The Type-Moon Miscellaneous Thoughts Thread

[Skull]

If you had to make a normal Moriarty Servant without a Phantom fused with him, what class would you say? My mind defaults to Caster just because it's kind of become the "smart guys" class, but without saying Fate Moriarty was a mage I don't know what he could possibly have to qualify as Caster.

Assassin. He organises the deaths of several people and even tries to (unsuccessfully) assassinate Sherlock Holmes himself.

[Reign]

TBH it depends on what you'd give him as NP anyway.

Something that's like a counterpart of Elementary, My Dear would be cool. A conceptual way to help perform crimes.

[pinetree]

Avenger, definitely. It fits him perfectly because Ruler fits Holmes perfectly. Assassin if you want to go for a standard Class.

[Byegod]

Honestly I feel like I would dislike 'there weird when we first see them' less if we at least got a sheet that showed there normal form.

Then again fgo sheets arent that great and weird as the standard is also a thing with odysseus.

[RoydGolden]

Avenger, naturally. The evilest of evils.

TBH it depends on what you'd give him as NP anyway.

I considered writing a Moriarty sheet once (before GO's take on him debuted) and I probably would've given him a Natural Born Killers-like NP that lets him disguise himself as any of the possible identities of Moriarty in pop-culture, and another NP that lets him recruit others into his crime-network, turning them into low-grade Servants whose eyes he can also scry through. Giving him an NP based on Asimov's story about him trying to destroy earth was actually a clever idea, but it ended up as mostly a generic big beam like so many NPs, and the coffin-gun (while cool) didn't fit Moriarty at all. Class-wise Assassin would be the most fitting, as Skull suggested.

[LJ3]

So whats everyones favorite NP? or NPs

Can be for any reason honestly, aesthetic, affect, history ect.

Kazikeli is up there, LoD is as well, balmung i like aesthetically though it being another beam sword is eh.

You can also say what NPs you hate as well

One example I would always champion of something in legend being presented through the lens of Fate as Noble Phantasm is Rho Aias. It's a very beautiful way to show that connection of Ajax with the flower.

[SpoonyViking]

I like Excalibur, Gáe Bolg and God Hand very much because they're interesting takes (God Hand especially) on actual legendary feats by those characters, though I'd knock several points from Excalibur for spawning a boatload of bland sword beams, and a few more from Gáe Bolg for being so constrained by the narrative. My favourite is probably UBW, though, for concept, theme, and coolness factor.

One which I don't hate, far from it, but feel very ambivalent toward is Wicker Man. On the one hand, it summons a giant made of fire, which is very cool! On the other, it's as generic an NP as could possibly be and reflects absolutely nothing at all of Cú Chulainn himself.

[Comun]

So whats everyones favorite NP? or NPs

Can be for any reason honestly, aesthetic, affect, history ect.

By history, I'd say Astrapste Argo.

By effects, Stella, Nightingale Pledge and Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine.

By serious FGO animation, The Dynamics of an Asteroid, Maha Pralaya, Genji Monogatari - Aoi - Mononoke, and again, Nightingale Pledge.

By meme FGO animation, Cursed Cupid Cleanser, and again, Astrapste Argo.

If you had to make a normal Moriarty Servant without a Phantom fused with him, what class would you say? My mind defaults to Caster just because it's kind of become the "smart guys" class, but without saying Fate Moriarty was a mage I don't know what he could possibly have to qualify as Caster.

He's a mathematician. He's as qualified as Babbage and Archimedes. And there's him directly saying that he'd be a Caster if weren't for max.

[Dullahan]

delusional heartbeat is bullshit, but it's cool

[Deathhappens]

Visually and as part of a narrative, Unlimited Blade Works and Ionian Hetairoi are both amazing. They're unique, they inspire wonder even in other Servants, and they're literally expressions of a part of their owner's soul given form. There are some NPs I really like conceptually, but have never seen represented well visually (like La Pucelle, Stella, or Kenran Makai Nichirinjou) and some that I like visually but don't really get in practical terms (Qlippoth Rhizome, Twinmyniad Disaster, Edin Shuqra Quasar). Still, if I had to pick some dark horses I'd say Shinpen Kidoku and Heaven's Hole.Just like their owners they're stylish yet manage to toe the line between 'sensual' and 'terrifying'.

[Spartacus]

I personally love Uraeus Astrape. Some famous figures didn't have an obvious feats and items to be chosen as Noble Phantasm, Cleopatra is one of them, yet it managed to capture what the story of Cleopatra is all about into cool looking flaming snek.

[Byegod]

Honestly vlad still represents some of the best 'feat and folklore turned into nps' that they dont really do much anymore.

A NP im two minds about is odysseus, i legitimately hate its a mecha, but it also looks cool..., Like if it was just LB odysseus instead of 'mecha memes modify the OG" than i think i would hate it far less

I guess another NP i hate is ozy's, I understand where it comes from but it legit fucks over most egyptian myth or historical servants by making it a ozy GoB

[Holiday]

My favorites are mostly still the original NPs:

