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Fate/Extra Battle System
Combat is carried out in six-move turns, with the core combat moves operating in a fashion similar to rock-paper-scissors; heavy Break attacks smash through defensive Guards, quick Attacks can strike a foe before they can land a Break, and a Guard can deflect a light Attack and allow the defender to retaliate. Successfully landing multiple damaging blows (not counting the trivial damage a successful Guard takes from an Attack)* increases the damage each move delivers, and delivering three blows in a row, as noted by the "chain counter", allows a combatant to use a powerful Extra Attack outside of the regular move order with no retaliation possible. Servants, and a select few monsters, may also use Skills, which can either provide a passive combat benefit or attack a foe directly, causing damage or inflicting a status ailment - or both, depending on the Skill in question. Offensive Skills override all other moves and the use of a Skill prevents a foe's offensive move from occuring (it does, however, also reset the chain counter of both combatants, for better or worse); if both combatants use an offensive Skill at the same time, the combatant with the higher Agility goes first, but both skills are used... assuming the slower combatant survives being hit. Passive Skills*, such as Caster's Spirit Theft, also occur before normal attacks, however using this kind of Skill leaves the user completely open to an Attack or a Break. Masters may also use Items or Code Cast spells (the Fate/Extra version of Magecraft, effectively), which occur before any other actions in a given move - if both Masters act in a given move, the Agility of the Servants again determine who acts first. Items almost universally provide restorative effects for a Servant, while Code Casts can vary in utility from healing to increasing or decreasing a parameter to interrupting and stunning a Servant using a Skill and more. Finally, under certain conditions Servants may utilize their Noble Phantasm fully - this counts as an enormous (and appropriately impressive, visually) attack which overrides all other moves and typically delivers devastating amounts of damage to the target.
Information is a key tool* in the Holy Grail War of Fate/Extra, and is the primary impetus for the "school" exploration section of the game; knowledge of your opponent results in being able to see several of their moves beforehand (and, crucially, full knowledge of an enemy Servant, including their true name, allows you to anticipate when a Noble Phantasm will be used and thus avoid getting obliterated by it). While information about the monsters simply comes from beating them repeatedly, knowledge of the enemy Masters and their Servants must come from a combination of learning about them in the "school" section and occasionally confronting them in the Arena. The exploration sections also advance the primary plot, and you have a private room within the school, allowing the Protagonist to spend time with their Servant and learn more about them. You can also speak with various other unnamed Masters participating in the Grail War, many having their own stories which range from the humorous to the tragic to the somewhat disturbing.
(Copied from the TYPE-MOON Wiki)
Notes:
Guard: Guard reduces the damage taken from any damage source, be it spells, attacks or even Noble Phantasms.
Passive Skills: Skills that only have an effect on the Servant, for example, a strength increasing spell.
Information is a key tool: Information is divided into 4 levels (1. Class 2/3. Skills/Abilities 4. True Name) which allows you to see a different amount of information regarding the enemy Servant. Knowing the true name of an enemy Servant does not necessarily mean you will know what effect his or her NP will have but you will be able to anticipate it.
The main benefit of this battle system is that information would play a very large role in battles whereas it only plays a very small role in the current system. It would encourage Masters to add information gathering abilities to their characters or make them avoid using or their NP (or powerful abilities) that could reveal their Servant's identity.
By simplifying the battle system a lot less calculations need to be done (which was a point that was criticized before) and battles won't last for several weeks as a Servant/Master pair with information has the upper hand in a battle versus a Servant/Master pair that has no information available about their opponents but the system also have some issues which I haven't been able to find proper solutions to:
1. Seeing actions is impossible in this format. It could be fixed by adding some Defects to Servants that force them to always use a certain action on a certain action box (for example Saber always uses Break as his sixth move). If someone has collected enough information about a Servant they will be aware of this Defect and they can use it to their advantage.
2. Masters will have a much smaller role in battles compared to the current system but it is also slightly more realistic. The only solution I have been able to come up with is to give Masters more actions (2 or 3 actions instead of 1) and more action types (such as a melee attack, firing a gun, etc). Confrontations between two Masters could play out the same as a confrontation between two Servants so they would get 6 actions too.
Servants will also not be able to attack Masters as long as their Servant is present (exceptions such as sneak attacks still apply) and this would solve the issue of Servants nuking Masters for an easy win (I am to blame for this).
Summoning your own Servants
By picking a specific relic that belongs to a Heroic Spirit you can summon that Heroic Spirit (except any that have already been summoned). Picking a lesser known, and slightly weaker as a consequence, Heroic Spirit would have an inherent advantage to it: information would be harder to gather on that Heroic Spirit as opposed to summoning a very well known, but stronger than a lesser known one which would make gathering information easier due to their legacy (one example would be Arturia where the sword reveals her true name). As most Servants can fit into multiple classes it should be impossible to pick what class they take unless you spend Master CP on it.
The only problem with this suggestion would be that GMs cannot create the Servants beforehand but if players decide on a relic before they create their character (and make it impossible to change) the Servants could be readied in a timely manner as the character creation period usually lasts over two weeks.
Opinions, suggestions and criticism is welcome. Please do not forget that these are merely suggestions.
