level 17 monk with only npc gear is CR 16).

High levels means you need to know a lot about either magic items or magic spells if you want your Wizard Chess mini-games (euphemism for PF combat) to work out. Your players will build some crazy stuff even if they do not know that much about the game. If you want things to be simpler, knock Masters down to level 3, have the Servants be level 8 and the enemies be CR 12.

So my question is, how can I make the campaign enjoyable if the players will have a low level character they created and a high level character they didn’t?

That depends on your house-rules. Most of the point of Pathfinder is people making neat builds for themselves and your masters are going to be dead-weight useless. The game could be fun depending on your house-rules, but that will be because your house-rules are fun and you are GMing well. Pathfinder isn't helping you here, it's a really complicated engine used to resolve fights between basically NPCs that you made yourself. You are using a barely manageable beast of game that can kick you off at any moment at some of the wildest level ranges (high levels).

EDIT: Make this WAY easier for yourself and just have everyone play unchained Summoners where the Servants are Eidolons. That way if your "build the eidolon" for them, they still get a character.

[Temennigru]

I am restricting the material to spheres of power, and encouraging people to use magic creatively. I don't want the masters to be dead weight. I want them to feel like they are actually doing something.
I also want to write custom rules for each servant to represent their abilities better. I don't want to be just building eidolons.

If a lvl 20 is too much for 6 lvl 10s and 6 lvl 5s, I might raise them to 7/14.

I do have some concerns though. What is to stop an enemy from simply attacking the masters?
I'm thinking of giving them an ability that does not let a servant target a non-servant if a servant is closer.

[Reversefigure4]

Have you played a lot of Pathfinder before? A level disparity, particularly one of 7 or more levels, is a pretty big deal. A gap of 2 to 4 levels might be covered by having sufficient numbers of PCs (Masters + Servants) and outnumbering foes 6 to 1, but not much more. Most things the Masters are able to meaningful interact with will be slaughtered immediately by the servants, and most things that pose a moderate challenge to the servants will simply massacre the Masters.

A simple rule would be to say that all Servants have a special ability that renders them unable to attack, cast spells or, or damage a Master in any way (a Servant fireball simply bends around them). That prevents Servants immediately slaughtering Masters.

To have the Master's contribute, you'll need either to have Masters in the fight for the lower-level Masters to fight, though, because even a Level 5 Master who is immune to being killed isn't going to be able to do anything much more than provide a flanking bonus against a Level 14 Servant.

Alternatively, you could try a more narratively-based system like FATE, where 'power level' is less of a concern, allowing physically weak characters to still meaningfully interact with the story.

[Rhedyn]

I am restricting the material to spheres of power, and encouraging people to use magic creatively. I don't want the masters to be dead weight. I want them to feel like they are actually doing something.
I also want to write custom rules for each servant to represent their abilities better. I don't want to be just building eidolons.

If a lvl 20 is too much for 6 lvl 10s and 6 lvl 5s, I might raise them to 7/14.

I do have some concerns though. What is to stop an enemy from simply attacking the masters?
I'm thinking of giving them an ability that does not let a servant target a non-servant if a servant is closer.

You could have masters/servants be equal level. It'll double your party size, but if you want them to fight level 20s in "everyone is probably going to die fights" then they would need to be level 13 (assuming 4 players and thus 8 PCs). If your party isn't super good at optimizing then you may want to bump everyone to 15 instead.

Now you seem dead set on level 20 enemies. That means you are playing high level PF. All PCs/NPCs need magic items and it doesn't matter how much christmas trees of magic items conflict with the lore. Sphere's of Power is balanced, but that also means it doesn't drastically change default assumptions about the game.

Really though, you do not have a great system here for what you are trying to do. I've heard decent things about Ars Magica that seem to line up more with what you are doing here, but I cannot confirm that.

[Friv]

Oof, that is going to be a rough request.

I've played around with Fate games. Even using the Grand Order model, in which noble phantasms are somewhat less BS and mages are somewhat more important, I don't think it can be done effectively in a system in which some players are mages and some players are Servants. You need a system in which you can give the mages a lot of non-combat and narrative weight to represent that they're thematically and symbolically important, while the Servants get to be unstoppable combat gods.

So... why aren't the players allowed to build their own characters? It seems like your best bet for a game of this style, if you're married to Pathfinder, would be to have each player play a mage much of the time, and then have them design and play their own Servant in the tactical portions of the game. The Mages would be modeled as buff-casters, probably.

[MoiMagnus]

I will be GMing a fate (type moon) rpg using pathfinder soon.

Pathfinder feel like a very odd choice for me. Fate's magic is everything BUT working as D&D's magic (but then, I don't know the spheres of power system you're talking about latter on)
You'd probably have better result with any system design for "superheros" than systems design for "medieval-fantastic", or any system which is more "improvise your own spells" than "here is a list of powers".

