Duel of Haiku vs. a Dishonored Personality

L5R CCG Rules board, 16 June 2012

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, 16 June 2012

Hello,

I did a search on this topic but could not find anything on this point. My apologies if this has already been addressed or answered before.

...

I was playing my friend last night when he managed to dishonor one of my personalities. He then used Duel of Haiku on it, meaning that thanks to the rule on dishonored personalities my duel stat was a 0. I went to focus (I had high focus value cards in my hand, so I thought I still might have a chance) but he told me there was no point in it. His logic is that since my duel stat is capped at zero thanks to dishonor, my focus values cannot apply ever, as no matter what my end result is still a zero thanks to the cap enforced by the Dishonored state.

Here are the relevant rules/card abilities:

Open: Choose your performing unbowed Personality and target another player's Personality: Your Personality duels the other. In this duel, each Personality uses their Personal Honor as his duel stat. The duel's winner's controller gains 1 honor. Bow and dishonor the duel's loser.

From the L5R rules site's comprehensive rules:

Dishonorable Personalities have a maximum Personal Honor of zero.

http://rules.l5r.com/CE_Physically_mark ... honorable[

From step G of the rules on Dueling from the L5R rule site's comprehensive rules:

G: Total scores: Each Personality adds his or her duel stat to the total modified Focus Value of all cards in his or her focusing area. This does not add to the Personality's stat itself. The duel stat is Chi by default. Effects may specify a different stat to be used by one or both Personalities in the duel. A "duel of Force," for example, is a duel in which both Personalities use Force instead of Chi.

http://rules.l5r.com/CE_Challenges_and_duels

Reading the last entry on how Focus Values work in a duel, I think that while my duel stat is 0 thanks to the personality being Dishonored, I would still be able to add Focus Values to my Total Score. E.g. If my Dishonored personality normally has a PH of 3 and I focus cards with a FV of 2, 3, and 4, my Total Score in the duel would be a 9.

Am I correct? Or does the Dishonored state of my personality really cause my Total Score to automatically/permanently be 0, even if I focus?

Thank you for the response!

Brook Cunningham (rules official), 16 June 2012

Hello,

I did a search on this topic but could not find anything on this point. My apologies if this has already been addressed or answered before.

...

I was playing my friend last night when he managed to dishonor one of my personalities. He then used Duel of Haiku on it, meaning that thanks to the rule on dishonored personalities my duel stat was a 0. I went to focus (I had high focus value cards in my hand, so I thought I still might have a chance) but he told me there was no point in it. His logic is that since my duel stat is capped at zero thanks to dishonor, my focus values cannot apply ever, as no matter what my end result is still a zero thanks to the cap enforced by the Dishonored state.

Here are the relevant rules/card abilities:

Reading the last entry on how Focus Values work in a duel, I think that while my duel stat is 0 thanks to the personality being Dishonored, I would still be able to add Focus Values to my Total Score. E.g. If my Dishonored personality normally has a PH of 3 and I focus cards with a FV of 2, 3, and 4, my Total Score in the duel would be a 9.

Am I correct? Or does the Dishonored state of my personality really cause my Total Score to automatically/permanently be 0, even if I focus?

Thank you for the response!

You are correct.

It USED to be the case that Focusing in a duel served as temporary bonuses to the stat, but that rule was dropped a number of years ago. If your friend has been playing for quite a while, he may have missed that change.

On: Duel of Haiku