

In Fate, can a Master summon an Extra Class Servant during a Holy Grail War,
or under any circumstances?

For example, one Master summons Jeanne of the Ruler Class, and another Master
summons Edmond Dantes of the Avenger Class. Can that happen?


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2019-01-30T05:37:01.953
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fate-series
In Fate, can a Master summon an Extra Class Servant during a Holy Grail War, or under any circumstances?


If I remember correctly, in the Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night universes,
Avenger Angra Mainyu was summoned by the Einzbern in the third Holy Grail War
instead of a Berserker. This would imply that it is technically possible to
summon an Extra Class Servant during a standard Holy Grail War following the
Fuyuki formula.


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2019-01-30T18:58:10.813
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## All rules are made to be bent, broken, and superseded

This is kind of the fundamental thrust of the Fate series (or more broadly,
the "Nasuverse"). Rules are more like guidelines and suggestions. Like if we
were going to play a game to settle a dispute, and I put everything for
Connect Four on a table, but you were like "first one to toss a token onto
their head wins!" The suggestion was that we play Connect Four, but you took
what was available and made it into what you could.

The Holy grail war has a system of rules and functions that it ideally
operates by, but every war becomes about who can manipulate and break the
rules the best. In Fate/Zero, Melloi splits the command seals and energy
burden between himself and his wife, respectively. In the third war the
Einzberns manipulate the system to summon an Avenger, thinking it'll assure
them victory (in the alternate timeline of Apocrypha, they summon a Ruler
instead). In the same war another team uses their special rule-breaking crest
to basically have two masters with their own copy of a servant. In Fate/Stay
Night Caster exploits the system to become a master herself, create a fake
Assassin that defied the normal rules for an Assassin, and to spawn camp the
lesser grail. She even has a Noble Phantasm called "Rule Breaker" that pretty
much does exactly what it says. A reality marble, like Unlimited Blade Works,
explicitly involves the user rejecting reality and substituting their own. In
Fate/Apocrypha the multi-team grail war is activated by Clock Tower members
after they infiltrate the base of those who had stolen the Greater Grail; it
wouldn't normally have happened. Heck, even the existence of the Greater
Grail, and its true purpose, was originally only meant to be known to the
three houses that developed the idea, with every other participant intended to
be under-informed schmucks that were supposed to be easily dispatched because
they didn't have the advantages of the Makiris, Tohsakas, and Einzberns.

Even the combat system devolves into who can break the rules better. An
unstoppable projectile meets an impenetrable shield...what happens? Well, that
can literally happen in this setting, and there's an answer to it, and it
mostly depends on the level of their divine mysteries and their compatibility.
If this shield specifically did, or was crafted to, stop the unstoppable
projectile in question in myth, then it'll easily do so here. If the user of
the projectile was cursed to have his attack blocked by someone of a certain
lineage, then if the shield's user is of that lineage then it will win (the
shield might not even need to be otherwise "impenetrable"). But a barely known
shield on a minor hero with no relation to the well-known attacker with a
well-known spear will be shot through (weak mystery vs strong mystery). In
Fate/Stay night this exact situation occurs in one route, resulting in a near
draw (but advantage to the attacker). In Apocrypha we see that the nigh-total
immunity of Siegfried can be punched through by attacks with sufficient divine
mystery relative to that of his own protection, and attacks by heroes or
weapons with a legend specifically for slaying dragons will be highly
effective against him. Several of the main characters of Apocrypha are in fact
intrinsically warping and defying the rules, both of the Grail War and
basically existence itself.

So, sure, all sorts of things could be summoned, provided the Masters and
others involved are sufficiently skilled and clever enough to manipulate and
break things in the right way to make it happen. And in Apocrypha there are in
fact multiple Extra Class servants active at once.


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2019-10-28T14:00:27.397
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No, it was stated that the Einzbern's were only able to summon those extra
class servants (avenger Angra or ruler Amakusa) because they were one of the
families to create the holy grail war system, so they were able to interfere
with the system to allow the ruler and avenger class to be summoned, but only
by them who knew how to and had the authority over the system to do so.

Therefore if any other master attempted to summon an extra class servant they
would not be able to because of the rules of the holy grail. So no, in a holy
grail war, a master can not just summon those extra class servants.


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2020-05-20T06:09:15.620
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For the first part of your question the answer for most Masters would be a no.
The Fuyuki Holy Grail Wars were built to have one Servant each of the seven
standard classes be summoned but since the Einzberns were part of it's
creation they can to an extent go "fwahahahha I am the rules" and were able to
summon an Avenger/Ruler class instead while Medea's skill at magecraft and
older mages generally being far superior to modern ones was able to bend the
rules enough to add Sasaki Kojirou albeit by having to bind him to specific
location.

The Great Holy Grail War is an extension of this system with two of each
standard class being summoned by Masters.

Outside of a Holy Grail War summoning a Servant is nigh on impossible but if
achieved would not be bound by class restrictions as demonstrated by the Faker
class Servant summoned by Doctor Heartless in Lord El-Melloi II Case Files
using an imitation of the Holy Grail.

Fate/Grand Order also demonstrates this as both the Chaldea summoning system
and the Grails found within singularities are capable of summoning Extra class
Servants just as easily as any other.


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