Courts of the Crane Clan

You can see in the sample image that the Berserker costs 1, and the two extra fate go on the character. That means the cost doesn't count toward their lifespan.

Add to things I love about Fate : how it interacts with kill actions. Assassins and other people who cared about how high a gold cost your personality had, while mechanically sound, was always flavor dead weight. "Oh, sorry, your lord paid too much to hire you, I can't kill you"? Yeah.

But with Fate as the currency, the same mechanism suddenly shifts into (basically) the RPG Great Destiny/Dark Fate advantages. You're not going to die from Isawa Masahiro throwing fire at you because fate won't allow it. And narratively (and in the context of Rokugan)...that actually make sense.

Uh? I haven't said it did.

I'm observing that many kill/steal actions (Isawa Masahiro's ability, Assassination, etc) are built to hit only lower-cost characters, ie characters with a lower fate.