The story will be that of fate/grand order, in which the players will be part of a special mage task force charged with maintaining humanity’s timeline intact.

My plan is to have the masters be lvl 5 and the servants have double the level of the master, while having enemy servants always be lvl 20.

The scenario is ok, but it doesn't even require the use of servants.
(Moreover, the use of servants is quite a rare thing in the Fate universe, at least in the main timeline.)
But if the goal is to play with servant, using the Fate universe is indeed a good ca

So my question is, how can I make the campaign enjoyable if the players will have a low level character they created and a high level character they didn’t?

Why? Sure, you don't have any choice on the exact capacities of your servant (even though you have a reasonnable choice on who you summon). But in the fate universe, you don't have any choice on what kind of magic you will do (depends on what you are good at). Why would you let them build one but not the other ones?

I mean, the only reason why I would ever play pathfinder (over another RPG) is for the joy of building a high level character.

Note that this question isn't a purely rethorical question. There ARE good answers to this. For example: "I want to build plot hooks inside the servants, so I need to create them myself". Of "my players aren't really interested in building high level characters from scratch". But make sure you have a good reason to do so if you chose to not let the player creates their own servant.

"Can you make the campaign enjoyable". Yes, but there is a very important question: How much control do the players have on the servant [outside or fights, you made it clear that they will control the servants during fights]?
+ If the answer is "a lot, they know their full backstory and chose how they react", then maybe the mages are not needed for your campaign, and you could find a way to just have the servants without PC master (so NPC masters, or no masters)
+ If the answer is "not that much, I keep most of their backstory secret for dramatic reveals", then you take the risk of the players having the feeling of you playing with yourself, and them being passive in the overhaul scenario while you play all the interesting characters.
+ If it is an in-between, then I know some players that will have difficulties with essentially playing two different characters, but others will love it, so it depends on your players.

[Resileaf]

Rather than level 20 enemies, I suggest creating a special template that will make them stronger and tougher, and more meat shieldy, than just straight up giving them the power to wipe out a lvl 10 party instantly. Enemy servants in FGO are remarkable not for being a million times stronger than your own servants, but for having a lot of HP. They generally hit a lot less hard than you do so you can actually have a chance to beat them. In Warcraft RPG, there exists a template that can be given to any enemy that quadruples their HP and increases a few other stats. In essence, the template is excellent for bosses.

Most importantly, you want to give your characters special powers and abilities. The Masters, rather than just being there to observe battles, should have powerful abilities of their own that they can use to enhance their servants for a short time. You should make those abilities custom for each player so they have variety in their abilities and what they do. And the Servants themselves should also have special cooldown abilities unrelated to feats or anything else.

As far as Noble Phantasms go, I would suggest making them recharge at a rate equal to how they recharge in the game for NPCs (as in three, four or five rounds) rather than figuring out percentages.

PF might not be the best system for Fate GO, but don't let that stop you. If it works and you have fun, then it doesn't matter if you could have found better.

[Fable Wright]

Tell everyone to make three characters: two Test of Spite characters, and one level 5 character.

When the game starts, reserve your favorite ToS characters for enemy NPCs, and randomly assign each player one OTHER player's servant. In this scenario, everyone plays the characters they made. BOTH of them.

1. R's player made an Tome of Battle build designed to have an unstoppable Line attack. She named that build Saber. She also built the Cube. That build is named Gilgamesh and the GM is not letting her play it. She built R as the perfect buffbot for Saber, and made it her character goal to make the perfect combo.
2. E's player was lazy and submitted a level 5 and level 12 version of his build, knowing that the early survivability and high CR of enemy servants and summons would let him power level. He's honestly curious if he can get the level 5 version to win in a fight, and tries to force that confrontation.

Their noble phantasm? The TO gimmick that they use. One it's known, it could be countered; reveal sparingly.

[Temennigru]

FYI the first chapter will have the group with a single servant, as well as a couple allies. They will be fighting a couple enemy servants individually, although they are not expected to beat them. They will also be fighting several weaker enemies, that the masters should be able to handle.

So perhaps I could raise the starting level for the party to 7/14 and lower the first chapter's servants to lvl 17.
In the beginning I will be building servants using monster rules, and the servants are not PCs, although they are controlled by the players they are paired with. The players are supposed to keep providing mana to activate the abilities of their servants, although I have to decide on the exact numbers.

For those who don't know, SoP is a system similar to psionics, but where there are no fixed spells. Players spend spell points to mix magical effects to produce spells. For instance, to make a fireball they would spend mana on the destruction sphere, and modify it with blast and fire talents. I am also encouraging them to create custom spells with the spellcrafting rules from the system. The mages should be jacks of all trades, while the servants will be the main damage dealers in the group and have limited powerful abilities.

