Katsumoto II

L5R CCG Rules board, 9 February 2008

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, 9 February 2008

I am utterly confused by the rulings here.

Akodo Katsumoto Lion Clan • Samurai • Tactician Tactical Battle: Bow one of your target Personalities: Bow a target enemy Personality with Personal Honor equal to or less than the Personal Honor of the Personality you bowed.

Per the Comprehensive Rules:

Tactical An action with the Tactical keyword can only be performed by a Tactician Personality (see Perform)

Perform A Personality or Follower is performing an action if its controller is the player taking the action, and any of these things is true:

The action comes from an ability on the Personality or Follower. The action comes from an ability on an Item or Spell in the Personality’s unit. The Personality or Follower was targeted by targeting in the ability’s constraints block (between the two colons).

Costs or other restrictions that are added to an action, and involve targeting a Personality, do not mean that the Personality thus targeted is performing the action. The targeting must come from the base wording of the ability.

(The bolded line clearly refers to Katsumoto performing the action as it's printed on him. The underlined lines should address the targeting required in Katsumoto's restraint block, clearing that personality of having to meet the Tactical cost.

Furthurmore...)

Costs

A cost is usually a change to the state or stats of a card, player or other game entity. A cost must fully occur, or be “paid,” for effects of an action or trait to happen, or for a card with a cost to enter play.

A player can not pay a cost by changing the state of another player's cards.

Targeting may occur in a trait or ability's constraints block but is not itself a cost.

....

So now I'm really confused as to how it can be perceived that the Tactical restriction on Katsumoto's base ability can be extended to the required targeting in his constraint box when the rules clearly state that wouldn't be the case? Would greatly appreciate an explanation. Thank you.

Zen Faulkes (rules official), 9 February 2008

I'm really confused as to how it can be perceived that the Tactical restriction on Katsumoto's base ability can be extended to the required targeting in his constraint box(?)

Because Tactical abilities can only be performed by a Tactician.

What seems to be at tissue is that multiple cards can perform an action.

The bits you underline talk about added costs, which is not the case with Akodo Katsumoto's action -- that's not added, it's base.