Touching the Soul

Legend of the Five Rings card from Diamond Edition, Scorpion Clan Coup 2, Jade Edition, Gold Edition, Pearl Edition

Card Type

Strategy

Gold Cost

0

Keywords

Kiho

Card Text

Reaction: Before you announce an action, bow your performing Monk or Shugenja and choose your Personality not at the current battlefield: He may perform the action as if he were at the current battlefield.

Focus Value

2

Legality

Clan Wars (Imperial), Four Winds (Gold), Hidden Emperor (Jade), Rain of Blood (Diamond)

Deck

Fate

Printings

Rulings

• Erratum: Bowing a Shugenja or Monk is a cost. [Erratum, ZF, 2 November 2003; JA, 3 November 2003] Rules Archive, August 18, 2007, p. 59
• Erratum: Touching the Soul: Bowing the caster is a cost. [errata] Legend of the Five Rings FAQ, April 26, 2004, p. 17

Rules Q&A

• Q: On defense, I have random monk/shugenja blocking. They are the only defender. Opponent attacks with 3 units. My first action I play Come One At A Time. When I go to issue the first challenge, can I use Touching the Soul to have someone not at the battle issue the challenge?
  A: No. The action would not be legal if he were actually there. Jeff Alexander, "rules for 11 Feb. 2004", 12 Feb 2004
• Q: Then there's a whole slew of Battle Actions: a Charge is _surely_ performed :-) The rulebook talks about changes to personalities, but only as costs.
  This generally isn't a serious problem - I'm not sure I would agree that Gift of Fealty is performed by the targetted personality, anyway, I just want a way to counter Pekkle bombs - but it does become important with Touching the Soul.
  Jeff, you might want to reread what you wrote about this for Zen's Card of the Week. That was in 1998, and you may be standing by the wording in the Spirit Wars rulebook, in which case Zen needs to add some notes to the entry for it!
  A: The definition of "performed" has always been a sticky issue.
  Ask yourself this: is Meditation performed by the target Personality? What about Uncertainty? Most people who answer quickly would say "yes" and "no". (I know you'd say "yes" to Meditation because of your attitute towards Charge.)
  Consider, however, that they're both actions that can target any Personality belonging to any player. (One is Open and one is Limited, but why should that matter?) There isn't enough mechanical difference between these two cards to support treating one as performed and the other as not. The rulings are inconsistant when compared back to back.
  The scope of this problem renders individual intent-based rulings infeasible. The term has been used for a long, long time without a formal definition. Between having too many cards on which to issue specific rulings and the unacceptable subjectivity of the FAQ's guideline ("it's performed unless it does something bad"), the only solution was settling on an objective, easily- defined-and-remembered rule with the full knowledge that it wouldn't apply seamlessly. Jeff Alexander, "replies to the 6 June digest", 10 Jun 2001