The problem with letting them build their own servants is it does not represent well the lore of fate. Each servant has very specific abilities that are tied to their legend.

For instance:
King arthur has a powerful ability, excalibur, which is a rank A++ anti-fortress noble phantasm.
He has rank A magic resistance and rank A riding.
He has rank B strength, rank A endurance, rank A agility, rank A mana, rank D luck, rank A charisma, rank A instinct and rank A mana burst.

I am working on the exact translations, but the build is pretty strict.

I could just ditch the concept of level for the servants and tie their HD to their individual abilities.

[Friv]

FYI the first chapter will have the group with a single servant, as well as a couple allies. They will be fighting a couple enemy servants individually, although they are not expected to beat them.

In the beginning I will be building servants using monster rules, and the servants are not PCs, although they are controlled by the players they are paired with. The players are supposed to keep providing mana to activate the abilities of their servants, although I have to decide on the exact numbers.

The problem with letting them build their own servants is it does not represent well the lore of fate. Each servant has very specific abilities that are tied to their legend.

Oh man, friend. Friend. Friend.

No. Don't do this.

I don't know your group, to be fair, but this is not going to go well for you. This sounds like you've kind of already decided exactly how the story is going to go and what you need to do to get it there, and the PCs are mainly along for the ride. You've bypassed the DMPC problem sort of by handing all your DMPCs to the players to control tactically, but you've also decided to have the PCs stand around feeding mana to the real heroes, all of whom you have created to exacting standards.

And as far as each servant having specific abilities tied to their own legend - I've played Fate. A lot of Fate. The ties can be pretty broad, and a lot of Servants have been summoned with different capabilities in different Grail Wars. King Arthur alone, even discounting the goofier FGO stories, exists as three different Sabers already in various media and two different Lancers.

Vlad Tepes from Fate/Apocrypha is wildly different than Vlad Tepes from Fate/Extra, even though they are both Lancers. Gilles de Rais in Fate/Zero is a Caster, and in Fate/Apocrypha is a Saber.

What you're doing here is unnecessarily shackling your game because you want to keep control of all its elements. This is a really bad idea.

[NichG]

Honestly, Fate seems tailor made for a Mage/Exalted cross-over campaign. The summoner is a Mage - massive utility that can completely change the course of a conflict, but unless they've perfectly prepared their contingencies they have no counter to Exalted's perfect offense/perfect defense shenanigans and will get splatted if they ever actually get into a direct fight. Meanwhile there's all sorts of absurd stuff around the Exalted materials that has at least the intent to feel like the way people in that series talk about servant ability ratings, noble phantasms, and the like. You'd probably have to tweak the mechanics a bit though.

[Fable Wright]

FYI the first chapter will have the group with a single servant, as well as a couple allies. They will be fighting a couple enemy servants individually, although they are not expected to beat them. They will also be fighting several weaker enemies, that the masters should be able to handle.

[...]

The problem with letting them build their own servants is it does not represent well the lore of fate. Each servant has very specific abilities that are tied to their legend.

You asked about how to make a Fate RPG enjoyable. In other words, how you make a battle royale with teams enjoyable.

This is not how you do that.

The main issues with battle royales are (1) when your character dies, you're out of stuff to do; (2) it can be difficult to get some roleplaying going without instantly devolving to backstabbing and TPKs; and (3) there are a fixed number of enemies and no mooks.

The solution, therefore, is to (respectively) (1) Have players with more than one character, so the incredibly fatal nature doesn't make someone sit around twiddling their thumbs for hours; (2) With enforced alliances, you can easily get far more PCs engaged in scenes; (3) make the combats fun by letting player reveal the full silliness of their build as their 'noble phantasm'.

And as far as each servant having specific abilities tied to their own legend - I've played Fate. A lot of Fate. The ties can be pretty broad, and a lot of Servants have been summoned with different capabilities in different Grail Wars. King Arthur alone, even discounting the goofier FGO stories, exists as three different Sabers already in various media and two different Lancers.

Vlad Tepes from Fate/Apocrypha is wildly different than Vlad Tepes from Fate/Extra, even though they are both Lancers. Gilles de Rais in Fate/Zero is a Caster, and in Fate/Apocrypha is a Saber.

What you're doing here is unnecessarily shackling your game because you want to keep control of all its elements. This is a really bad idea.

So much this. Is Iskander a 7' tall muscleman who rides into melee combat, or a short and clever backlines commander with the cunning to conquer the known world? You could stat him out as his Zero version or as F/GO's Zhuge Liang and both would be valid.

Just tell the players to give you a vague outline of historical heroes they think would fit with their TO build, and massage the fluff to fit.

[Quertus]

The problem with letting them build their own servants is it does not represent well the lore of fate. Each servant has very specific abilities that are tied to their legend.

