God's Hand and Fafnir Armor.

First, let's look at the principle of these two defensive NPs, which work on the parameter concept.

God's Hand is Hercules' NP, which allows you to come back to life 11 times. Damage from attacks of B-rank and below is completely nullified, and can only be penetrated by attacks and NPs of rank A and above, since it is the rank that is important, and not the power that the Attack carries. According to Saber, even an attack capable of destroying the World will be useless if its rank is low.

Under normal circumstances, a C-rank NP is equivalent in strength to an A-rank attack, but against God's Hand this will not matter, since it is the rank itself that is important. It is said (and proven in Fate route) that each life has a certain damage threshold, and if the attack is too strong, then several lives can be taken at once (Caliburn moment).

It would seem that in this case, one might think that a B-rank NP can cause damage, since:

B-rank NP C-rank NP = A-rank attack, but no.

First, the attack rank is checked, and only then the amount of damage is calculated. The algorithm is:

1) Attack rank/NP equals/exceeds A-rank?

A) No = damage is nullified.

B) Yes = move on to the next step

2) Attack rank exceeds the damage barrier for taking 1 life?

A) No = damage is registered, Herc gains resistance

B) Yes = 1 life is taken away, we return to the beginning of point 2 and again check if the damage is enough to take the next life. We do this until the lives run out/there is not enough damage

After death/damage, Herc gains 100% resistance to this type of attack.

Fafnir's Armor is Siegfried's conceptual defensive NF, which nullifies all attacks of B-rank and lower, and attacks of greater severity are weakened by B-rank.

If E = 10, B = 40, and A = 50, then the damage is registered as follows:

A (attack rank) - B (armor rank) = E (or another value).

After this, Siegfried receives damage equal to an E-rank attack (in this case). Fatal blows are reduced to scratches.

This is where the similarities end, and let's talk about the differences.

1. For Siegfried, damage is registered only AFTER subtracting the rank of his Armor, while Herc takes the attack completely. Let's assume that Siegfried and Herc have 100 HP each. Enemy attack is equal to A-rank = 50.

Damage calculation for Siegfried:

1) 50(A-rank attack) – 40(Armor's B-rank) = 10 (E-rank injures).

2) 100 (Siegfried's HP) – 10 = 90.

After the A-rank attack, Siegfried has 90HP left.

Damage calculation for Heracles

1) 100 (Herc's HP) – 50(A-rank attack) = 50.

2) Herc gets 100 resistance to this type of attack

After the A-rank attack, Hercules has 50HP left.

Now let's assume there was another A-rank attack.

Damage calculation for Siegfried:

1) 50(A-rank attack) – 40(Armor's B-rank) = 10 (E-rank injures).

2) 90 (Siegfried's HP) – 10 = 80.

After the second A-rank attack, Siegfried has 80HP left.

Damage calculation for Heracles

1) 50 (Herc's HP) – 50(A-rank attack)*0(since Herc received resistance) = 50

After the A-rank attack, Herc has 50HP left.

In other words, Siegfried will always be confident that even the strongest attacks will only cause him scratches, since they will be reduced to E-rank. And Heracles may well die. Over a range of 100 attacks, Siegfried will take 100 E-rank damage, while Heracles will take 1 A-rank damage and 99 attacks will be nullified (if the attack power was not enough to take his life).

2. After each hit received, Herc receives conditionally 100 to resistance from such attacks/weapons. Siegfried in all cases will only have a constant damage reduction.

To get Herc's lives you need follow this conditions:

1) Hit so hard that the attack immediately takes away several lives at once, since the Attack will pass several thresholds

2) You need to attack him with A-rank each time, but at the same time take 1 life for 1 attack, otherwise the A-rank attack will be useless on the 2nd hit.

From here we smoothly move on to the fight between Herc and EMIYA. What we know about this fight:

1) They fought in a confined space, and EMIYA clearly had to fight Herc in a melee stance. He simply would not have had enough time to prepare a shot.

2) The fact of using UBW is absent (what was in the anime is purely DEEN's idea). This may or may not have happened, since the entire fight is left off-screen in the VN. For example, Kanshou & Bakuya Overrage first appeared in the DEEN anime, Nasu liked it and decided to make it canon.

3) Archer killed Herc 6 times in 6 different ways. This is clearly stated in the VN itself, when Herc admires the skill of his opponent.

