Personal Assassin

Legend of the Five Rings card from Chaos Reigns Part I

Card Type

Follower

Force

3

Chi

0

Gold Cost

5

Keywords

Assassin, Ninja, Experienced

Card Text

Engage: Remove a target Personality's abilities. After each time an action targets them, if they are at this battlefield, give them a -1F/-1C Poison token and, if receiving the token reduces their current Chi to 0, banish this Follower and lose 1 Honor.

Focus Value

1

Legality

Shattered Empire

Deck

Fate

Printings

Rules Q&A

• Q: ShE - Personal assassin targets something, they have no tokens, Itsuki targets the same thing... what happens? When Itsuki is targeting they have no tokens, but then I target and the assassin gives them a token and they have tokens now making the target illegal?
  A: Effects triggered by targeting happen when the targeting happens during effects, not during the "choose targets" step, so they are not illegal at a point where it would interfere with the action. Thus, in your scenario, the Personality would get both tokens, one from the delayed effect of the Assassin and one from Itsuki's action. Brook Cunningham, "Sun and Moon #rules-questions", 28 Apr 2025
• Q: ShE - Engage with Personal Assassin, then target with Tsai... this would give the target enough tokens that they die... are they dishonored when they die?
  A: I'll have to check the CR which I don't have handy for all the finicky timing on that. Will post again when I can.
  So, the answer is that the targeting will "find" and target the Personality to dishonor before dishonoring them, triggering their receiving of the tokens directly after the targeting, before the dishonor, which kill them immediately, and only after then will the dishonor effect happen to them, in the discard after they're already dead, so no, they do not die dishonorably. Brook Cunningham, "Sun and Moon #rules-questions", 15 Apr 2025
• Q: I have a question about Personal Assassin from Chaos Reigns: The assassin targets with its engage action so does the target immediately get a poison token even at the engage step?
  A: No. It was targeted during the first effect removing its abilities. The indefinite conditional effect set up afterwards will trigger on each subsequent targeting, but the action's own targeting has already passed and will not trigger it. Brook Cunningham, "Sun and Moon #rules-questions", 7 May 2024