For instance:
King arthur has a powerful ability, excalibur, which is a rank A++ anti-fortress noble phantasm.
He has rank A magic resistance and rank A riding.
He has rank B strength, rank A endurance, rank A agility, rank A mana, rank D luck, rank A charisma, rank A instinct and rank A mana burst.

I am working on the exact translations, but the build is pretty strict.

I could just ditch the concept of level for the servants and tie their HD to their individual abilities.

Well, that block of stats really doesn't scream "King Arthur" to me.

I'd say you'd get just as good of representations by letting them build their own characters.

[MoiMagnus]

The problem with letting them build their own servants is it does not represent well the lore of fate. Each servant has very specific abilities that are tied to their legend.

For instance:
King arthur has a powerful ability, excalibur, which is a rank A++ anti-fortress noble phantasm.
He has rank A magic resistance and rank A riding.
He has rank B strength, rank A endurance, rank A agility, rank A mana, rank D luck, rank A charisma, rank A instinct and rank A mana burst.

I am working on the exact translations, but the build is pretty strict.

I could just ditch the concept of level for the servants and tie their HD to their individual abilities.

Hum, I get it, but I wasn't expected you to actually try to translate the official servant.
If you chose servant that are not in the fate lore (which I agree is quite big if you take all the spin-off and other stuffs), you're free.
And to be fair, the servant of Fate are absurdly unbalanced with each others, and a lot of their capacities only exist for story purposes (and their lore was created to make it look logical), so I'm not 100% convince that's a good idea to use them at all cost.

However, yes, if your goal is to translate the official servants, you don't really need to follow the PC rules to build them, and you can build them as a NPC/monster.
From a personnal point of view, I would have no-problems with pre-build servants for a few-session campaign, but if the campaign was expected to be long enoug, I would expect to build my own servant that doesn't exist yet in the official lore (though I would also be ok with starting with a pre-build servant, and at some point the plot kill all our servants and we have to build new servants).

[Temennigru]

Well, that block of stats really doesn't scream "King Arthur" to me.

I'd say you'd get just as good of representations by letting them build their own characters.

It's not about it being the actual king arthur. It's about it being the king arthur, character from fate. The whole point of this campaign is not to tell the fate go story (which is actually pretty stupid), it is to play a fate campaign, with familiar characters and a familiar system. Fate has a very complex system and I would like to explore it to the maximum of my abilities.

One thing I forgot to mention about fate for those of you who don't know is that the servants are tied to specific class cards. The most common being the seven: saber, lancer, archer, assassin, caster, rider and berserker. Each of those classes have skills and abilities that are common to them. For instance, saber usually has some form of magic resistance while being the strongest fighter overall, lancer has protection from arrows while being the most agile servant, assassin has presence concealment while being weak in combat, etc.

These are things I wish to explore when GMing, and pathfinder alone is not very compatible with that.

One thing I had though of was writing classes for each class card and letting the players use that to build the servants, so they would be the same characters in fate, but with their own personal touch, which would be acceptable, but that would be a lot of work.

That shouldn't matter anyways for the 1st chapter as they won't be getting servants till the 2nd.

Hum, I get it, but I wasn't expected you to actually try to translate the official servant.
If you chose servant that are not in the fate lore (which I agree is quite big if you take all the spin-off and other stuffs), you're free.
And to be fair, the servant of Fate are absurdly unbalanced with each others, and a lot of their capacities only exist for story purposes (and their lore was created to make it look logical), so I'm not 100% convince that's a good idea to use them at all cost.

However, yes, if your goal is to translate the official servants, you don't really need to follow the PC rules to build them, and you can build them as a NPC/monster.
From a personnal point of view, I would have no-problems with pre-build servants for a few-session campaign, but if the campaign was expected to be long enoug, I would expect to build my own servant that doesn't exist yet in the official lore (though I would also be ok with starting with a pre-build servant, and at some point the plot kill all our servants and we have to build new servants).

This is another thing I've thought thoroughly about. my conclusion is that if I am to build the servants myself, I would have to offer some sort of customization and growth options for the servants. One thing I was brainstorming about would be encouraging crafting custom items and spells so the players can grow with their characters and servants during the campaign.

[Friv]

Well, I tried.

[Man_Over_Game]

You could try your hand at using DnD 5e as your system. It has a few things that fix the problems you're facing.

Notably:

• Each character is a specific class, with an even more specific subclass. Two Barbarians can be very similar in how they Rage, but one generates a storm when he Rages, and the other gains enhanced speed and agility. This fits well with your class cards, in how each Servant is similar to others while also staying unique.
• Numbers matter. Because of how the bounded accuracy works in 5e, low level creatures can always stay a threat with ample enough numbers. At level 1, a single kobold might be a threat, and at level 20 you might be able to take on 20 of them.
• The game is simple. As long as you don't constantly try to think "It's Pathfinder, but different", you can learn the majority of the game in an hour. However, the people who have the hardest time learning are those who try to adapt their own experience of older systems to 5e, and that just doesn't always work (leads to a lot of 5e players not knowing what's true or false because of misinformation).

