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, 13 May 2015
this is totally not meant to be a troll post, just got confused when I saw a recent ruling and need further classification.
viewtopic.php?f=59&t=113667
in the 5th part of this ruling at the bottom, it is stated that gold will not be paid if a reserve recruit is cancelled by a Sun returns. is this only referring to the invest cost or the entire cost of the peep? if it's the entire cost then what happens to the gold paid for a Deliberations that is cancelled by the Sun Returns. would the result be different if a turtle's shell is used instead?
why is gold paid in the ruling regarding ivory courtroom? viewtopic.php?f=59&t=113749
Alex Jones (rules official), 13 May 2015
this is totally not meant to be a troll post, just got confused when I saw a recent ruling and need further classification.
viewtopic.php?f=59&t=113667
in the 5th part of this ruling at the bottom, it is stated that gold will not be paid if a reserve recruit is cancelled by a Sun returns. is this only referring to the invest cost or the entire cost of the peep? if it's the entire cost then what happens to the gold paid for a Deliberations that is cancelled by the Sun Returns. would the result be different if a turtle's shell is used instead?
why is gold paid in the ruling regarding ivory courtroom? viewtopic.php?f=59&t=113749
The action sequence is this:
A. Announce B. Pay costs C. Declare targets D. Interrupt action round E. Action Resolution F. End
In particular, note what happens in step B: During the Pay Costs step, if the action has a Gold cost (or if a targeting paradox makes it potentially have one), its player may produce Gold and then pay for the action using the Gold just produced and Gold in that player’s Gold pool. Any Gold produced that is not spent on the action goes to the player’s Gold pool.
During this step, you not only produce gold, you spend it. Gold which you've produced but not spent goes into the pool at this stage. You can't pay more gold for the action later (except with cards like In Stillness, Forge the Soul which explicitly allow you to make payments at other times). If the action is a Recruit or Invest action, and you intend to Invest the card entering play, you must pay the entire gold cost now: you don't for example pay the printed cost now and the Invest cost later.
Once you've spent that gold on the action, it's gone beyond your reach, regardless of what happens to the action. As stated previously, if the action is cancelled, you don't get it back.
You'll note that I didn't say that the gold isn't paid when the Recruit action is negated by The Sun Returns. What doesn't happen is "the gold paid for the action" becoming also "the gold paid for the Personality".