Customized SKills...

[Folker]

Why not allow all characters have all non magical skills. You want a skill? you practice it in one way or the other untill it shows up in your skill list. When will we do it, whether in an hour or in a year, is up to GMs to choose, as long as it 'does' happen.

Then people's skill sets will not consist of what they chose, but what they had the opportunity, time, resources, and capable teachers to learn themselves.

Add that with an ability to get 60/40/20/10% skills of the starting guild in the beginning, and offer each character a x% cap possibly learned per year, and y% cap possibly learned by the character 'ever'. And you're golden.

Your ranger doesnt have access to bows and arrows? Then it wont ever use a bow, and it will never show up in the skill list, nor will it get better. Your ranger got into a wrong crowd, and life made him steal? Soon enough sneak, hide, and pickpocket creeps into your skill set. Life of crime is proving to be good, and 5 years pass? And your ranger ends up with some useless ranger skills that are not really trained for they were never used, and some superb pickpocket skills.

Finally ... the IC events of your chara made your character into more of a pickpocket, then a ranger, but is it truly a bad thing? Afterall, if the guilds are locked like they are now, that means that characters are limited in their reaction to IC events. Something that guild choices 'supposedly' shouldnt have an inpact on.