A pair of a level 5 and a level 10 couldn't take down a level 20, but a party of them probably could. You'd still want to jack up HP and lower damage on the bosses, but I'd say that a party of 5's and 10's could take down a level 20 boss, as long as they don't get caught by a high level AoE spell right off the bat.

My recommendation would be to have everyone pick from a selection of possible Master classes and subclasses, then have them pick from a list of Servant classes and subclasses. A Mastermind Rogue (master manipulator, enhances the attacks of others) and a Hexblade Warlock (heavy melee damage caster) would be cool for a pair of dark schemers, or a Swashbuckler Rogue (uses high damage hit-and-run attacks with melee weapons) with a Celestial Warlock (uses holy damage and healing) could be on the table.

Both scenarios use the same classes, but they are definitely unique. You may not be able to draw identical parallels between the 5e classes and Fate's classes, but an understanding of the mechanics will get you really close to what you're looking for.

[Temennigru]

You could try your hand at using DnD 5e as your system. It has a few things that fix the problems you're facing.

Literally everyone in my group dislikes D&D5e because it is way too limited. We are all used to the absolute plethora of material and power gaming experience provided by 3.5/pathfinder. Spheres of power is an excelent approximation of the magic system in fate.

[Rhedyn]

Literally everyone in my group dislikes D&D5e because it is way too limited. We are all used to the absolute plethora of material and power gaming experience provided by 3.5/pathfinder. Spheres of power is an excelent approximation of the magic system in fate.

This thread actually got me to reading Ars Magica. That really does seem to line up more. Powerful Magi buffing Special Servants fits right in-line with the magi/companion dynamic.

It's a 240 page book for 5th edition, which should be light reading for any 3.5/PF fan.

[Red Fel]

Hi there. Regular poster in this very forum's FGO thread here. Nice t'meetcha.

Several issues with what you're doing. Let me start with your most recent post.

It's not about it being the actual king arthur. It's about it being the king arthur, character from fate. The whole point of this campaign is not to tell the fate go story (which is actually pretty stupid), it is to play a fate campaign, with familiar characters and a familiar system. Fate has a very complex system and I would like to explore it to the maximum of my abilities.

In other words, everyone wants to pick Artoria, Gilgamesh, Iskandar, or Cu.

These are things I wish to explore when GMing, and pathfinder alone is not very compatible with that.

That's because you're not proposing a Pathfinder game. You're proposing a Pokemon RPG, but replacing Pokemon with genderbent historical figures. Fact is, having the Master as a statted character - as opposed to just a character who's sort of there - is a terrible idea. Because with the exception of a truly exceptional Magus, no Master will be able to contribute in any meaningful way to Servant combat. Sure, Command Seals will work, and maybe a Mystic Code that lets you augment your Servant's attack or stun your enemies, but statting Masters is just a waste of time. A Master's damage versus Servants, Phantasmals, or anything else is 0; an enemy Servant's damage versus a Master is DEATH.

Let's back up for a moment. What is Fate? Not FGO, but the actual franchise. It started as a visual novel. (Originally, an eroge, but that's another matter.) What's a visual novel? Well, that's basically text with pictures and a choose-your-own-adventure aspect to it.

When you try that crap at a table, most of the people on this forum start screaming "railroading," and for good reason - it is railroading.

The characters in Fate - both Servants and Masters - hit particular story beats unique to those characters. It's why they're so compelling. We're not excited by yet another Saberface just because Artoria is genderbent King Arthur and also adorable. We're excited for what it means for the character - a character originally defined by her relationship with Shirou and Rin and her rivalry with a certain Nameless Archer, then later expanded by her relationship with Kiritsugu and her rivalry with a certain pair of Kings, and also redefined by becoming an Alter, and made silly in Carnival Phantasm - this is a character we've explored facets of based on her interactions with others.

Shirou's hero's journey isn't just the story of a Pokemon trainer whose starter happens to be the King of Knights. He's compelling not only because of his strong sense of justice, but because of the transformative impact the Grail War has on him, both during and after (and therefore during, because Grail-related shenanigans). It's the deconstruction and reconstruction of his idealistic desire to be a hero after seeing the true acts of real "heroes" and deciding whether that's the kind of person he wants to be, and the further discovery by the audience of the role that conflict played in making him the person he is (both in that Grail War and the prior one).

The point I'm trying to make is that these characters don't work well as pick-and-mix Pokemon trainers and their starters, chosen randomly. Cu Chulainn would not have worked as Shirou's Servant. Medusa would not have worked as Rin's. Artoria would never have taken orders from Shinji. This is borne out in lore - Servants don't just respond to the call because the right catalyst is used. The Servant who arrives, or even the aspect of the Servant who arrives, is defined in part by the Master. In other words, players have to build their Servants and their Masters, together.

