Attachment Force (L5R rules board)

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, 14 August 2009

Hey All, What is the "force" of a Weapon or Armor attachment for the purposes of such cards as Tamori Shaiko who destroy cards based on the target card's force. According to the rulings, if a stat is absent on a card, it is presumed to be zero. This is easy enough to determine for things like Followers, which clearly have their own force stat, or spells, which have no area on the card for a force value to appear. Are the +X values on a given armor or weapon supposed to:

1. Indicate their "force" for the purposes of cards such as Shaiko since it appears in the force area. <or> 2. Is it to be read as a modifier to the personality due to the "+," leaving the true "force" value of the card as zero?

*Sorry if this has been answered, did my best to search if it has but could not find a conclusive ruling.*

A player, 15 August 2009

Card types, Items: "If something in the game needs to check an Item’s Force or Chi separately from its Personality’s stats, use the value of its modifier (minimum zero)."