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.
Can Otomo Bureaucrat reduce the honor gain from proclaiming?
Can Look into the Soul?
If I use Otomo Bureaucrat to reduce a gain to 2, can I then use Look into the Soul on a 4c personality to reduce it to 0?
If yes, can the honor gain then be increased by anything, since it is now a gain of 0?
Can Otomo Bureaucrat reduce the honor gain from proclaiming?
Can Look into the Soul?
If I use Otomo Bureaucrat to reduce a gain to 2, can I then use Look into the Soul on a 4c personality to reduce it to 0?
If yes, can the honor gain then be increased by anything, since it is now a gain of 0?
The honour gain from Proclaiming is from the Proclaim action, so Otomo Bureaucrat may be used to reduce the gain to 2.
Look Into the Soul creates an indefinite conditional effect to reduce the gain, and Otomo Bureaucrat creates a delayed effect. These are both applied in step C of the Timing Conflicts sequence, in an order decided by the active player. Since you may only Proclaim on your own turn, I would expect you to apply the reduction from Look Into the Soul first, and then Otomo Bureaucrat, since if you use apply the Otomo Bureaucrat's reduction first, Look Into the Soul could then reduce it further.
During step C, while the active player is applying "triggered traits, delayed effects, indefinite conditional effects, and triggered rulebook effects", the gain is still considered a gain, so that if one effect reduces it to 0, another effect can still increase it above 0. However, once all such effects have been applied, if the gain has been reduced to 0, it no longer exists as a gain, and no effects that are triggered by gaining honour are applied.