Regarding this ruling: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=109251
Does this mean I can announce an equip action, bow Soken to pay 3 gold, fail to equip anything and float 3 gold?
Failing Equips
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.
Regarding this ruling: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=109251
Does this mean I can announce an equip action, bow Soken to pay 3 gold, fail to equip anything and float 3 gold?
Essentially, yes.
More generally, you can: 1. Announce any action with a gold cost, 2. Produce any amount of gold and put it in the pool, 3. Pay for the action with gold from your pool.
If the action has a (*) cost, you may choose any amount from 0 up to the amount of gold in the pool: if you have 3g in the pool, and you pay 0g for the action, you will indeed be left with 3g in the pool.