Combat is carried out in six-move turns, with the core combat moves operating in a fashion similar to rock-paper-scissors; heavy Break attacks smash through defensive Guards, quick Attacks can strike a foe before they can land a Break, and a Guard can deflect a light Attack and allow the defender to retaliate. Successfully landing multiple damaging blows (not counting the trivial damage a successful Guard takes from an Attack)* increases the damage each move delivers, and delivering three blows in a row, as noted by the "chain counter", allows a combatant to use a powerful Extra Attack outside of the regular move order with no retaliation possible. Servants, and a select few monsters, may also use Skills, which can either provide a passive combat benefit or attack a foe directly, causing damage or inflicting a status ailment - or both, depending on the Skill in question. Offensive Skills override all other moves and the use of a Skill prevents a foe's offensive move from occuring (it does, however, also reset the chain counter of both combatants, for better or worse); if both combatants use an offensive Skill at the same time, the combatant with the higher Agility goes first, but both skills are used... assuming the slower combatant survives being hit. Passive Skills*, such as Caster's Spirit Theft, also occur before normal attacks, however using this kind of Skill leaves the user completely open to an Attack or a Break. Masters may also use Items or Code Cast spells (the Fate/Extra version of Magecraft, effectively), which occur before any other actions in a given move - if both Masters act in a given move, the Agility of the Servants again determine who acts first. Items almost universally provide restorative effects for a Servant, while Code Casts can vary in utility from healing to increasing or decreasing a parameter to interrupting and stunning a Servant using a Skill and more. Finally, under certain conditions Servants may utilize their Noble Phantasm fully - this counts as an enormous (and appropriately impressive, visually) attack which overrides all other moves and typically delivers devastating amounts of damage to the target.
Information is a key tool* in the Holy Grail War of Fate/Extra, and is the primary impetus for the "school" exploration section of the game; knowledge of your opponent results in being able to see several of their moves beforehand (and, crucially, full knowledge of an enemy Servant, including their true name, allows you to anticipate when a Noble Phantasm will be used and thus avoid getting obliterated by it). While information about the monsters simply comes from beating them repeatedly, knowledge of the enemy Masters and their Servants must come from a combination of learning about them in the "school" section and occasionally confronting them in the Arena. The exploration sections also advance the primary plot, and you have a private room within the school, allowing the Protagonist to spend time with their Servant and learn more about them. You can also speak with various other unnamed Masters participating in the Grail War, many having their own stories which range from the humorous to the tragic to the somewhat disturbing.
(Copied from the TYPE-MOON Wiki)
Notes:
Guard: Guard reduces the damage taken from any damage source, be it spells, attacks or even Noble Phantasms.
Passive Skills: Skills that only have an effect on the Servant, for example, a strength increasing spell.
Information is a key tool: Information is divided into 4 levels (1. Class 2/3. Skills/Abilities 4. True Name) which allows you to see a different amount of information regarding the enemy Servant. Knowing the true name of an enemy Servant does not necessarily mean you will know what effect his or her NP will have but you will be able to anticipate it.
The main benefit of this battle system is that information would play a very large role in battles whereas it only plays a very small role in the current system. It would encourage Masters to add information gathering abilities to their characters or make them avoid using or their NP (or powerful abilities) that could reveal their Servant's identity.
By simplifying the battle system a lot less calculations need to be done (which was a point that was criticized before) and battles won't last for several weeks as a Servant/Master pair with information has the upper hand in a battle versus a Servant/Master pair that has no information available about their opponents but the system also have some issues which I haven't been able to find proper solutions to:
1. Seeing actions is impossible in this format. It could be fixed by adding some Defects to Servants that force them to always use a certain action on a certain action box (for example Saber always uses Break as his sixth move). If someone has collected enough information about a Servant they will be aware of this Defect and they can use it to their advantage.
2. Masters will have a much smaller role in battles compared to the current system but it is also slightly more realistic. The only solution I have been able to come up with is to give Masters more actions (2 or 3 actions instead of 1) and more action types (such as a melee attack, firing a gun, etc). Confrontations between two Masters could play out the same as a confrontation between two Servants so they would get 6 actions too.
Servants will also not be able to attack Masters as long as their Servant is present (exceptions such as sneak attacks still apply) and this would solve the issue of Servants nuking Masters for an easy win (I am to blame for this).
Summoning your own Servants
By picking a specific relic that belongs to a Heroic Spirit you can summon that Heroic Spirit (except any that have already been summoned). Picking a lesser known, and slightly weaker as a consequence, Heroic Spirit would have an inherent advantage to it: information would be harder to gather on that Heroic Spirit as opposed to summoning a very well known, but stronger than a lesser known one which would make gathering information easier due to their legacy (one example would be Arturia where the sword reveals her true name). As most Servants can fit into multiple classes it should be impossible to pick what class they take unless you spend Master CP on it.
The only problem with this suggestion would be that GMs cannot create the Servants beforehand but if players decide on a relic before they create their character (and make it impossible to change) the Servants could be readied in a timely manner as the character creation period usually lasts over two weeks.
Opinions, suggestions and criticism is welcome. Please do not forget that these are merely suggestions.
