Why Is There No Saber Class? The 5 Broken Rules of Fate/strange Fake

If you're watching or reading Fate/strange Fake, you've probably noticed something is... wrong.

Servants are being summoned without masters. A police chief is a Master. And most noticeably: Where is the Saber class?

The "Snowfield Ritual" isn't just a normal Holy Grail War with quirky characters. It is a fundamentally broken system. It’s a "False" war designed to cheat the system. Here is the mechanical breakdown of why this war is glitching out.

1. The Missing Saber Class

In a standard Holy Grail War, the Saber class is unrivaled—often considered the strongest. Yet, the False War physically cannot summon a Saber.

Why? Because the system is incomplete. The mages who built the Snowfield ritual couldn't copy the Third Magic perfectly. To stabilize the ritual, they had to "cut corners." The Saber class—requiring the highest stats and magical energy—was excluded to lower the processing load on the Grail.

Examples of this "glitch":

• Richard the Lionheart (the "Saber" of the story) only appears later when the "True" war begins to override the False one.

2. The "False" Grail Can't Count to Seven

The False Grail isn't designed to reach the Root (Akasha). It's a battery.

Because it’s a counterfeit, it cannot sustain the full 7 Heroic Spirits needed to punch a hole in reality. It stops at 6. This is why the "False" war feels like a battle royale that started before everyone joined the lobby.

3. The "True" War Override

Here is the twist that confuses everyone: There are two wars happening at once.

The "False" war was just kindling to start the fire. Once enough energy was gathered, the real Holy Grail War system (the one that includes Saber) booted up automatically, overlaying the False one.

This results in 13 Servants existing simultaneously (6 False + 7 True). It’s a server crash waiting to happen.

4. Non-Human Servants

Because the summoning definitions are loose, entities that shouldn't be Servants are getting in:

• Pale Rider (False Rider): Literal Pestilence given form. Not a hero, but a concept.
• Enkidu (False Lancer): A divine construct, not a human spirit.

5. The Location is a Lie

Fuyuki City had ley lines steeped in history. Snowfield, USA, has... nothing.

The land itself is artificial. The mages literally imported the magical properties of Fuyuki soil to trick the Grail system into thinking it was in Japan. It’s the magical equivalent of using a VPN to bypass region locks.

Conclusion

Fate/strange Fake is what happens when you mod a game until it breaks. The lack of a Saber class isn't a plot hole—it's a feature of a corrupted save file.

And just like any corrupted file, it’s only a matter of time before it crashes the world.