Could you do it like in FGO, where players just get Servants? Sure. But you won't be able to tell the same stories, hit the same beats. And therein lies the rub - you clearly want to tell a story. That's fine, that's what Fate is about. You tell a story, the players interact with your story and react to it, and the narrative beat flows on.

That works great as a visual novel. It's frustrating as a tabletop game. If I were in a tabletop game, going through a fraction of the scenarios in FGO, I'd throw my hands up and walk away. They're unfair. They're contrived. You're deliberately made to feel useless and powerless before a deus ex machina turns the tides for you. It's the game version of a visual novel. But in a tabletop game, I expect to have more of an impact. I expect to play, not to be played.

This has been a long, rambly rant, but the crux is this: Play Fate as a Pokemon game, not a Pathfinder visual novel. Let players pick or design their own Servants, then let them engage in their own adventures, not some overarching story established by you, in which their job is to click the text boxes and win fights.

[Temennigru]

I don't know if you've noticed, but I basically threw out the gatcha aspect of FGO. I'm making this into an entirely story-driven RPG.

None of the characters in fate got to chose their servants.
Not all servants got well together with their masters in the start. (You really think any servant would want to have shinji as their master? He is a weak and despicable little man.)
I want to give players the opportunity to evolve their relationships with their servants and feel more attached to them as the story progresses.

I've come up with solutions to the 2 problems I noticed I had to solve:

Participation: the masters have to be able to pull their weight and feel like they are doing something. To this end I will be making the servant level closer to the master level, adding non-combat situations, plenty of master-level combat and encouraging them to create new spells and items to help them close the gap between master and servant and offset their own weaknesses.
Progression: There has to be some sort of progression aside from leveling up to make the masters feel attached to their servants. To this end I am adding a separate progression step for "servant bond", where at each level masters can select different abilities for their servants to have. Servants start up with very basic abilities attached to their "spirit origin" but can learn new abilities along the way to maximize their power.

I think this shouldn't be too hard to implement and should keep the campaign pretty fun.

[Fable Wright]

I don't know if you've noticed, but I basically threw out the gatcha aspect of FGO. I'm making this into an entirely story-driven RPG.

It's still a pokemon RPG from what you've described. You "start out" with one low level servant, and you've implied that more will be gained.

And... actually, I have a question for you. Are the players directly controlling the (apparently ONLY) party servant directly? Taking turns/by committee/whathaveyou? Or is this a situation where you have a bunch of low level tagalong characters following around the overleveled DMPC and providing support while he does all the cool combat? Or a situation where one person gets to be super overpowered compared to the rest of the party?

None of the characters in fate got to chose their servants.
Not all servants got well together with their masters in the start. (You really think any servant would want to have shinji as their master? He is a weak and despicable little man.)

Spoiler: Heaven's Feel Spoilers

Show

Shinji was not chosen as a master. Medusa, aka Rider, was the perfect match for her chosen master, Sakura, due to their similar natures and Medusa's desire to keep Sakura from following their same route. Their abilities also complemented well, with Sakura's high mana reserves being more than able to fuel extreme uses of Medusa's mana-hungry abilities that Shinji needed to resort to using Blood Fort Andromeda to try and fuel.

Heracles was chosen as Illya's master because of his desire to protect, after he couldn't protect his own kids from his power.
Medusa chose Sakura to keep her from going down a regrettable path.
Shirou was Saber's Sheathe.
True Assassin was a perfect match for Zouken.
Medea was unfortunately attracted to a man who was as callous as her Jason. (I'm talking about her pre-Kuzuki master.)
Lancer had his absolute perfect match in Bazette, as they had perfectly complementing abilities and personalities.
And Rin got the man she'd be grow up and marry in several timelines.

As you can see, all the servants got someone who fit their myth near perfectly, had complementing offensive or defensive abilities, and were generally tailored to their servants to a T. Admittedly, this is because more than a few of them summoned without catalysts; Fate/Zero is a better example if you wanted to show servants and masters not being custom tailored for each other... and that's because the masters specifically picked out their servants without caring about complementing personalities.

Participation: the masters have to be able to pull their weight and feel like they are doing something. To this end I will be making the servant level closer to the master level, adding non-combat situations, plenty of master-level combat and encouraging them to create new spells and items to help them close the gap between master and servant and offset their own weaknesses.

Have you considered... letting the players control the epic spectacle of heroes throughout history fighting each other to the utmost with their entire arsenal as opposed to being allowed to minimally contribute to the spectacle going on around them?

Progression: There has to be some sort of progression aside from leveling up to make the masters feel attached to their servants. To this end I am adding a separate progression step for "servant bond", where at each level masters can select different abilities for their servants to have. Servants start up with very basic abilities attached to their "spirit origin" but can learn new abilities along the way to maximize their power.

