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With Berserker's God Hand promising victory for 11 battles in old "Fate", and only six other Servants participating in the Holy Grail Wars, it seemed as if Berserker's Noble Phantasm all but guaranteed his victory. This theory was proven wrong in old "Fate" by Gil, who was able to counteract Berserker's God Hand with a Noble Phantasm that guaranteed Gil would survive. Due to the paradox created by a clash between an entity who "cannot lose" and an entity who is "certain to live", Berserker did not technically lose the fight but he did lose his life. When we were working on "stay night", we decided to change God Hand's effect to one that essentially casts a revive spell 11 times. Even with this change though, Berserker is still a pretty overpowered servant.

Another thing that was briefly mentioned by Rin in Saber's route was the fact that there was a Servant who was said to share its life force with its Master. This was actually a reference to an early concept we had for Berserker. The idea was that Berserker and Illya basically shared a life pool, which essentially meant that targeting Illya instead of Berserker was a futile tactic. As long as Berserker was alive, Illya could not truly be killed. Of course, all logic dictated that Illya and Berserker formed an invincible pair in this case. It didn't take us long to realize that this would completely destroy any semblance of balance in the game, so the idea was ditched.