Hey there. I've seen a number of questions regarding Kaito Temple Protector and copying a character with a dash("-") skill value. KTP ability reads:

Action: While this character is defending,
choose another participating character – until
the end of the conflict, set this character’s base 
military and Political skill to the chosen character’s 
current skill values.

I believe the culprit of the misunderstanding is from the RR1.2:

If a skill value for a dash character is required to resolve a
card ability, treat the card as if it had an unmodifiable skill
value of 0.

I was not surprised by the recent ruling that using KTP on a character with a dash would just "copy the dash", honestly I hadn't really thought too much about it. When I saw the question posed by others, I tried to see their point and really thought about what the bullet above meant. I've been playing basically like "if it's a dash it's a dash, and only if I need an integer for a card effect to make sense does it become a 0".

The way the clarifying point is worded seems to imply that we need an integer: " If a skill value for a <skill value> is required [...]" makes no sense if "dash" was a valid skill value (and we know that dash is a valid skill value). That would be like saying " If a skill value for a 2 character is required to resolve a card ability, treat the card as if it was a 2 ", it's redundant. ... seems clear that "requiring an integer" is the reason for this bullet point in the rules, but I don't think it's explicit enough.

Regardless, I can now see very clearly how someone would expect the new KTP to copy a dash over as a 0, since if you indeed applied this bullet in every case of resolving every card text where a dash skill was in play, it seems like the recent ruling is wrong and you should have a 0 where they have a dash.

I think the RR around dash needs to be clarified a bit if my interpretation is in fact correct. The latest ruling is really saying,

Card abilities should resolve a dash skill value as a dash if able.
However, if an integer value is REQUIRED to resolve a card ability,
then then treat the card's dash value as an unmodifiable skill value of 0.

I'm sure this could be even clearer, I'm not a writer.

Thoughts?

I generally followed your post and I agree with your understanding. Well said.

However, there are a few cards whose texts (Actions, etc) could have been written in a more clearer manner, IMO.

1 hour ago, LordBlunt said:

I generally followed your post and I agree with your understanding.

I edited the main paragraph to hopefully be a bit more clear; it's sort of an odd thing I'm trying to articulate.

This whole post came about because I was chatting with some people in the discord about this. At first I completely didn't understand their side, it seemed very clear to me, but by the end of the discussion I found myself wanting to believe that the ruling seemed contradictory.