We are interested in the last line. It is stated in black and white that Archer defeated Hercules 6 times and took 6 lives, that is, the method of "pour a lot of magical energy into Broken NP and take several lives in one blow" (as Shirou and Saber did) was not used.

Taking into account the conclusion above, we have a picture in which the only way to take Hercules' lives is to remove lives with different NP's and in different ways, and this must be done in exactly 1 blow, otherwise further attacks will be useless. 1 NP, 1 attempt.

Archer's projections drop by 1 Rank, so B-rank NP turns into C-rank. Archer found a trick to bypass this limitation by using the "Broken Phantasm" technique, when he overloads NP, and then shoots it, and when attacking, the rank increases by 1 level. That is, the phantasm returns to its original power.

It would seem that this is the answer, but it is worth considering that this method only works in a long-range battle. If you try to overload Caladbolg, and then hit Heracles with it in close combat, Archer will also receive damage. In addition, as shown in Hollow Ataraxia, during the battle between Saber and Archer on the bridge, it takes him several seconds to charge NP with enough magical energy.

In the conditions of the battle between Heracles and Archer, such an amount of time is a luxury. They were in a confined space, and Heracles has A-rank STR and A-rank Agility. Using the Bow is simply impossible. Thus, there is only one way Archer could have defeated Hercules - his attacks/techniques had to be comparable to A-rank and at the same time strong enough to exceed the damage threshold and take 1 life with 1 hit.

Archer has D-rank STRK and B-rank Magic. When projecting, the weapon rank drops, so the conditional Gae Bolg will not be B-rank, but C-rank.

So is it possible to have D-rank power and C-rank NP to deliver a strong enough attack to take Hercules' life? After all, as we have seen earlier, it is the RANK of the attack that is important. Even if a copy of C-rank Gae Bolg is comparable to an A-rank attack, the damage will be nullified.

Well, as it turns out, it is POSSIBLE to damage Heracles under such conditions. The answer to this question was given to us by the fight between Karna and Siegfried in Fate/Arpocrypha.

Karna himself has a B-rank physical strength, but his skill with a spear is so great that his attacks are registered as A-rank and can penetrate Fafnir's armor. This case was given to us as an exception in the Apocrypha novel.

What is the significance of this fight? It confirmed that just because two Servants have an A-rank in the Strength stat, it does not mean that they are both that strong physically. That is, A-rank STR can mean both physical strength and attack damage.

Using Karna as an example, the correct information would be:

Strength (Physical) B-Rank, Strength (Attacks) A-Rank.

In addition, it is mentioned that even Atalanta, using all her strength and pulling the bowstring to the limit, can deliver a devastating A-rank attack. And this is despite the fact that her base STR stat is D-rank (just like EMIYA).

So for Atalanta it would be:

Strength (Physical) D-rank, Strength (Attack) A-rank (theoretically).

After analyzing this, let's go back to Archer and Heracles' fight.

With D-rank STR and C-rank NP(Gae Bolg) or B-rank NP (Gram), the only way Archer could kill Heracles would be to raise his Strength (Attack) rank to A-rank, through sheer skill, like Karna (whose spear skills are called "Divine") did.

Moreover, it is necessary not only to increase the Attack Rank with your Mastery, but also to make sure that it will be enough to take away Heracles' life with the first blow, since otherwise the efforts will be in vain due to resistance.

From this we conclude that EMIYA is capable of one-shot an opponent of Heracles' level with a Master like Illya in 6 different ways due to pure mastery alone (without using the Broken NP technique, which he mainly uses for long-range combat) in DISADVANTAGEOUS conditions for himself.

Before the release of Apocrypha, everyone thought that Archer simply spammed Broken NP, but this is not true, since he needs time for each volley, and it is not possible to say that he himself is able to survive the explosion of Caladbolg a couple of meters away from himself. And in that case, he would have completely destroyed the Einzbern castle.

Yes, serious Cu had him in a vice and their whole fight was not about who would win, but "how long Archer would last before Cu would kill him". But Archer's goal was to hold out and survive, not to win. He didn't use anything in that fight except Kanshou & Bakuya, as well as Rho Aias. The question here is not that Archer is unable to defeat Cu, but that he is a very inconvenient opponent for him.

