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For those of you unaware of what the Fate/Stay Night Universe is, you probably won't care or will be unhelpful towards aiding me in this thread, but you're welcome to discover it and/or read the topic all the same! Random comments are alright too, though preferably helpful ones!
But, to get to the substance. Hello friends. I've been mulling this one over for a long time now, more than a year, and have been wanting to create a custom campaign inspired by the Visual Novel/Anime/Video Games that the Fate Universe, which is a part of the larger Nasuverse, and use the mechanics, ideas, and maybe characters of this mythologically inspired fiction and insert them into Pathfinder, which similarily is inspired by real world countries, myths, folklore, and legends. Seem to me the two would make a great marriage, eh?
Now, before anyone suggests to me that another system, such as the FATE game system or another might work better, I love pathfinder, and I'm using Pathfinder rules. In fact, after paying great attention to the Mythic rules, I believe that having Servant be Mythic characters is perhaps the best way to produce the awesome epic level prestige that is a Servant, without tearing asunder the space-time-continuum. Generally, I prefer to work within the rules or adapt existing concepts to my ends then build something COMPLETELY from scratch. I feel both cleverer and more organized when doing so. The fact that the Mythic system has six different paths that work for a variety of classes, many awesome, cheatish abilities that make sense for servants, and even have rules for Legendary Weapons (Hello Noble Phantasms~) makes me quite in love with them, even if I'm personally reluctant to ever dive into the madness that is Wrath of the Righteous.
Anyway, what I'm wanting to do specific is incorporate the Holy Grail War system of the Fate Universe and fit it into Golarion in a flavor satisfying way. Rather than changing Golarion to fit Fate necessarily, I wanna do vice versa. And this for me has proven surprisingly easy. Ancient artifacts capable of doing things on the level as the Fuyuki Holy Grail is fairly feasible, and I was actually thinking of convering the Holy Grail to a chalice made of part of the Starstone, and infused with the legacy left behind by the Fallen God Aroden. Any meteor capable of turning people into literal Gods must be capable of bringing back heroic badasses that are less than gods back from the grave in a pseudo spirit form, right? This parts open to change, as the object need not even be a cup or small, but I figured it'd be a way both to pay homage to the actual Holy Grail and pay respect to pathfinder's Fallen God of humanity.
In the terms of the Servants themselves, I haven't quite figured out how exactly I want their relationship to the ritual or artifact to be established, whether I want them all to have a Saber-esque relationship, willing lending their soul to their artifact when at Pharasma's gate so as to obtain a chance to accomplish some regret in their previous life, or to make them all forced into it, shoved into the role of a servant reluctantly like a still living tuna into a small tin can. I definitely don't wanna make the artifact itself evil like the Fuyuki Holy Grail becomes, but more of a neutral force. I'm not even sure if I want it to grant wishes, or for the Grail war to be a multiple contestant test of the star-stone. I'll probably put alot of early mystery into it, as I plan for the party members to stumble into it accidentally or without much planning or idea of what they're getting into.
But, I do know that I wanna go with 'Real' world heroes rather than using Golarion's own rich ones or making them up on the spot. Why? Well, partially its because I don't know seven heroes of different lands of Pathfinder that I would happen to like and all fit into the seven different classes. But also, because I like the mythological references of Fate, taking the original legends and spicing them up or twisting their flavor. As such, much like Golarion itself is heavily based on real world cultures, what I want to do is use unused (Or lightly used) Heroic figures of our world and place them within Golarion. I feel that using actual earth heroes will also make them more 'Real' and fearsome to my party of players, who often don't read as much as me into the Golarion universe. But Hercules? Even high school drop outs know about hercules for example. Creativity Liberty is the name of the game!
An example? Well, for example, if I wanted Siegfried as my Saber Class servant for my war, I'd want to place him most likely in the Land of the Linnorm Kings, a very much norse inspired region, and also fitting perfectly thematically with Siegfried who he himself was a dragon slayer who gained a form of immortality upon killing the great dragon Fafnir. But, I'd take it a step forward from their by altering his legend so as to make him have an impact on Golarion. Specifically? Easy. Siegfried was the FIRST Linnorm King in Golarion, the first of the Ulfen to slay a Linnorm, thus establishing the tradition, which, makes sense, given he's probably the real world inspiration for the idea in the first place! But, as you can see, its not hard to fit Earth world heroes into Golarion, which is why I aim to do that, while avoiding some of the more obvious or overused ones. (i.e. Arturia Saber)
So, clearly I've alot of ideas here right? I've very much got an idea of how I wanna go about it. But there's alot of rough edges and stuff I'm still mulling over or wanting to muse. And since I'm not a Golarion expert quite yet, there might be lands of cultures or figures within Golarion I know little about but much do much to add to my campaign. Oh, and for context, I will be starting it out in Taldor (Because, coooome oooon England is where the Holy Grail SHOULD start), but open to it spanning across the whole world. While I feel mythic rules goes leagues towards making Servants feel authentic to Golarion, I'm not sure on how else I should mechanically work them out. For example, Mana. I don't want to force every master to be a Mage for example, and even if I did, how would I represent mana? Pathfinder Magic is less point based and more spell slot based, and given that servants are mythic as is, I'm not sure I wanna have to force the master to give up their own abilities in combat. I do want to limit Servant functionality to some degree, at the very least to keep them from going all out all the time. Mythic Points are good for this, but I'm not sure if I should expand upon it or not.
