The Grind: A compromise solution

[Alesan]

This is a good discussion to have. There's one thing I want to point out.

Maybe even make some skills less terrible at lower levels--foraging for anything specific with less than advanced forage feels borderline impossible, for instance. It seems more effective to just forage rocks until you happen to find jasper than to 'forage rocks for jasper.'

Regarding this, I was under the impression that skill has nothing to do with the success of specific foraging. The mechanic simply auto-junks whatever you aren't foraging for. Which seems... counter-intuitive.

[Tranquil]

Definitely not an aside. If I could start as Trooper/Private every other PC I would.

This would be great. I want to play in clans, but I don't want to wait a month before my character can even be a 'true' part of it.

Maybe a role application, much like tribals have.

[Halcyon]

Do not add new classes, use current ones.
Introduce a command like "gain" to be used only within first 3 hours of gameplay, like reroll
It reduces a player's cap by X amount, and adds that to skill level.

command gain:
gain hunt 10
gain piercing weapons 20
gain shield use 10
gain armormaking 30
etc.

If your hunt cap is 80, and starting at 20. After using gain hunt 10
Your skill will go up to 30 and cap reduced to 70.
Cannot be rerolled or taken back, new cap is permanent.

Instead of reducing cap, how about a balancing skill gain debt?
If you add on 10 slashing, your character would then have a debt of 15 or 20 points they would have to earn off before their slashing could rise again?