But there's only ONE servant at the start of the party. So exactly one person gets to have this special relationship while everyone else twiddles their thumbs and waits for their gacha servant.

That said... if you want players to feel attached to their servants, have you considered roleplaying? Like developing an actual character bond? Of course, managing a number of servants equal to the number of players would be difficult. You could alleviate this by letting players control other peoples' servants, and get, well, a kind of party dynamic that makes people feel attached to each other.

Or you could have the masters give the servants a few bonus feats, I guess. Fate/Extella did the same thing, and... really it did nothing but add some number crunching chore to the game rather than develop my relationship with a character. To the point where the small sound clips characters made while dashing through the map were more engaging. But it'll be much more engaging in your game! Right?

[Rhedyn]

I'm making this into an entirely story-driven RPG.

OK fair enough, but the system you have selected will not help you. In Pathfinder, the story being fun is a GM thing, the game being a fun aspect is where Pathfinder makes any effort to help you and most here have been telling you what will and will not work. One not-working aspect is building people's main characters for them. Pathfinder's main appeal against other RPGs is making a cool character for yourself.

Without that investment and level of attachment, you are asking your players to put up with a lot of crunch and crap without the main reward.

So if you want to use Pathfinder well, then expect to bend your story to the game more so than bending the game to the story. Can players build their own Servant in-lore? Doesn't matter, you are playing pathfinder and servants will be the vastly higher level character the player controls. They will make it themselves and your story just needs to line up that.

You do not want to do that? Well too bad. Either get over this hang-up or use an RPG system that actually lines up with what you want.

You can either do that or brace yourself for a complete trainwreck only avoidable my massive player buy-in and your GMing being fun regardless of how the "game" is working.

[Temennigru]

It's still a pokemon RPG from what you've described. You "start out" with one low level servant, and you've implied that more will be gained.

And... actually, I have a question for you. Are the players directly controlling the (apparently ONLY) party servant directly? Taking turns/by committee/whathaveyou? Or is this a situation where you have a bunch of low level tagalong characters following around the overleveled DMPC and providing support while he does all the cool combat? Or a situation where one person gets to be super overpowered compared to the rest of the party?

In the first chapter the players will not have any controllable servants. They will have a demi-servant allied NPC and a full-servant allied NPC.
They will each get a servant @ downtime.

I am exploring the possibility of giving them "summoning catalysts" as the story progresses so they will each get 2 servants total, so they can take on the LITERAL GODS in the final few chapters.

This is very far from being a pokemon-style game.

Spoiler: Heaven's Feel Spoilers

Show

Shinji was not chosen as a master. Medusa, aka Rider, was the perfect match for her chosen master, Sakura, due to their similar natures and Medusa's desire to keep Sakura from following their same route. Their abilities also complemented well, with Sakura's high mana reserves being more than able to fuel extreme uses of Medusa's mana-hungry abilities that Shinji needed to resort to using Blood Fort Andromeda to try and fuel.

Heracles was chosen as Illya's master because of his desire to protect, after he couldn't protect his own kids from his power.
Medusa chose Sakura to keep her from going down a regrettable path.
Shirou was Saber's Sheathe.
True Assassin was a perfect match for Zouken.
Medea was unfortunately attracted to a man who was as callous as her Jason. (I'm talking about her pre-Kuzuki master.)
Lancer had his absolute perfect match in Bazette, as they had perfectly complementing abilities and personalities.
And Rin got the man she'd be grow up and marry in several timelines.

As you can see, all the servants got someone who fit their myth near perfectly, had complementing offensive or defensive abilities, and were generally tailored to their servants to a T. Admittedly, this is because more than a few of them summoned without catalysts; Fate/Zero is a better example if you wanted to show servants and masters not being custom tailored for each other... and that's because the masters specifically picked out their servants without caring about complementing personalities.

Spoiler: Fate Spoilers

Show

Actually, each of them got their servants because of the catalysts they used. Shinji was also technically a master, since sakura gave him her command seals.
And Rin never really got along with her servant, especially since he betrayed her many times.
If you consider the other fate series (zero and apocrypha), there are plenty of cases of servants that disliked their masters, and vice versa. Even saber was not a big fan of kiritsugu, gilgamesh was not a fan of tohsaka, etc.

Have you considered... letting the players control the epic spectacle of heroes throughout history fighting each other to the utmost with their entire arsenal as opposed to being allowed to minimally contribute to the spectacle going on around them?



But there's only ONE servant at the start of the party. So exactly one person gets to have this special relationship while everyone else twiddles their thumbs and waits for their gacha servant.

