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, 28 February 2008
At the risk of sounding like Leon, I am going to ask a question that I have been unable to find in the search or comp rules. This is really focused around Legacy, not SE.
Card Features in the comp rules contains this description: Constraints block: An ability may contain a second colon, at some point after the designator’s colon, which separates the constraints block from the effects block. If it does not have this second colon, there is only an effects block. The constraints block contains one or more of the following elements.
A. Reaction trigger. Like triggered traits, Reactions have a trigger that describes a point in time when they can be taken. Example: “After the start of a turn:” “Before a Personality is destroyed:” “When producing Gold:” B. Conditions. Some conditions are restrictions, limiting when the action can be taken (such as, “If you control no Courtiers”). Others allow a player to take the action in spite of the game rules or other effects (such as, “Even if this card is bowed” overrides the rule that abilities on bowed cards cannot be used.) Sometimes a condition does both; “If this card is face-up in one of your Provinces” restricts the use of the ability, but also implicitly allows it to be used when the card is out of play, which overrides the basic rules. C. Costs. Any text in the constraints block that tells you to do something – bow one of your Personalities, pay gold, lose Honor, and so on – is a cost of the action. D. Targeting may appear in the constraints block, as well.
If a card does not contain one of these elements in the constraint block, is that card deemed to not have that element at all or it does have the element but it is blank?
This is of particular interest for triggers to reactions. If a trigger is to a particular element type of the constraint block but the action being played does not have that constraint printed on it, is it still a legal trigger for that reaction?
Cheers UK Ronin
Zen Faulkes (rules official), 28 February 2008
At the risk of sounding like Leon, I am going to ask a question that I have been unable to find in the search or comp rules. This is really focused around Legacy, not SE.
Card Features in the comp rules contains this description: Constraints block: An ability may contain a second colon, at some point after the designator’s colon, which separates the constraints block from the effects block. If it does not have this second colon, there is only an effects block. The constraints block contains one or more of the following elements.
A. Reaction trigger. Like triggered traits, Reactions have a trigger that describes a point in time when they can be taken. Example: “After the start of a turn:” “Before a Personality is destroyed:” “When producing Gold:” B. Conditions. Some conditions are restrictions, limiting when the action can be taken (such as, “If you control no Courtiers”). Others allow a player to take the action in spite of the game rules or other effects (such as, “Even if this card is bowed” overrides the rule that abilities on bowed cards cannot be used.) Sometimes a condition does both; “If this card is face-up in one of your Provinces” restricts the use of the ability, but also implicitly allows it to be used when the card is out of play, which overrides the basic rules. C. Costs. Any text in the constraints block that tells you to do something – bow one of your Personalities, pay gold, lose Honor, and so on – is a cost of the action. D. Targeting may appear in the constraints block, as well.
If a card does not contain one of these elements in the constraint block, is that card deemed to not have that element at all or it does have the element but it is blank?
This is of particular interest for triggers to reactions. If a trigger is to a particular element type of the constraint block but the action being played does not have that constraint printed on it, is it still a legal trigger for that reaction?
Cheers UK Ronin
I think that we really need a couple of concrete examples here to illustrate the matter.
It may also be that there is not going to be a consistent answer for old cards, given how relatively unstructured the wording on a lot of them are compared to now.