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, 23 July 2010
Let's say I have Faint Praise and Only Actions Speak in my hand. It's my opponent's action and they lobby for the favor.
I play Faint Praise.
They bow Acrobat Troupes to gain to honor. As they announce it, I play OAS. Both actions (FP + OAS) seem to have an ongoing negation effect. So which one happens first?
Relevant text: Faint Praise Political Open: Before the next time this turn a player gains Honor during his Dynasty Phase or from one of his own actions, he loses that amount of Honor instead of gaining it. Only Actions Speak Reaction: After an action is announced: Negate all Honor gains until after the action's resolution. At that time if this negated any gains, negate all Honor gains until the end of this phase and draw a card.
[Mod edit: Thread title. Please do not use acronyms, abbreviations, and nicknames. Thanks! - ZF]
Alex Jones (rules official), 24 July 2010
Let's say I have Faint Praise and Only Actions Speak in my hand. It's my opponent's action and they lobby for the favor.
I play Faint Praise.
They bow Acrobat Troupes to gain to honor. As they announce it, I play OAS. Both actions (FP + OAS) seem to have an ongoing negation effect. So which one happens first?
Relevant text: Faint Praise Political Open: Before the next time this turn a player gains Honor during his Dynasty Phase or from one of his own actions, he loses that amount of Honor instead of gaining it. Only Actions Speak Reaction: After an action is announced: Negate all Honor gains until after the action's resolution. At that time if this negated any gains, negate all Honor gains until the end of this phase and draw a card.
[Mod edit: Thread title. Please do not use acronyms, abbreviations, and nicknames. Thanks! - ZF]
The Timing Sequence says: If two or more reactions, triggered traits, or rules procedures are triggered at the same point in time, follow this sequence from A through C to decide their order. B. Anything that is triggered at this point but is not a Reaction happens now. This includes triggered traits, delayed effects, indefinite conditional effects, triggered rulebook effects (such as losing Honor after a dishonourable Personality is destroyed). If more than one of these things conflict, the active player decides the order in which they happen.
Because Only Actions Speak negates all Honour gains for its duration, it is considered to create an Indefinite Conditional Effect, whereas Faint Praise creates a delayed effect (that triggers only once). Both of these are applied at step B, above, and as they conflict, the active player - which isn't you - decides which applies first.
In the situation described, if the active player chooses to resolve Faint Praise first that would stop the Only Actions Speak from triggering its ongoing effect for the rest of the phase right?
but in the opposite situation the opponent chooses to resolve Only Actions Speak, then the trigger for Faint Praise has not yet occured and so will translate through to Dynasty phase, right?
Alex Jones (rules official), 28 July 2010
follow up to this.
In the situation described, if the active player chooses to resolve Faint Praise first that would stop the Only Actions Speak from triggering its ongoing effect for the rest of the phase right?
but in the opposite situation the opponent chooses to resolve Only Actions Speak, then the trigger for Faint Praise has not yet occured and so will translate through to Dynasty phase, right?
Under discussion
A player, 29 July 2010
Follow up to this.
It occurs to me that if the active player chose to resolve Only Actions Speak first, thus negating all other honor gains for the phase. Would that then create a timing conflict for the Feint Praise each time an honor gain occured for the rest of the current phase? Thereby giving the active player another opportunity to choose to resolve Feint Praise first, thus (using it up), but allowing Only Actions Speak to continue to be in effect?
Well, it's already past 3 months (going 4 now)... I (we) hope you have a conclusion for this...
My question would be, wouldn't Faint Praise's timing be more similar to that when you rehonor a person (via performing, his own traits, or attaching something which causes an honor gain)? If so, shouldn't that mean that Only Actions Speak negates all honor gains from the entire (limited/open) phase making Faint Praise's effect trigger only during the dynasty phase?
Though this is what most in our playgroup think, we'd still rather have an official answer from the Rules Junta
Was hoping we'd get an answer soon...