That said... if you want players to feel attached to their servants, have you considered roleplaying? Like developing an actual character bond? Of course, managing a number of servants equal to the number of players would be difficult. You could alleviate this by letting players control other peoples' servants, and get, well, a kind of party dynamic that makes people feel attached to each other.

Or you could have the masters give the servants a few bonus feats, I guess. Fate/Extella did the same thing, and... really it did nothing but add some number crunching chore to the game rather than develop my relationship with a character. To the point where the small sound clips characters made while dashing through the map were more engaging. But it'll be much more engaging in your game! Right?

Again, my players are big fate fans, and we want to try something new and similar to fate. I have reached a consensus on how this would work with them (except for 1 player who rage-quit, but he wasn't a big fan of the idea of a fate campaign from the start). If it doesn't work out in the first chapter, we can always change the system later on.

The actual usefulness of their first servant in the first chapter will be very limited, as goes the story, and the final boss fight is having them fight a big scary mean ENEMY SERVANT (wow). As the story progresses and they get their servants, as well as get stronger themselves, they will be able to fight more servants on each chapter.

Finally, my group is a very big fan of number crunching, and not so much of roleplaying (the reason why we dislike 5e). A modified version of pathfinder (which is a system we know inside and out) is more than ideal for our purpose. And if things seem unbalanced, as an experienced GM, I can always make quick adjustments to it.

OK fair enough, but the system you have selected will not help you. In Pathfinder, the story being fun is a GM thing, the game being a fun aspect is where Pathfinder makes any effort to help you and most here have been telling you what will and will not work. One not-working aspect is building people's main characters for them. Pathfinder's main appeal against other RPGs is making a cool character for yourself.

Without that investment and level of attachment, you are asking your players to put up with a lot of crunch and crap without the main reward.

So if you want to use Pathfinder well, then expect to bend your story to the game more so than bending the game to the story. Can players build their own Servant in-lore? Doesn't matter, you are playing pathfinder and servants will be the vastly higher level character the player controls. They will make it themselves and your story just needs to line up that.

You do not want to do that? Well too bad. Either get over this hang-up or use an RPG system that actually lines up with what you want.

You can either do that or brace yourself for a complete trainwreck only avoidable my massive player buy-in and your GMing being fun regardless of how the "game" is working.

What I mean is more story driven than combat driven. Pathfinder provides plenty of rules for that. There will still be plenty of crunch, and there will still be combat. They will just be using their abilities less in combat and more on developing the story and surviving. Like the infantry escorting a company of tanks.

[HamsterKun]

Saber would definitely be a Paladin (Oath of Devotion)/Sorcerer (Divine Soul) multiclass, but the mentioning of Paladin/Sorcerer alone makes me fear them going into Mary Sue territory.

[Quertus]

Again, why aren't the players making the servants?

Also, did you understand the concept that was brought up of summoning without catalysts producing reasonable matches?

That said, I like the idea of telling the story of how these characters work out with these servants. That's a much more engaging story IMO than a paint by the numbers retelling of each servant's "optimal" master.

[Temennigru]

Again, why aren't the players making the servants?

Also, did you understand the concept that was brought up of summoning without catalysts producing reasonable matches?

That said, I like the idea of telling the story of how these characters work out with these servants. That's a much more engaging story IMO than a paint by the numbers retelling of each servant's "optimal" master.

Because part of the fun is not knowing what you are getting, and having to deal with the inherent weaknesses. This is not a high level campaign, so players will have room to grow.
The players signed up for this, and if it doesn't work out we can always reboot the system and continue the story.

And like I said, nobody in the original fate series summoned a servant without a catalyst. Even Rin had archer's vial with her.

And even if you do have a catalyst, it doesn't necessarily turn out the way you want. Tokiomi used "the world's most ancient fossil" as a catalyst and got gilgamesh. He wasn't expecting that, and they were most definitely not compatible. Tokiomi didn't have the ambition gilgamesh wanted, and so gilgamesh turned on him in favor of kirei.

And that's not even counting fate apocrypha. There was more betrayal there than a group of people getting in a circle and stabbing each other in the back. All the red masters got betrayed by their servants in favor of shirou, siegfried betrayed his master and sacrificed himself for sieg, astolpho also betrayed his master and became sieg's servant, that yggdmillenia guy forced vlad to become a vampire, even though vlad made him swear not to, the golem guy sacrificed his own master to create the garden of eden, acchiles betrayed shirou in the end, spartacus was completely out of control for the whole series...

I think the only "compatible" master/servant pairs were saber of red (mordred) and berserker of blue (frankenstein).

Saber would definitely be a Paladin (Oath of Devotion)/Sorcerer (Divine Soul) multiclass, but the mentioning of Paladin/Sorcerer alone makes me fear them going into Mary Sue territory.

I'm avoiding PC builds for the servants so I can add custom abilities to them. They will have pretty bland abilities in the beginning and will get new ones of the players' choosing as the game progresses.