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, 29 January 2015
I understand that School of Wizardry doesn't work with Orinoko's invest, but I don't fully see why. As far as I can tell from the CR, SoW doesn't reduce or even affect the gold cost of a personality at all. It instead just lets them enter play paying 0 gold, which seems more like a substitution (i.e. you pay 0 gold INSTEAD of their gold cost). For SoW to meaningfully interact with her invest under the rules wouldn't it have to say something along the lines of "when paying for a human shugenja entering play, reduce their gold cost to 0 until it is paid?"
Thank you
Roger Giner-Sorolla (rules official), 15 February 2015
I understand that School of Wizardry doesn't work with Orinoko's invest, but I don't fully see why. As far as I can tell from the CR, SoW doesn't reduce or even affect the gold cost of a personality at all. It instead just lets them enter play paying 0 gold, which seems more like a substitution (i.e. you pay 0 gold INSTEAD of their gold cost). For SoW to meaningfully interact with her invest under the rules wouldn't it have to say something along the lines of "when paying for a human shugenja entering play, reduce their gold cost to 0 until it is paid?"
Thank you
You're welcome; the key phrase here is Orinoko's "This Invest cost may not be reduced." We treat the "0 Gold" as a reduction, because it changes like for like (a Gold cost for a lower Gold cost). Note that under "Reduction" not all examples directly say "reduce" and one example, the closest to how School of Wizardry works, is "Set his Force to 3" (when it was higher). A substitution would be something like "Bow your Stronghold instead of paying its Gold cost," that is, substituting an effect that is different in kind and using the word "instead." I hope that answers your question.