Thinking on how to do Saber(Arturia Pendragon) of Fate/Stay-Night and Fate Zero.

Thinking on how to do Saber(Arturia Pendragon) of Fate/Stay-Night and Fate Zero.

She’s the King Arthur of her universe and lived as a man for most of her life. Helped by the magic that kept her looking young and the fact she mostly was seen in armor or bulky robes. At the end of her life she made a deal with one of the spirit of Nan’s collective will to survive to serve as an eternal spirit guardian if she was given the chance to correct the tragedy her kingdom ended with. That was how she came to be one of the Heroic Spirits available to summon for the Grail Wars. Unlike the other spirits however, she is continually pulled forward from that last point of her life where she lies dying. Her body is repaired and she still has a lot of the power of a heroic spirit but can’t do things like become a total spirit. Also she’s not a copy of the original heroic spirit (the world refuses to risk the loss of the actual spirits so it only sends out copies of the heroes from those within the Throne of Heroes) she is the original. If she ever manages to win a Grail War and realize her wish then her deal with Alaya will complete and she’ll become a counter guardian (similar to be not quite the same as a heroic spirit).

I could do her either as a Chosen, an Exile or a Divine. If I wanted to stretch and deal with the hate-corrupted Saber Alter from one timeline I could even go monstrous. I think the Exile presents the best match for what I’m thinking.

Charm -1, Cool +2, Sharp +1, Tough +2, Weird +0

Technically, Saber has the heart of a dragon due to the magics involved in her conception so she could be a great magus but she has never showed an interest in that. Her high power levels show in her monstrous resistance to magic and in her fighting style. So Weird +0, Tough +2, and Cool +2 since that is used for Act Under Pressure. She is also supposed to have exceptional Charisma, but functionally she is rather demanding and occasionally awkward she also developed a detached attitude that eventually caused trouble in her reign. So Charm -1. She was an intelligent general and leader though so Sharp +1.

The how she got there is easy, she was summoned by the Master-Servant ritual.

For Moves she gets Warrior and Immortal Name.

For weapons she gets Big Sword, Spear and Martial Arts. (There are actually at least three swords, one spear and one witch-slaying knife connected to Arthur in RL. In F/SN only Excalibur and Caliburn come into play and Caliburn was broken in the course of her normal life.

If I were to Advance her I’d add Hearty Constitution and Learned from Exile, Smite from Divine and Immortal from Monstrous.

Ideally she would get Advanced Kick Some Ass, Advanced Use Magic (representing Heroic Spirit weirdness and Exaclibur’s powers rather than actual spell casting), Advanced Act Under Pressure and Advanced Protect Other.

Her use of Excalibur as an anti-fortresss level phantasm would be a use magic move. I know it seems odd to relegate something she used to kill what was implied to be Cthulhu to use magic, but in the stories it is usually accompanied by a high cost of mana or requiring her to be have both hands and some time to set it up.

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For more fun, plotting her back story and role in F/N

Arturia begins life raised as the brother and squire of Sir Kay but is made aware of her heritage before the prophecy of the Sword in the Stone is made public.

Then she goes to pull the sword out of the stone knowing it is meant for her. Merlin appears and warns her to think it through and that she would be abandoning her humanity to pull the sword out. She accepts that with the idea that a king must not show human emotion and that she had been raised since a child to accept that she would have to conceal her gender and always act the proper king.

At this point she is the Chosen.

Stats:

Charm +1, Cool +2, Sharp +1, Tough +1, Weird -1

Moves – Destiny’s Plaything, I’m Here for a Reason, Dutiful

Heroic Fate: Sacrifice, Mystical Inheritance

Heroic Doom: No Normal Life, Treachery

Caliburn: Handle, Artifact, Heavy Blade, 3 Harm Hand Balanced, Magic

Over the course of her early adventures she takes the following Improvements:

Ally (Adoptive Brother Sir Kay – Confidant)

Tough +1 (+2)

Cool +1 (+3)

Devastating

Resilience

Then Caliburn is broken and she gains the replacement in the form of Excalibur and its sheath Avalon.

