Characters / Fate/Grand Order: Archers

Archer is one of the seven normal Servant classes summoned for the Holy Grail War and considered one of the Three Knight Classes along with Saber and Lancer. Despite the name, having skill at archery is not a requirement, simply possession of powerful projectile weapons or special abilities related to projectile weapons will allow a Heroic Spirit to qualify for this class. Class skills include high Magic Resistance and Independent Action, which allows them to go for a time without the mana supply of a Master, this can come in handy for scouting but also means that unruly or disobedient Archers can act against their Master's wishes without threat of running out of mana.

Shared Tropes

Tropes which apply to most members of the class besides the exceptions should go here.

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• Abnormal Ammo: While most Archers do use traditional projectile weapons like guns and bow and arrows, there are a few who don't conform to this, most notably Gilgamesh and Jeanne D'Arc.
• Always Accurate Attack: About half of the single-target Archer roster have some form of Sure Hit or Ignore Invincibility to pierce Evasion, whether tied to their Noble Phantasm^note Billy the Kid, Chloe von Einzbern, David, Paris, Tristan, William Tell or skills^note Altera the Sun(ta), Archer of Shinjuku, Asagami Fujino, Robin Hood — notably, most of these Archers are "free to play" and easily obtainable by diligent players, so Archers tend to be a backup option for an Evasion-piercing squad. Even some AoE Archers like Nikola Tesla and Ishtar join in on the Evasion-piercing action.
• Anti-Magic: From their Class Skill, Magic Resistance.
• Critical Hit Class: The Archer class has the second-highest base Star Gathering hidden stat in-game, hovering around 150, letting them gather more Critical Stars than most other classes (in comparison, the highest are Riders with 200 while the lowest include Berserkers at 10). Most Archers are further defined by their passive Class Skill, Independent Action, which increases their Critical Strength. Molded around this base are a sizeable number of Archers who have more skills to increase their Critical Hit damage capacity.
• Damager, Healer, Tank: Notable in this regard - a lot of other Classes tend to have a spread of Servants who can fill a variety of roles (being tank-like, or straight healers, or otherwise supportive, etc). Archers are almost exclusively hard-core damage monsters. Until the release of Superhuman Orion, every other Archer in this game has gotten an offensive Noble Phantasm, making it the only main class that didn't have Servants with non-offensive Noble Phantams up to that point.^note Despite Superhuman Orion's NP not an offensive one, it boosts his damage output so much, that he is capable of inflicting damage as much as another Servant would with the support of Merlin. Among Extra Classes that shared the same distinction were the Alter Ego class and and the Moon Cancer class, the former being also noted for its offensively-orientated members and the latter having only very few members to begin with.
• Long-Range Fighter: Most of the Servants in this class are specialized in ranged-combat but not much in close combat. While there are some who are no slouch in close combat (like Emiya and Arjuna), they are still more effective at a distance. However, range has little bearing in gameplay.
• Non-Indicative Name: The class is called Archer, but really covers all Heroic Spirits skilled at ranged combat. This means there are "Archers" who use guns, or a sling, or fire melee weapons out of portals. (That said, any actual archer summoned under this class are a Master Archer by default.) Even if they use lightning or telekinesis, if it's not magecraft, the Servant will be placed into Archer instead of Caster. It's lampshaded in Arjuna's Trial Quest, where Mash tells the amnesic Arjuna that just because he has a bow that doesn't automatically make him an Archer, to which he replies that they must know some...rather unique heroes. Lore wise, there is an Extra class that focuses on guns, Gunner, that would replace Archer in a proper war, all known servants that qualify for it, qualify for Archer anyways. This verity of weapons was actually explained by Fate/complete material III, as such:
  The qualifying condition for the Heroic Spirits [of the Archer class] is not attributes, but instead the possession of powerful projectile weapons or special abilities related to projectile weapons. Servants will generally assume that the Noble Phantasm of an Archer-class Servant is their bow, but any projectile weapons, even firearms, can be indicative of an Archer.

• Planet of Hats: Played with regarding Indian Servants:
  • Many Indian heroes in their original stories emphasize archery and the like. In practice, only two Indian Servants in this game are Archers, three if you count Arcade: Arjuna and Ashwatthama in the main game and Sita as an Arcade exclusive. They are later followed here by the goddess Durga/Kali—who ironically does not have a bow amongst her visible weaponry.
  • Karna, Rama and Kama can qualify as Archers, and in case of the latter, she still uses a bow and arrow even as an Assassin, and her profile even states that she should really be in the Archer class. Some of these even have the ability to act as Archers while in other classes; Rama's Armory of Vishnu NP is described as granting him all the advantages of all three Knight classes in one Servant.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: In terms of the game, Archers have an advantage against Sabers due to Saber's lack of long-range attacks, and a weakness against Lancers due to their high agility. They also have the common strength and weakness against Berserkers, lowered damage dealt to Rulers and are defensively weak to the Demon Pillars.

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Characters

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• D through M
• N through Z

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