

Throughout the fate universe, there are many strong servants. And one of them
is Karna, who is said by Nasu to be on par with Gilgamesh.

But it is a fact that he consumes so much mana that an ordinary master can't
handle it. A basic mage can't even keep his mana burst(flames) activated
continuously for 10 seconds. Why does this happen?

The reason I'm asking this is simple. We have Gilgamesh, who uses thousands of
noble phantasms (and that is his main offence) and still doesn't drain his
master. This one may not seem like a good example (since he uses hate of
Babylon) so let's look at another case;

Artoria(saber). She was summoned in fuyuki ALIVE. She is different from other
servants this way. Since she was summoned like this and not in a servant
container as how it should be, she had no choice but to use mana burst to
match in strength with other servants. And even though she was using mana
burst again and again, Shirou could handle it.

Why is it like this? Does this mean that Karna alone is like this? Will his
prana consumption decrease if he summoned in archer or rider class?


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fate-series fate-apocrypha
Karna's prana consumption


Gilgamesh is not using hundreds of NPs. He's using the Gate of Babylon, just
opening a portal, shooting a projectile and then retrieving it, it's actually
very cost effective. The only weapons he can actually release their True Names
are Ea and Enkidu.

Source from Fate Complete Material III, on Gilgamesh: Tactics

> Gilgamesh battles by shooting the originals of all Noble Phantasms like
> bullets via Gate of Babylon. The tactic yields excellent destructive power
> to magic energy efficiency. Since every Noble Phantasm is a bullet, the real
> magical energy used is merely the activation cost of Gate of Babylon.
> Because he possesses the originals of all Noble Phantasms, he can assault
> the weakness of any Servants. As a result, Gilgamesh has the advantage over
> most of the Servants in combat.

Artoria doesn't even have a proper path with Shirou, she's using her own prana
reserves to use her skills. So no, Shirou is not sustaining her Mana Bursts.

Karna's Mana Burst (Flame) is just very high-maintenance. Extremely powerful
as well, the dude is a fucking demigod, easily Heracles tier, who also has
terrible prana consumption, Illya is probably the only one who could sustain
Karna, much like she did with Herc. This last bit is pure speculation.


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Paulnamid's answer covers your mistake about Gilgamesh, and briefly mentions
what you've got wrong about Artoria. But to go into more detail on Artoria...

Artoria has the [heart of a
dragon](https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/Artoria_Pendragon_\(Saber\)#Magic_Core).
Or, depending on who you ask, her heart _is_ a dragon. She can as such store
and produce massive amounts of prana all on her own, and does so as naturally
as (and via) breathing. If a mage is a minor machine at this, she's a massive
factory. The problem for her is that she needs something of a starter supply
to activate the core, and it's this she was originally in short supply of in
F/SN. She starts out with _no_ supply of energy from Shirou, at all. So
there's no issue with Shirou withstanding her Mana Bursts, as he was never
involved in that in any way. She was initially relying entirely on her stored
reserves, and used up something like a fifth of what she started with in her
first encounter with Berserker. But eventually, in the suitable route, Shirou
gets his circuits connected to Artoria's with Rin's help, and her draconic
magic core activates (well enough for her to achieve what she does for the
rest of the war, anyway)*. Depending on which version of the story you have
digested, you might see Shirou encounter a dragon in this sequence, and the
core light up with a prismatic light as it activates with Shirou's energy.
After this point, Shirou is essentially only providing the fuel necessary to
keep Artoria's core running, and the core's production covers her mana
burst.**

The distinction then is that, as a Servant, Karna has no intrinsic ability to
produce his own prana supply, at least not at the level necessary to sustain
everything he can do. Artoria, however, has a prana factory intrinsic to her
very being (though it may need a jump start).

*In the Unlimited Blade Works route, Shirou is instead connected to Rin, who has a heart of dolphins or something. Rin then fuels both Artoria and Shirou.

**You may be asking yourself, "why doesn't Artoria just feed her own core the
energy needed to kickstart it? She's got a lot more than Shirou does for most
of this time." The answer there doesn't seem to get spelled out as explicitly,
but the short of the matter is that she was never trained in any of the
magecraft arts, and she has no real understanding about how to use her core
and her absolutely amazing draconic magic circuits properly. [But if she had
been...](https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/Artoria_\(Caster\)) So she has
difficulties really activating the core on her own, and it's the direct hookup
of her core to Shirou's supply that enables it to finally get going.


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