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 December 2007
This is from the rules FAQ: [edit] Is an action legal if an effect can't happen? A. All of those are variations on the same question: Do effects have to happen for an action to be legal? No, they don't. (Costs are another matter, though. Costs have to happen.)
Based on this, I'd like to get a clarification on a couple cards. For instance: Rapid Deployment says: Battle: Target one of your Samurai Personalities at the current battlefield: Target two of your units not there. Move them there. If you are defending, straighten each of these units that moved.
If I have only 1 unit not at the current battlefield, can I still move it there with Rapid Deployment. (i.e. I tried to target 2 units, but one of the targetings failed, does the other still work?) The people I play with think no, you have to move 2 units.
Kitsu Ineko Open: Target a Lion Clan Personality in your discard pile. He becomes honorably dead. Give Cavalry to all cards in one target unit. What happens to Ineko's action if there are no Lion Clan personalities at all in the discard pile? I'm inclined to think this wouldn't work either, although targeting an already honorably dead personality would work.
Zen Faulkes (rules official), 3 December 2007
This is from the rules FAQ: [edit] Is an action legal if an effect can't happen? A. All of those are variations on the same question: Do effects have to happen for an action to be legal? No, they don't. (Costs are another matter, though. Costs have to happen.)
Based on this, I'd like to get a clarification on a couple cards. For instance: Rapid Deployment says: Battle: Target one of your Samurai Personalities at the current battlefield: Target two of your units not there. Move them there. If you are defending, straighten each of these units that moved.
If I have only 1 unit not at the current battlefield, can I still move it there with Rapid Deployment. (i.e. I tried to target 2 units, but one of the targetings failed, does the other still work?) The people I play with think no, you have to move 2 units.
Kitsu Ineko Open: Target a Lion Clan Personality in your discard pile. He becomes honorably dead. Give Cavalry to all cards in one target unit. What happens to Ineko's action if there are no Lion Clan personalities at all in the discard pile? I'm inclined to think this wouldn't work either, although targeting an already honorably dead personality would work.
You want to look a little further up in the FAQ, as both of those questions concern targeting.
http://rules.l5r.com/FAQ#What_are_required_targets.3F