A player, 15 November 2010
I just wanted to ask/add something: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=85205
Isn't it that when you successfully play Only Actions Speak's reaction, successfully draw a card, and successfully "negate all future gains", doesn't that mean that it has an ongoing or continuous effect (Step A of the Timing Sequence), then when you play Feint Praise after successfully playing all effects of Only Actions Speak, wouldn't Feint Praise take effect during Step B of the Timing Sequence?
I apologize for being impatient but it's been a couple of months since this question was asked @_@... I think that should give enough time for fruitful discussions/arguments...
A player, 16 November 2010
So I was looking at this. Which said that the two effects create a timming conflict at point B, and active player chooses.
It reminded me of this. Which, rightfully said that, negation/substitution happens in step A.
It doesn't change much from AkodoGilador's answer, but does mean that it doesn't trigger with other stuff that triggers at step B. Just thought I'd point that out, since I missed it before. Been a while since we got an answer to this. You guys still discussing or what?
A player, 17 November 2010
So I was thinking about this again, and since we still didn't have an answer, I thought I would offer this. It occured to me that we may have missed something in the timming rules...
The order of resolution means that triggered effects that come first, due to the above order, the order of Reactions, or the active player’s decision, can negate or otherwise make impossible triggered effects and Reactions that come later. When this happens, Reactions to the now nonexistent trigger may not be taken, and other triggered effects fail to occur. [Clarified & expanded 19 Apr 2010]
You'll have to forgive me, because while I vaguely remember the original discussion that prompted this addition, I could not locate it.
So wouldn't this mean that if active player chose to have Only Actions Speak trigger, then the Feint Praise triggered effect, by rule simply fails to occur, and is used up.
Likewise, if the Feint Praise was selected by active player then the delayed effect of Only Actions Speak, would not create the ongoing effect, because the initial ongoing effect failed to negate an honor gain.
In the case where an Only Actions Speak ongoing effect was already in effect, active player could negate the gain or allow the loss, but in either case the Feint Praise is used up(activated or failed based on active player's choice).
Brook Cunningham (rules official), 5 March 2011
So I was thinking about this again, and since we still didn't have an answer, I thought I would offer this. It occured to me that we may have missed something in the timming rules...
The order of resolution means that triggered effects that come first, due to the above order, the order of Reactions, or the active player’s decision, can negate or otherwise make impossible triggered effects and Reactions that come later. When this happens, Reactions to the now nonexistent trigger may not be taken, and other triggered effects fail to occur. [Clarified & expanded 19 Apr 2010]
You'll have to forgive me, because while I vaguely remember the original discussion that prompted this addition, I could not locate it.
So wouldn't this mean that if active player chose to have Only Actions Speak trigger, then the Feint Praise triggered effect, by rule simply fails to occur, and is used up.
Likewise, if the Feint Praise was selected by active player then the delayed effect of Only Actions Speak, would not create the ongoing effect, because the initial ongoing effect failed to negate an honor gain.
In the case where an Only Actions Speak ongoing effect was already in effect, active player could negate the gain or allow the loss, but in either case the Feint Praise is used up(activated or failed based on active player's choice).
Apologies for the long delays on this!
Actually, I thought that the CR had been clarified a while ago to deal with the timing issues brought up by these questions, but I discovered to my dismay that this had been left undone. So...
The current rule is now this:
Timing Sequence: "The order of resolution means that triggered effects that come first, due to the above order, the order of Reactions, or the active player’s decision, can negate or otherwise make impossible triggered effects and Reactions that come later. When this happens, Reactions to the now nonexistent trigger may not be taken, and other effects are not triggered by it."
So, simultaneously timed triggered effects like Faint Praise and Only Actions Speak (both timed to effect an Honor gain before it occurs) can cause each other not to trigger, depending on the choices of the order of their triggering by the Active Player.
Thus, if the AP chooses OAS to tigger and lower the amount of an honor gain to zero, Faint Praise will remain un-triggered (as a gain, once reduced to zero, is no longer an "Honor gain").
Again, sorry for your wait. I did think this was already handled.