Servants of Red vs. Fate /stay night servants

[Dark Soul # 7]

Servants of two different timelines do battle in the arena. We're using the general visual novel/light novel versions of all characters (because the anime version of the Apocrypha servants would steamroll the opposition, except for maybe the caster fight). Assume that they all have equally good masters but no command seals will be used.

Most of them will be matching servant classes except for the last one for what's probably obvious reasons.

Archer fight: Atalante vs. Emiya

Berserker fight: Spartacus vs. Heracles

Lancer fight: Karna vs. Cú Chulainn

Rider fight: Achilles vs. Medusa

Saber fight: Mordred vs. Artoria

Special fight*: Semiramis vs. Medea

*Semiramis is as powerful as she would be in her throne room and Medea is as powerful as she would be in her temple in F/SN

Which side gets the most wins?

[Siriel]

Archer fight: Atalante vs. Emiya

Atalanta crushes him. Better mobility, higher rate of fire, and if he tries to melee her her transformation NP would result in him getting crushed. She can also prevent any big projections attempts by just continuously shooting at him.

I'd give him a fair odd if he took the fight seriously and they had to find each other in a city, but not in the arena.

Berserker fight: Spartacus vs. Heracles

This one depends on if you allow some scaling, or if it's solely their own feats in those works. Spartacus has the completely ludicrous strength feat of shaking the Hanging Gardens flying high above with the aftershock of his striking Jeanne, which is far above anything in Stay Night.

If there's no scaling, he completely overpowers Heracles.

If there's scaling he gets slaughtered until he explodes, then Heracles revives from the explosion having lost a handful of lives.

(This is assuming an Illya-tier Master so Heracles can actually fight and doesn't just vanish almost immediately.)

Lancer fight: Karna vs. Cú Chulainn

With top-tier Masters, Karna, no contest.
With average Masters, Cu might be able to hang on until Karna runs out of energy.
With bad Masters, Karna can't really do anything.

Rider fight: Achilles vs. Medusa

Depends how good their Masters are. If they're poor, Achilles. If they're good, it depends on if Achilles' immortality stops her eyes from petrifying him or not.

Using Bellerophon would be a major mistake for her because his shield would stop it cold, but since they're both Greek heroes she'll likely recognize him immediately and not try it.

Saber fight: Mordred vs. Artoria

Depends on Artoria's first move. If she goes into melee, Mordred beats her to a pulp*. If she opens with Excalibur, Mordred has no real counter.

*: In-story Artoria is supposed to be better than Mordred, but in terms of feats Mordred has far better ones.

Special fight*: Semiramis vs. Medea

*Semiramis is as powerful as she would be in her throne room and Medea is as powerful as she would be in her temple in F/SN

Assuming Medea doesn't actually have to go through the Hanging Gardens, she should win; the Gardens make Semiramis very powerful inside of them, but Medea is better at actually using magic. She might die from poison afterward depending on how careless she is.

[BitVyper]

VN Fate/Stay does very little to show the scale of a lot of its fights, and a lot of the feats could be anywhere from slightly superhuman to earthshaking. I never read the Apocrypha LN, so I can't speak to it, but I suspect I pretty much agree with Siriel's assessment except that in the case of Artoria, I feel like scaling is a given, since I'm assuming the LN still acknowledges that Artoria didn't really have a great deal of trouble beating Mordred in life and only died because of the post-death curse attack.

[Siriel]

I feel like scaling is a given, since I'm assuming the LN still acknowledges that Artoria didn't really have a great deal of trouble beating Mordred in life and only died because of the post-death curse attack.

The fight is entirely offscreen except for the start and the very end.

Artoria killed Mordred with Rhongomyniad (which she doesn't have here) after starting the fight with Excalibur, but it's never explained how they got to that point. We're at least told that they had exchanges of blows, so it wasn't like in the anime where Mordred blitzes Excalibur out of Artoria's hands and then Artoria materializes Ron from nowhere and one-shots her.

There's also zero mention of a curse; Mordred just gets really mad and manages to give one last strike.

Adding that abilities while alive are not abilities as Servants, we're pretty much stuck with feats, and Mordred has generally better feats on top of having AOE force lightning she can toss out with no noted charge time.

[BitVyper]

Fair enough; the curse is from the VN. I'm not sure where else it's mentioned.

In any case, I feel like the events being referenced implies scaling regardless. But less of an overt win for Arturia maybe.

[Siriel]

Fair enough; the curse is from the VN. I'm not sure where else it's mentioned.

Only in the VN I'm pretty sure.

The issue is that the VN's flashbacks are interpreted by Shirou, who has an heavy bias in Artoria's favor, and don't mesh with a lot of what was later shown from the Knights of the Round Table's interactions.

We know that it's definitely wrong for Apocrypha Mordred at least, because Shirou says that the curse made Mordred strike after death when Mordred is definitely still alive since we see the events from her perspective. Her profile also attributes the final strike to her refusal to give up rather than a curse.

