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In the Fate universe, is there a reason why the Servants summoned in each Holy
Grail War belong to different classes?

Using relics and additional incantations during the summoning ritual, Masters
have some degree of control over the Class (e.g. Matou Kariya's additional
incantations to choose the Berserker Class) and exact identity of the Servant.

What would happen if two Masters both tried the same Class using an
incantation (e.g., Berserker), or even used (part of) the same relic to summon
the same Servant? For example:

> What would happen if Waver Velvet had only stolen part of Rider's (Iskandar)
> cloak, unbeknownst to Kayneth Archibald, and both Masters tried to summon
> Rider?


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fate-zero fate-stay-night
Why do the summoned Servants all belong to different classes?


I think you answered this yourself:

> Using relics and additional incantations during the summoning ritual,
> Masters have some degree of control over the Class

The keyword here is "some". The Servants are summoned by the Grail, even
though the Masters have some sort of control of what they are trying to
summon. [This wiki](http://typemoon.wikia.com/wiki/Servant#Classification)
states (it has a reference too, but the reference is in Japanese):

> The Three Knight classes are the only Servants who will definitely be
> summoned according to the framework of the Holy Grail War, allowing for
> variation in the rest of the classes. More than one version of the same
> class cannot be summoned, even if all the Masters were to use the variation
> in the summoning chant to get a Berserker-class Servant.

So apparently in this case, the Grail will summon a Servant based on it's
compatibility with the concrete Master, much as it has happened with

> Caster's master Ryuunosuke Uryuu


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Whoever summoned a class first will get it for certain. If two Masters tried
to get Saber, whoever summoned it first would get it and the other would get
the hero their catalyst would summon in another role. To give an in-universe
example: Gilles de Rail (Caster) was summoned as his weakest possible class in
his weakest state: after the death of Jeanne D´arc where he was a deranged
serial killer who delved into magic. Had Ryounosuke summoned Gilles earlier,
he would´ve most likely gotten him as a Saber or Rider, the two classes he
belongs to the best.

There´s never really a reason given as to why classes exist. The best answer I
can give you is variety in combatants. If all 7 masters summoned a Hassan
Sabbah (Assassin), the show would honestly suck.


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The Servant System is a ritual with the purpose of summonning 7 [Grand
Servants](http://typemoon.wikia.com/wiki/Servant#Grand) in order to protect
mankind from being wiped out, these are the 7 greatest heroes belonging into
each of the classes and they are summoned in their strongest form, in their
prime, as recorded in the Throne of Heroes. This is a ritual done by the
collective unconciousness of humanity, Alaya, and draws power from the Root
itself, beyond human comprehension. Then the Makiri (Matou) family designed
the Servant summoning ritual for their Holy Grail War in imitation of this
Grand Servant ritual, but the summoned Heroic Spirits are sort of shackled by
the Classes in which they are materialized, so they are not the full forms of
the Servants. For example, Artoria when summoned to the Saber class has no
access to her Holy Lance Rhongomyniad, and if she's summoned as Lancer she
doesn't have Excalibur. So the Class restrictions as are seen in Fate/stay
night are completely due to it being an imitation of another higher ritual.

On the other hand there are instances of 2 Servants of the same class being
summoned. In the 3rd HGW, The Edelfelt sisters summoned 2 aspects of a single
Saber Servant, so there were 2 Sabers during that war, but it had more to do
with their family Magic Trait, Ore Scales, so it was a very unusual situation.


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