Other stuff I'm mulling? Servants to a degree, although I've a good idea of the ones I'm leaning towards at the moment. I wanted to avoid ones already used in an adaption of Fate, but found Siegfried and Vlad the Impaler from the apocrypha novel too awesome not to use, especially since they won't be recognized by my party. And trust me, god KNOWS it was hard not to use original Fate Archer, though its becoming difficult. I swear, Archer and Assassin are the hardest to imagine heroes for, the former due to most archers not having much in ideas beyond shooting an arrow, the latter because assassins inherently tend to be subtle. (And yes, I am disregarding the "Only original assassins qualify" rule.) Input or ideas on how to incorporate nasuverse style play or themes also welcomed. I don't know when if ever I'm going to do this, but when I do, it SHALL be epic~
P.S. I thought Homebrew would make more sense for this than conversation, due to the fact that I'm not so much converting a single thing or even many things, as much as I'm taking a whole system, shoving it into Pathfinder, and then looking to make my OWN original story with it. (Which I'm not going into detail this moment, mwahahaahhaa.)
I highly approve of this thread, just wanted to say.
I assumed all the contestants in Fate/Stay series were summoners and their eidolons were the servants. Life link works well for that.
Dotted for mucho interest.
If summoner is of interest there's a supplementary thing called into the breach that give it an archetype called paracosmist , basically you get a single eidolon no other summons but said eidolon is much stronger smarter sect. It might work I haven't looked at in a while but I believe it feature a humanoid build for eidolons
I never assumed Archers to be individuals only with bows- Rather, I've found Archers with unique powers and worthy features for Archer Noble Phantasms are difficult to find/imagine. While of course, creative liberty as aformentioned is highly allowed for the scope of this, giving Oda Nobunaga a bow of Japan creation just because I can seems lazy, as opposed to finding a figure with a particularly more inventive or fascinating noble phantasm that doesn't ignore the source material.
Spoilered just to be safe.
Hm. Regarding "mana". Given the spell-slot system of Pathfinder, I'd probably say that the Master is going to have to have some sort of magical ability, even if it's only a few SLAs. Perhaps they lose the use of one spell of the highest level they can cast each day they maintain a bond to a Servant, and in exchange the Servant gains a bonus to attacks, weapon damage, AC, CMB/CMD, and saving throws equal to that spell slot. It might represent some of the problems various servants have had when paired with Masters who had less skill (e.g. Arturia with Shirou in original Fate; possibly the way Caster worked with her Assassin in original Fate as well). Still lets the Master function, but at reduced capacity. If all they have are SLAs, then all uses of their best SLA are lost and the bonus is halved.
For Noble Phantasms: just remember that not every Noble Phantasm was a direct named weapon. Berserker in Fate/Zero used whatever was at hand. The Berserker in Fate/Stay Night didn't use a weapon for his Noble PHantasm at all. And Gilgamesh, well...that's a lot of weapons. And Archer's another headache :)
Regarding Archers: I imagine just some research will help there. Sources of myths are easy to find, so it shouldn't be hard to find people to suit.
Rather create yet another topic, I decided to dig my old topic. It's been a long time, with life being quite a distraction. But! I'm still quite in love with this concept, and would love further input. I can imagine fates only grown in popularity with the UBW series.
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Mm, I know a little about the show, but I do have an interesting Golarion-Specific suggestion. I know that the characters were referred to as lancer, saber, etc.
A Golarion suggestion would go as follows = Cut the number of masters by 1. That leaves six. Now name them after the actual Mythic Paths. Heirophant, Archmage, Champion, Guardian, Marshal, Trickster.
Eh, it's all I got without knowing alot about the source material, but knowing more about golarion. In fact, with the Occult Adventures medium channeling "Heroes of the Past" with those names as well, it makes a bit of sense. Good luck on your campaign/conversion.
Okay, well as a huge Fate series (and Nasuverse in general) fan, I approve of this idea. As for mechanics, I think I have one or two ideas.
First, the world is a big place and just seven servants in the entire world limits things quite a lot. One concept I've used before when sketching out ideas for Fate was 49 servants, 7 of each class (seven sevens), spread all over the world. That gives a lot more material to work with and means that a party of 4-6 (the usual size I've experienced, maybe you're thinking of a smaller group) isn't going to be the only group in the world that has the majority of the power of the servants.
Second, let the servants and masters be built as separate characters, but with different build rules. For example, the master (the primary player character) is built say using 15-point buy at level 2 while the Servant (kind of a cohort/eidolon in this case) is built using 25-point buy at level 10 (or higher) with several mythic tiers. Then each player controls both. So I'm sure your wondering where mana or whatever comes in with this. Instead of using magic as the mana source for servants, what about using Mythic Power as the servant power source? Instead of the servant having their own mythic power, the master holds the mythic power (but can't use it fully on their own) and the servant's mythic powers (their strongest abilities) rely on the master giving them 'mana' to function. That way it represents the bond between the two, but both characters still have their class features and standard abilities that they can use in combat on their own so a master and a servant are both capable on their own, but they're stronger together. The Servant can only use their powers when the Master is alive and conscious to give them mana (Mythic Power) and the Master has a much stronger ally to keep them safe from powerful threats.
Gate of Dot-ylon.
Being a tsundere.