Suppose I have a character with Incompetance in Heavy Weapons (like 0 unaware) but I also have an active soft of heavy weapons 4? (with skillwires or whatever)

furthermore what if I bought a knowsoft about (heavy weapons 5)??

I can't find any rules that explicitly mention this so I'm pretty sure this is going to be more of an GM opinion type thing or maybe someone has some SR3 cannon....

My guess is it depends on how the GM interprets the rules, you could say that the incompetence applies to even the skillsoft, or you could say that the skillsoft is immune to the incompetence.

no offense but thats exactly what i was wondering. you kind of just restated my question. Thanks for the reply though

A) Let the player get away with it cause he is spending the Nuyen on the skillwires and softs, but make it harder for him to get them for unknown reasons unless he RP's the situation well (IE, market dry, crackdown on illegal skills, etc). This is if he got the incomp at gen and wanted to buy the softs later in the game.

B) Smack the player up side the head for trying to get around the rules and saving only 1BP, cause the 5BP for the Incomp dont add up to the cost of the skillwires 4 "Basic" (8000) + the activesoft (12000) [4BP nuyen] + the essence loss of the skillwires (priceless). This is char gen...

We all seem to agree that there's no Rule As Written prohibiting being Incompetent in an active skill and having Skillwires and an Activesoft to replace the Incompetence.

It's important to note, though, that for the 5BP that Incompetent provides that you would have to purchase Skillwires and an Activesoft of the same rating. Note that Incompetent does not apply to Knowledge skills and Languages.

That's a pretty big Essence and Nuyen hit just for 5BP. =)

Edit: Konsaki must have had the same thought at the same time. =)

and interestingly, the person can no longer roll edge when using heavy weapons...

You can't get skillwires 4 with a rating 4 progam at char gen.

Also, keep in mind that the nuyen hit you take is really only for the 12,000 program if you assume the character would have gotten the skillwires anyway. 8,000 for a rating 3 program at chargen means they've gained 3BP and 2,000 . Not too shabby, and definitely a minor cheese of the system.

However, they can only have up to double rating active in skills and it takes a simple action to swap skills, so they'll sometimes find themselves losing actions to use their heavy weapons. They also can't use edge with the skill, so will lose the ability to pull off some big shots when they really need to.

I see no problem for a character having incompetence in one skill and then using skillwires to help him using the equipment. They pay for it both in essence and money and hardly gain much in it.

1. They cannot use Edge
2. They are limited to Rating 3 (8D6 with smartlink for ranged combat)
3. Rating 3 skills cost 9K a piece so they aint cheap.