Bitter

Legend of the Five Rings card from The War of Spirits

Card Type

Item

Force

+2

Chi

+3

Gold Cost

7

Keywords

Unique, Weapon

Card Text

A Personality whose only Weapon is Honorable may attach this card ignoring the restriction against attaching more than one Weapon.
If this Personality ever has 0 Personal Honor: Destroy him.
Battle: Any number of times per turn, if this Personality is unbowed, target an enemy Personality with 0 Personal Honor: This Personality duels him. Destroy the duel's loser.

Focus Value

3

Legality

Four Winds (Gold), Hidden Emperor (Jade)

Deck

Fate

Printings

Rulings

• Destroys a dishonored Personality before he or she can commit seppuku. [VRD, 8 November 2000] Rules Archive, August 18, 2007, p. 49

Rules Q&A

• Q: If number 2 is correct:
  This means that a bowed personality with Bitter can still issue challenges to Personalities with 0 PH?
  A: An unbowed Bitter cannot be used by a bowed Personality because of a completely unrelated reason: under Gold Edition rules, Bitter's action targets its own Personality. Jeff Alexander, "post for 4 December 2002", 5 Dec 2002
• Q: We come with this question in a prev tournament, and I will like to know how this mechanic works.
  First a little background. On the rules and errata section in alderac (http://l5r.alderac.com/rulings/), we found (http://l5r.alderac.com/rulings/#Bow):
  a.. Abilities on Items that do not require the attached Personality to bow can still be used when he is bowed, provided the Item is not. [DW, e-mail, 2/7/97]
  My oponents use his towers of the yogo ability to bow my pep with bitter attached.
  bitter: (from l5rseach.com)
  Unique Weapon* A Personality with Honorable as his or her only Weapon can attach Bitter. If this Personality ever has under 1 Personal Honor, destroy him or her. Battle: This Personality issues an unrefusable challenge to an opposing Personality with 0 Personal Honor.
  Ability can be used any number of times. [JA, 7 November 2000] a.. Destroys a dishonored Personality before he or she can commit seppuku. [VRD, 8 November 2000]
  So acording to the first ruling about items, if my personality is bowed by towers of yogo, I still can use his ability when my pep is bowed, because the personality doesn´t need to bow, right?
  A: In general, it'd be allowed. However, under the Gold Edition definition of targeting, Bitter targets its own Personality with its Battle action (unlike, say, the Daikyu). It cannot be used if the Personality is bowed. Jeff Alexander, "post for 11 December 2001", 12 Dec 2001
• Q: What was the thought behind not making Hunger and the other Five Swords have a designation like the Bloodswords? My instinct is to think that it would be "trait lore text" that could create confusion, but other cards have the same "trait lore text" that doesn't seem to have a purpose, e.g., Goju Yurishi's Dragon Child trait, or Diagotsu Yajinden's Khadi trait. It implies there could be a card later than may never come ("Search your Fate Deck for a Weapon of Legend equipment"), but we've seen that in many cases, and it would attach a certain mystique around the equipment? Bitter and Hunger sound like Bloodswords, but they're not. Honorable doesn't sound like it should be related to Bitter and Hunger, so if you don't know any history, you'd miss the interesting link between them.
  A: The short, simple answer is that story simulation within the cards is not applied exhaustively. Also, talking about the Bitter/Honorable daisho and Hunger, you're looking at cards printed over a decade apart by completely different teams. If anything, their lack of unifying keywords speaks more to internal consistency than if Hunger had gotten any, well after the other two lacked them. Brook Cunningham, "Oracle of the Void #l5r", 8 Feb 2024