I am having a disagreement with a friend about the number of cards you can focus in duels. It stems from the use of the word 'instead' in the SE rule book. I read this to mean that if you wish to focus a card from your hand you may do so, but only INSTEAD of from the focus pool (so there are only 3 cards total possible in a focus pool), he reads it that he can focus 4 times. Please clarify this for me.
number of cards to focus in duels
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.
I am having a disagreement with a friend about the number of cards you can focus in duels. It stems from the use of the word 'instead' in the SE rule book. I read this to mean that if you wish to focus a card from your hand you may do so, but only INSTEAD of from the focus pool (so there are only 3 cards total possible in a focus pool), he reads it that he can focus 4 times. Please clarify this for me.
Focusing with a card from hand "instead of" a card from the Focus Pool does not render one of the cards in your Focus Pool ineligible for focusing in at the next opportunity to Focus or Strike.
There is no explicit limitation on the number of times you can Focus in a duel. The only practical limitation is that you run out of cards to Focus with or effects to do "instead of Focusing."