• I think Avalon is a really cool NP that gets slept on a lot. It takes one of the most iconic aspects of the Arthurian mythos—Arthur doesn't actually die at the end, he gets spirited away to a distant utopia and he'll come back one day, once and future king and all that—and turns it into a shounen power. It's as overpowered as King Arthur's best NP should be, but it also feels totally on point in terms of flavor. (Plus, it's cool to have an NP which embodies the old adage that "the best defense is not being there".)
• Gáe Bolg is kinda bullshit but also kinda cool. Causality reversal is at least a more novel take on "my attack never misses" than it just being another homing missile.
• UBW is another NP that's cool mechanically but also knocks it out of the park in terms of flavor. "NPs symbolize a hero's legend" is such a ripe premise for meta commentary on the nature of heroism, and UBW takes full advantage of that. The fake hero with borrowed ideals doesn't have his own NP, but he can make hollow and degraded copies of the NPs of others? It's beautiful in its simplicity.
• As several others have mentioned, God Hand is awesome. Great flavor, super powerful, captures everything that Heracles should be.
• I'm kinda on the fence about GOB. On the one hand, I do like how it was used in F/sn. Like UBW, it leans into the meta angle—Gil is the original hero, so he has the originals of all the NPs. I also like how UBW and GOB are both very thematically on-point on their own, but also interact with one another in a really satisfying way. However, I feel like subsequent works have just wanked GOB more and more to the point that it's no longer just a treasury filled with all the weapons, it's now a Doraemon pouch from which Gil can pull hot springs and nuclear submarines and all manner of bullshit. Even holding back Ea, it's no longer plausible for him to have lost against Shirou anymore given all the stupid nonsense he can pull out of GOB these days.
• If I have to mention a non-F/sn NP I like, I guess I'll pick Ionioi Hetairoi. Same thing as I've said about a lot of these—cool shounen power mechanically, but also the perfect fit for its user in terms of flavor.

[Comun]

On a related note, I have a feeling I would really like Per Aspera Ad Astra if I actually knew what it did.

[Spartacus]

Hmm if about the OG I will go with Avalon too.

[SeiKeo]

God Hand > Delusional Heartbeat > Gate of Babylon > Tsubame Gaeshi > Bellerophon > Gáe Bolg > Excalibur > UBW > Rule Breaker

[LeadDemon]

For me, the ways I look at an NP are (a) if I just think it's cool/interesting in its own right, (b) if I think it's a reasonable way of comporting the legend/feat/item in question into the setting, and (c) if I think it slots in with the rest of the Servant's kit to give the idea of this cohesive whole, where you have the Servant's sheet basically telling a story about how they are. That doesn't mean something's gotta excel in all three for me to like it, but I guess that's kinda how I break it down. Obviously those categories can't apply across the board given the quirks of certain Servants, though.

I think something like God Hand meets all three categories really handily and is the gold standard from the FSN cast. It's rad, adapts the Twelve Labors without the bloat of Alkeides in a way that feels organic, and interlocks incredibly well with the rest of Herc's kit so that just by looking at the guy's stat sheet, even with how simple it ultimately is, you get this feeling of him as this unstoppable, persevering force. The mechanics, the character, and the real life legend all work together, basically.

I Stan for Herc's Kit's Design for a Bit

So, when you look at just his skills, and pretend you don't know whose sheet it is, it doesn't seem like anything special. "Normal" levels of Mad Enhancement for the Class Skill, alright, sure, that's as expected. Bravery, Divinity, Eye of the Mind, and Battle Continuation? None of those are really standout personalized skills, they're all pretty generic. Look at fanmade original Servants and you'll see those as some of the most common ones people put on them. Not to say that they're bad, but without something else there, they feel kind of generic.


Then you see God Hand, and everything immediately slots together. Bravery means you can't take this guy down mentally, you need to actually kill him. Eye of the Mind means fighting him is going to be a hassle. Battle Continuation means even if you chop an arm off, he'll keep coming- it'll be really hard to kill him. And then God Hand takes everything about that flowchart and compounds it. The feedback loop that God Hand and Battle Continuation have together is great. It's not that you have his skills and then you have God Hand, and they work in their own worlds, like if you have a Servant whose skills are all about combat and then they have a beamsword as their trump card. God Hand is a factor that meshes with and amplifies all of the other facets of his kit, they all work together as a cohesive whole where every part of his kit makes the other parts better. It's a set of abilities that makes him the king of attrition battles.


And then you think about the flavor of it, and realize who this character is, and it gets so much better. This is the aspect of Heracles as the 'raging destroyer', a razor-focused beatstick who doesn't use tactics or techniques because he doesn't need them. At the same time, it's reflective of the perseverance that permeates his legend as a whole. Every time you down him, he's getting back up, he's learning, he's becoming stronger. It's honestly really great.


Then you look back at his kit and you realize that all of this was expressed with one Noble Phantasm and three very basic Personal Skills. There's no bloat where you have absurd numbers of skills or NPs, and (while there's nothing wrong with coming up with original or more personalized skills when designing Servants by any means) there isn't any need to make some special crazy out-there skill like "Prophecy of Tiresias" or "Titan's Arm" or something. I genuinely think it's one of the best cases of design we've seen overall, and it's my go-to example when I'm talking with friends about what I think a well-themed Servant kit is.

[Byegod]

On a related note, I have a feeling I would really like Per Aspera Ad Astra if I actually knew what it did.

Yeah I really like the huge sigil in the sky and mandala, it's probably why im wiling to give romulus a bit of slack as it looks so good, BUT romulus still is eh

its a 50/50 chance they will explain what it does right?

Honestly I'm kinda the opposite on god hand, I feel like its partially the reason why herc is delegated to being illya's pet and 'how can he somewhat job?'

[pinetree]

Gae Bolg is the worst one out of FSN. It might be cool conceptually, but nothing will ever be able to fix how it was immediately undermined.

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Also the only time it got a cool animation was with Deen.

[SpoonyViking]

Gae Bolg is the worst one out of FSN. It might be cool conceptually, but nothing will ever be able to fix how it was immediately undermined.

Indeed. And the thing is, Nasu did it so much better with the ranged version's clash with Rho Aias.

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Also the only time it got a cool animation was with Deen.

Really? But it was so simple! I'm a fan of elegant simplicity, but the Deen version didn't seem much elegant to me.