In any case, I feel like the events being referenced implies scaling regardless.

I'm fine with a degree of scaling. I wouldn't, for example, say that Mordred can hurt Artoria by running next to her, despite that being something that could actually be argued going strictly by Apocrypha vs Stay Night feats.

But the offscreen fight that ended in Mordred's defeat involved Artoria switching to a weapon she flat-out doesn't have here. I don't think it can really be used to say she'd be superior if the same fight happened without Rhongomyniad.

But less of an overt win for Arturia maybe.

I don't think it's a win at all if she goes into melee even if we gave them pretty much equal stats, because Mordred can flood the area around her with crimson lightning while fighting. In a fight between relative equals, the one who's also getting electrocuted is going to lose.

Note: I'm assuming that this is default Servant Saber as she was for most of the VN, and not specifically end of Fate Saber with Avalon. I agree she should win if she has it.

[BitVyper]

Honestly, I'd really like to see Chiron vs Cu only because their respective NPs both pull "you are already dead" bullshit and I think it would be a hilarious double KO.

[Siriel]

Honestly, I'd really like to see Chiron vs Cu only because their respective NPs both pull "you are already dead" bullshit and I think it would be a hilarious double KO.

Sadly that would end badly for Chiron. His NP is a standard arrow, just a really sneaky one, and Cu can't be hit by arrows.

[BitVyper]

Oh that's right, I forgot about that. That would be even more amusing, really.

[BitVyper]

In response to the other post: I pretty much agree. I'm assuming full mana Saber with no Avalon, personally.

Can we assume that the circumstances at Camlann would have been roughly the same in the Apocrypha LN as in the Stay/Night VN? They basically line up with the legend of King Arthur and Mordred, in which case it would have been a fairly beleaguered Artoria that Mordred fought.

[Siriel]

In response to the other post: I pretty much agree. I'm assuming full mana Saber with no Avalon, personally.

Can we assume that the circumstances at Camlann would have been roughly the same in the Apocrypha LN as in the Stay/Night VN? They basically line up with the legend of King Arthur and Mordred, in which case it would have been a fairly beleaguered Artoria that Mordred fought.

Mordred also slaughtered her way through the battlefield and according to Apocrypha only managed to find her because everyone on both sides in the surroundings were dead. Neither of them were exactly in fresh condition.

[Dark Soul # 7]

They all have top quality masters.

Not sure how to handle the possible scaling or not.

Would anything change if we allowed feats from Fate: Grand Order?

[BitVyper]

I've only played a little bit of GO, but I suspect it kind of throws everything else out the window, especially since its servant classes are balanced instead of stuff like Saber just being "the best one."

[Siriel]

I've only played a little bit of GO, but I suspect it kind of throws everything else out the window,

Not really. You have to ignore gameplay obviously, but most of the best feats in the franchise come from F/GO's story.

Excalibur for example is shown to be massively more powerful than it got to show off in Stay Night or Zero by annihilating a life-wiping meteor with one full power use.

especially since its servant classes are balanced instead of stuff like Saber just being "the best one."

That was just what Rin thought based on the fact that Sabers tended to get to the final fights of the wars, not a factual statement.

If you look at the lineups of the basic seven Servants classes over the franchise (and only count 'regular' Servants), Archer is probably the strongest overall class, then Lancer* and then Saber.

*: With two different Lancer Artorias, Romulus, Karna, Scathach, Cu and older Li Shuwen, Lancer's top-tier is surprisingly stacked. Saber has more high-tiers, but they peak at a weaker point and are basically all some variant of beamsword knight so they're way less versatile.

[BitVyper]

That was just what Rin thought based on the fact that Sabers tended to get to the final fights of the wars, not a factual statement.

I should say my opinions are founded on narrative from the VN mostly, so I acknowledge that the setting rules got a lot more developed as time went on. Also, regardless of which class is ACTUALLY the best, my point was more that GO has balance where the series was originally fairly clear about certain classes just being out and out better than others. That said, just regarding the VN...

It's not very important, but there's a lot of little throwaway "strongest card" and "strongest servant" type lines that seem to suggest Rin is right. Of course it's also brought up that the specific template applied, outside of Berserker, is less important than the actual servant summoned; I think Rin mostly wants to get Saber as a point of pride. She does also seem to suggest that it's the hardest one to purposely summon. I also get the sense that Rin is more in the know than is implied in either Stay/Night or UBW, simply for the sake of not letting on about the big reveal in Heaven's Feel. Plus the Grail War wasn't imagined as anything balanced by its creators; they were all deliberately trying to give themselves as many advantages as they could while maintaining the appearance of some kind of balance so that other wizards would come join and feed the grail.

Really, I think Saber is just the Mario of servant classes.

As a side-note, I really love that a major driving force in the backstory to Fate is that the Einzberns came up with this Wizard Superbowl idea and then couldn't win the damn thing because they were nerds and the Grail War presumably attracted all the competitive jock wizards, so they finally just said **** it and hired their own Chad wizard. And then he screwed them.