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 March 2012
The Oracle text on Blade of Truths looks neat enough... until you think, what if I want to focus from the top of my deck against this?
Also, I couldn't find specific mention in the EE Comprehensive rules that one can look at focused cards during the duel, but not before focusing them.
Blade of Truths -> Reaction: Any number of times per turn, after this Personality enters a duel: Name a number. The player controlling the other Personality in the duel cannot focus cards, or announce Reactions from Strategies, with that Focus Value during the duel.
Suggested Oracle text for Blade (simplified, keep intent but forsake a 100% match to the original functionality) -> Reaction: Any number of times per turn, after this Personality enters a duel: Name a number. The player controlling the other Personality in the duel cannot focus cards from his hand, or announce Reactions from Strategies, with that printed Focus Value during the duel.
Suggested Oracle additional text for Blade (complicated, but to entirely match original functionality as much as possible) -> When focused cards are revealed, if that player focused any cards from the top of his deck, set aside any of those cards with the printed named Focus Value, and the player may focus an additional same amount of cards from the top of his deck. If he does, repeat this process until none of the focused cards not set aside has the printed named Focus Value, then reshuffle all cards set aside into the player's deck. Discard any cards set aside that have not been reshuffled.
EDIT -> also, where in the EE rules is the restriction that you can only react once per trigger with the same printed reaction (or words to that effect) to prevent you from reacting 6x per duel with BoT and nerf all focus values 0 to 5?
Brook Cunningham (rules official), 23 March 2012
The Oracle text on Blade of Truths looks neat enough... until you think, what if I want to focus from the top of my deck against this?
Also, I couldn't find specific mention in the EE Comprehensive rules that one can look at focused cards during the duel, but not before focusing them.
Blade of Truths -> Reaction: Any number of times per turn, after this Personality enters a duel: Name a number. The player controlling the other Personality in the duel cannot focus cards, or announce Reactions from Strategies, with that Focus Value during the duel.
Suggested Oracle text for Blade (simplified, keep intent but forsake a 100% match to the original functionality) -> Reaction: Any number of times per turn, after this Personality enters a duel: Name a number. The player controlling the other Personality in the duel cannot focus cards from his hand, or announce Reactions from Strategies, with that printed Focus Value during the duel.
Suggested Oracle additional text for Blade (complicated, but to entirely match original functionality as much as possible) -> When focused cards are revealed, if that player focused any cards from the top of his deck, set aside any of those cards with the printed named Focus Value, and the player may focus an additional same amount of cards from the top of his deck. If he does, repeat this process until none of the focused cards not set aside has the printed named Focus Value, then reshuffle all cards set aside into the player's deck. Discard any cards set aside that have not been reshuffled.
EDIT -> also, where in the EE rules is the restriction that you can only react once per trigger with the same printed reaction (or words to that effect) to prevent you from reacting 6x per duel with BoT and nerf all focus values 0 to 5?
I appreciate your suggestions, but please don't trouble yourself beyond pointing out anomalous cards.
The plan is that, when I get around to updating the Legacy Rules to mesh better with the cards' Oracle versions, I will be adding as a general Rule the text of Ryokan's Sword basic that dealt with this issue; if a card revealed as a focus turns out to be illegal, it's discarded and you're out of luck. Yay for precedence, eh?
EDIT: And the Rule isn't there in EE anymore. So, you'll notice a lot of the old cards in the Oracle have "Any number of times per turn, but only once per X" or such. However, this is a tedious thing to have to remember to add, and sometimes (as with Blade of Truths), it was missed. Thanks again for the observation.