Overall, DnD/FGO-logic worked to some extent in the original FSN:

Saber is weaker than Archer, if EMIYA really fights the way an archer should fight - at a distance, using a bow. In F/HA, 5-6 shots are enough to kill Saber and she wins only due to the buff from CS.

Archer is weaker than Lancer because Cu is able to quickly close the distance and projectiles (including UBW swords) are useless against Cu due to his innate skill.

Therefore, it is 100% impossible to say that this is a one-sided fight. After all, EMIYA fought in close combat with Heracles, who has all A-rank physical stats, and in Fate/Extella Nameless dominated the fight against Medusa (about whom Nasu said that he and EMIYA had a 50/50 chance).

Also, Archer somewhere behind the scenes calmly stood 1 on 1 with Sasaki (who at the time of HGW 5 was the best in terms of pure fencing) and EMIYA's skill was enough to maintain parity and then get away. Direct quote of Nasu:

"Nasu-san CHECK! If it's a straight out death match, then Archer will win. But Assassin is an oddity that fights under different battle conditions from the other Servants. While many Servants are offensive, Assassin is defensive. At a Servant-killing battlefield like Ryuudou Temple and with Caster's anti-sorcery defensive barrier, sorcery and Noble Phantasm power is decreased significantly. As a result, if it's not a powerful Noble Phantasm, then he won't take a fatal wound. Which means that the battle between the two is clearly swordsmanship. With Archer having his sniping sealed off to him due to the terrain effect, could Archer actually lose...?"

This clearly states that Archer will not be able to use his Bow and therefore Broken NP, meaning the battle will come down to pure swordsmanship. And EMIYA will win. During the HF route, a half-dead Shirou with EMIYA's arm killed Saber in close combat. Yes, there was no Excaliblast-spam, but we are talking about pure swordsmanship. If it was EMIYA instead of a dying Shirou, he obviously would have been able to kill Salter with less effort. This is in line with what Saber herself said in the Fate route, who said that if Shirou trains hard for a few years, he will surpass her.

You could say that EMIYA is a hero of a few minutes if the fight is in close combat. UBW not only copies weapons and SKILLS, but also, as Shirou showed in the battle with Herc in HF, copies the STATS needed to use the technique. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the very principle of UD is a different take on Common Sense.

Something like the situation:

"does the impossible because he does not know that it is impossible."

Yes, Shirou only destroyed 80% of Heracles' body and his copy was objectively imperfect since he only won because Heracles was distracted by Illya. But we're talking about Shirou, whose body is destroyed every time he uses Archer's arm. Not to mention that Shirou is VERY far from his peak physical abilities at that point.

An older and more experienced version of him, whose body is MUCH stronger and STURDIER due to the constant use of Reinforcement, would be able to handle it much better. Not to mention EMIYA (who is a Servant) or Nameles/No Name (whose physical strength is equal to C-rank). So Archer has a pretty good chance of defeating an A-rank/National-level Hero in close combat.

The only problem is that 90% of the authors whose fanfics you read are absolutely sure that the entire set of Shirou/EMIYA weapons for battle is: Kanshou & Bakuya, Hrunting, Caladbolg and Rho Aias. At best, someone will remember Rule Breaker/Durandal/Harpe, but that's it.

And certainly no one will remember the ability to copy Techniques and Stats. The only reason EMIYA seems like an outsider is:

1) Nasu's very desire to make him look undergod, which is destroyed every time. At first they said that he can't copy Divine Constructs, then comes Prisma Illya (Excalibur/Gil's Swords), Fate/Extra CCC (Excalibur Image and EA's degraded version) and Lord El Melloi (overlaying the properties of some NP's on others). So, uhm.. Retcon?

2) The narrow-mindedness of the authors themselves, who believe that Kanshou & Bakuya is a universal answer to any question.

3) The power level is too broken like in Dragon Ball, where characters blow up cities with their attacks. From Fate/Zero, where a wounded tendon on the hand could decide the end of a battle, we came to FGO, where everyone just spams their NP and colorful explosions are heard around. Let's talk about the degradation of battles, huh

To sum up, in this article I answered the question of how EMIYA could defeat Heracles. As you can see, using UBW doesn't really make sense since it will ultimately depend on EMIYA's ability to recreate an A-rank attack using Mastery alone.


AN:

Currently rewriting Fate/Grand Cuck. Maybe the new chapter will come out this week. I won't delete the old version, so you can read it at any time.