How to choose approaches with NPCs

By ladycruella, in Rules Questions

I'm GMing a L5R game and seeing the NPC sheets, I noticed that their skill groups with some rank are colored with the same colors of the rings:

Artisan - Void - black,

Martial - Earth - green,

Scholar - Fire - orange,

Social - Air - purple,

Trade - Water - blue.

First, I thought that it represented their favored stance/approach for each skill group, but then, comparing different sheets, I saw that those colors were always in the same order.

Is there any particular reason why they used those colors for the skill groups, like representing a favored ring?

Or you simply choose any ring/approach/stance every check (according to their behavior and approach description, of course) just like PCs do?

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Well, in the case for the Ki-Rin, it's because they don't have artisan skills nor Trade skills (with the exception of Survival 3) because they are creatures.

I don't think there's anything related to the rings, because you can see it's always the same colors in the same order, except when a given character doesn't have any of the skills.

See the Scholarly Shugenja and the Trained Ashigaru, for instance.

Yes, that's true. Skill groups with rank 0 don't are not colored, independently if the creature is a animal, spirit or person.

Since the order of those colors (black, green, orange, purple, blue) are always the same I don't think they are suggested approaches either. It doesn't make sense that a Fire Kami will Attack with it's earth ring just because it's Martial skill group box is green.

I'm just trying to figure it out if those colors mean something else...

No, those are just to increase the contrast, they have no meaning beyond that.