A topic from AEG's L5R CCG Rules forum, copied for Oracle of the Void from a copy of the forum saved in October 2015, so pages it didn't save are missing. Players' names are left out; the rules officials are named. Rulings are as they stood on these dates; later rulings, the rulebooks and the Rules Archive may differ.
A player, 20 February 2013
Spell text: Battle: Bow this card and give the current battlefield's province a bonus, or a penalty if you are defending, from 1 up to its current strength: Give this Shugenja an equal Force bonus. Negate his next bowing or movement from other players' card effects if he is Earth.
http://rules.l5r.com/EE_Special_wording ... and_values As a quantity, the phrase "up to" [a certain number] indicates a number chosen by the player taking the action or using the trait, between zero and that number, inclusive.
Since the card text says 1 up to current strength instead of 0 up to, I assume the card text overrides the emphasized portion of the 'up to' rules. If a player has 0 province strength and uses the action on Earth's Protection, how much force can they gain? 0, 1, or infinite (in the event that the 'conflicting minimum/maximum stat' rule also applies in a '1 up to 0' situation)
Jon Palmer (rules official), 21 February 2013
Spell text: Battle: Bow this card and give the current battlefield's province a bonus, or a penalty if you are defending, from 1 up to its current strength: Give this Shugenja an equal Force bonus. Negate his next bowing or movement from other players' card effects if he is Earth.
http://rules.l5r.com/EE_Special_wording ... and_values As a quantity, the phrase "up to" [a certain number] indicates a number chosen by the player taking the action or using the trait, between zero and that number, inclusive.
Since the card text says 1 up to current strength instead of 0 up to, I assume the card text overrides the emphasized portion of the 'up to' rules. If a player has 0 province strength and uses the action on Earth's Protection, how much force can they gain? 0, 1, or infinite (in the event that the 'conflicting minimum/maximum stat' rule also applies in a '1 up to 0' situation)
If the current province strength is zero, since no number is both greater than or equal to 1 (the minimum you can choose) and less than or equal to the current province strength of zero (the maximum you can choose), you cannot fulfill that part of the cost.