For Avalon she takes Immortal (Monstrous)

For Excalibur (and the development of her mana-driven swordsmanship) she takes Advanced Kick Some Ass and Advanced Use Magic and uses the same weapon stats as Caliburn

She also takes +1 Charm (+2)

Soon after gaining Excalibur she decides to switch over to the Leader playbook (which I need to find a picture I have rights to for and put on my drivethrurpg page currently its unavailable).

She has accomplished the unification of Britain and so her destiny is played out and she loses the Destiny’s Plaything and I’m Here For a Reason moves from Chosen. However, she remains Dutiful, Devastating, Resilient and Immortal.

For Leader she gains the following moves:

At My Command, Inner Circle, Motto

Her recruitment method is a Cause.

As a strength her minions have great Battle Experience

As a flaw her minions have poor Unity and there are many factions. (This is a morphing of her Treachery Chosen doom)

Her Kingdom has a Rigid and Specific Hierarchy and her followers have High Personal Initiative.

Her item of authority is the sword Clarent (2 harm hand messy authority)

Mordred (a homonculus cloned from her) is already in the Round Table at this point but has been rejected by her “father” and has become bitter.

As improvements during her kingship she takes:

+1 At My Command Hold per session

+1 type of Minion, her second recruitment model is Reputation

Lead from the Front

Tough +1 (+3)

Smite (Divine Move)

However, through some event, she loses Charm 2 (taking her to 0) due to being perceived as lacking human emotions.

Then comes the Guinevere and Lancelot affair followed by civil unrest and the Battle of Camlann where she kills Mordred with Rhongomyniad (The Spear that Shines to the Ends of the Earth) and is dealt a critical blow herself.

She looks about and sees the despair and devastation that afflicts her kingdom and blames herself. She makes a deal with the World (specifically, Alaya…humanity’s will to survive) to become a Counter Guardian if the timeline can be altered so that someone else took up Excalibur who would not lead Britain to this chaos.

Since the deal is not complete until the wish is granted, Alaya causes her to be eligible for the Grail War allowing her to be called an infinite number of times to an infinite number of Grail Wars across alternate timelines.

She is first canonically called to battle in the Fourth Grail War by Emiya Kiritsugu with whom she has a conflict of personality.

Her new playbook is Divine and she keeps a great amount of her power due to the fact that Kiritsugu’s innate mana fuels her quite well.

As the Divine She loses: At My Command, Inner Circle, Motto, Lead from the Front, all her minions, her ally sir Kay

She keeps: Dutiful, Devastating, Resilience, Immortal, Smite, Advanced Kick Some Ass, Advanced Use Magic (which allows her to do various Heroic Spirit things like supernaturally upgrade a motorcycle so that it can handle her level of riding skill without falling apart)

Smite is a Divine move already so she takes two more Divine moves (effectively she “lost” Smite and then took it as one of her base three Divine moves).

She takes Soothe and Cast Out Evil

Her mission is to obey her Master and to acquire the Grail so that both her and Master’s wishes might be enacted.

Over the course of the series she gains:

+1 Weird (0) (because of Heroic Spirit weirdness…even though she’s not a conventional Heroic Spirit)

+1 Sharp (2) (because of dealing with Kiritsugu’s tactics)

+1 Charm (1) (due to some of the social matters she involves herself in and recovering some emotions)

Never Again (Wronged)

Suspicious Mind (Flake)

Then Fate/Zero ends and she is commanded to destroy the grail.

Ten years later, she comes back summoned accidentally by Emiya Shirou. Due to Shirou’s low mana and the improper nature of the summons as well as the amount of betrayal and psychological trauma she suffered, she comes back as the Exile described above at at base starting levels and Fate/Stay Night begins.