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, 30 January 2014
This thread got me wondering... how does Hired Killer / Dramatic Assassination work in the Ivory action sequence, if costs are paid before the targeting occurs?
Do those cards (and The Heir's Wrath, Civility, Will, At Any Cost, etc.) get Oracle-MRPed to have their effect conditional to the amount of gold paid, a la Blood of the Preserver xp?
Then what happens if the target is redirected? Say I announce Hired Killer on a 6GC dude, thus paying 8gold (I presume, before targeting). We go into the resolve effects step and you announce Ryoshun's Guidance's redirection to a 9GC dude. Don't I get a chance anymore to pay more gold so my Hired Killer can go through?
Brook Cunningham (rules official), 30 January 2014
This thread got me wondering... how does Hired Killer / Dramatic Assassination work in the Ivory action sequence, if costs are paid before the targeting occurs?
Do those cards (and The Heir's Wrath, Civility, Will, At Any Cost, etc.) get Oracle-MRPed to have their effect conditional to the amount of gold paid, a la Blood of the Preserver xp?
Then what happens if the target is redirected? Say I announce Hired Killer on a 6GC dude, thus paying 8gold (I presume, before targeting). We go into the resolve effects step and you announce Ryoshun's Guidance's redirection to a 9GC dude. Don't I get a chance anymore to pay more gold so my Hired Killer can go through?
The plan is, those cards won't have their effect conditional upon the amount paid, but rather their legal targets will be restricted by the amount paid.
Thus, you will be able to make your opponent lose out on a bunch of Gold spent by redirecting to a lower-cost target, but you won't be able to make the action have no effect at all, because redirecting to a higher-cost target won't be a legal option.
It's not a perfect solution either way, of course, but the above way means there doesn't have to be any "fizzle rule" at the back end; all the interaction will be in the card's text itself.