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, 18 November 2010
Hello all,
Here's the scenario.
I have Hida Hikita with a Farmer in a battlefield opposing a Random 5 force man with Rising Sun Blade attached. When I use Hikita's ability targeting the personality, do I set his force to 0 or I set his force to 0 but the blade still giving 6F, meaning that he now has 6F.
If the first is true... what is the force of the Rising Sun Blade afterwards?
Reference: Hida Hikita-->Battle: Bow your target Follower: Reduce the Force of a target enemy card to 0.
Thanks in advance.
A player, 18 November 2010
Since the targeted card has a current Force of 11 (5 base + 6 Weapon), per the rules about how to set a stat to a value, Hikita's action gives that enemy Personality a Force penalty of -11. His Rising Sun Blade still gives him +6F, so his current Force becomes 5 base + 6 Weapon - 11 Hikita = 0 indeed.
An Item has no Force stat, it has a Force modifier. However the rules about Items state that: "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)." As a consequence, if something in the game needs to check the Force of this Rising Sun Blade, it is still 6.
At last, if Hikita's action targets the Rising Sun Blade itself, this rule applies: "Force and Chi bonuses or penalties to an Item affect the modifier; for example, a +1F Item that suffers -2F now has a -1F modifier." Therefore the Weapon's Force modifier becomes +0F and the enemy Personality's current Force decreases to his base value of 5.