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, 1 October 2012
So let's say I have done 2 actions from cards with different titles in a battle already and I then discard The Ring of Water (tRoW) to move someone into the opposed battle making that 3 actions. On my next action I play String of Victories to put tRoW back into my hand. Is that the fourth action so I can put tRoW into play? And can I then use the ability once again?
I am pretty sure the answer is yes (I know it is on the second question), but my brain starts to hurt when I consider the tracking rule. The game "forgets" that tRoW has used it's ability but somehow the forgotten use of said ability counts as an action from cards with different titles? It's just weird to me.
Alex Jones (rules official), 2 October 2012
So let's say I have done 2 actions from cards with different titles in a battle already and I then discard The Ring of Water (tRoW) to move someone into the opposed battle making that 3 actions. On my next action I play String of Victories to put tRoW back into my hand. Is that the fourth action so I can put tRoW into play? And can I then use the ability once again?
I am pretty sure the answer is yes (I know it is on the second question), but my brain starts to hurt when I consider the tracking rule. The game "forgets" that tRoW has used it's ability but somehow the forgotten use of said ability counts as an action from cards with different titles? It's just weird to me.
They're tracking different things.
Ring of Water's trait checks abstract game state: "A battle action was taken by this player using an ability on a card called XXX." This doesn't care what happens to the card after the action was taken - it can be removed from the game, shuffled back in, have its title changed (theoretically!), lose the ability, etc.
However, the game state of each card is also tracked, for maximum abilities uses per turn, etc: "This ability on this card has been used once this turn." When the card goes face down and out of play, this tracking stops - so when the card reappears, game state considers it to be a different card (and yes, we have considered having a different tracking rule for uniques, but decided that was even more complicated).