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, 2 June 2015
My group started playing again for the first time in a while and I'm a little rusty on some rules. Hopefully you can clarify how a few cards work when the opponent has no presence at the current battlefield. The cards in question are Seeking the Way and Inexplicable Challenge; can I use these for the honour gain without an enemy to target? My understanding was that the costs for playing them were (respectfully) bowing my shugenja and targeting my courtier, and that everything afterwards were effects I was able to apply if desired, but the argument against this came from Wheels Within Wheels, whose effect after paying the cost of killing my personality used the phrase "You may..." Thanks in advance for any help, I tried searching the forums but found nothing relevant.
tl;dr Do you have to apply all effects of a card in order to play it legally?
EDIT: I just remembered something else that came up, sorry for the double post: If you play Mercantile Conflict, bow a Brilliant Cascade Inn for an honour loss and then bow Yogo Honami to increase it, would Mercantile activate a second time due to Honami using a second ability, or is it a single modified honour loss?
Alex Jones (rules official), 3 June 2015
My group started playing again for the first time in a while and I'm a little rusty on some rules. Hopefully you can clarify how a few cards work when the opponent has no presence at the current battlefield. The cards in question are Seeking the Way and Inexplicable Challenge; can I use these for the honour gain without an enemy to target? My understanding was that the costs for playing them were (respectfully) bowing my shugenja and targeting my courtier, and that everything afterwards were effects I was able to apply if desired, but the argument against this came from Wheels Within Wheels, whose effect after paying the cost of killing my personality used the phrase "You may..." Thanks in advance for any help, I tried searching the forums but found nothing relevant.
tl;dr Do you have to apply all effects of a card in order to play it legally?
EDIT: I just remembered something else that came up, sorry for the double post: If you play Mercantile Conflict, bow a Brilliant Cascade Inn for an honour loss and then bow Yogo Honami to increase it, would Mercantile activate a second time due to Honami using a second ability, or is it a single modified honour loss?
You may announce an action even if you know its effects will fail. However, if an action has required targets, you may not announce it if there are no appropriate targets.