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, 3 July 2007
Thank you for answering my previous question, and sorry to bring up a similar topic again, but as there are no replies and I still have a question, I thought it might be ok. Once again, for reference, here is the exact text of the rulebook's tactical battle ability:
Tactical Battle: Any number of times per turn, discard a card and target one of your Tactician Personalities: Give him a Force bonus equal to the Focus Value of the discarded card.
Every Tactician in play has this listed ability, so in theory, I'm asking if I could use one of them to target and boost an entirely different tactician.
Zen's answer was this:
No. "Give him" refers back to the targeted Tactician.
I understand that "give him" refers to the targeted Tactician. My question is about the part before the targeting. If this was actually written on a personality, you would definately be able to use this ability to boost any other tactician, because it doesn't say you have to target yourself. It only says that you have to target one of your tactician personalities (and not the performing tactician). Tactician A would blow his "power" to allow me to discard a card, target any tactician (Tact. A or otherwise), and then give this targeted tactician the power boost.
Once you've targeted somebody, then you have to give that somebody the force boost, I agree, but it seems that the performing personality could conceivably target any other tactician. Is the rulebook different (ie: is this not an unprinted ability that is on every tactician, but merely an action that I the player perform)?
Thank you again for your time.
Zen Faulkes (rules official), 3 July 2007
Thank you for answering my previous question, and sorry to bring up a similar topic again, but as there are no replies and I still have a question, I thought it might be ok. Once again, for reference, here is the exact text of the rulebook's tactical battle ability:
Every Tactician in play has this listed ability, so in theory, I'm asking if I could use one of them to target and boost an entirely different tactician.
Zen's answer was this:
I understand that "give him" refers to the targeted Tactician. My question is about the part before the targeting. If this was actually written on a personality, you would definately be able to use this ability to boost any other tactician, because it doesn't say you have to target yourself. It only says that you have to target one of your tactician personalities (and not the performing tactician). Tactician A would blow his "power" to allow me to discard a card, target any tactician (Tact. A or otherwise), and then give this targeted tactician the power boost.
Once you've targeted somebody, then you have to give that somebody the force boost, I agree, but it seems that the performing personality could conceivably target any other tactician. Is the rulebook different (ie: is this not an unprinted ability that is on every tactician, but merely an action that I the player perform)?
Thank you again for your time.
I do not understand the question.
Chris Fuchs (rules official), 3 July 2007
The quoted tactical ability is not granted to all tacticians. It is a rulebook ability. I think that is where the confusion is occuring here. The tactician you target with the ability is the one who performs the ability, and also gains the force bonus.