Would it be too late now to split out adventuring skills?
e.g. Lockpicking, Barter, Speech, Crafting and related skills should have a separate pool of skill points.
So you could for example:
- receive 2 + 0.2 x intelligence skillpoints per level that you can spend on ANY skills, as well as
- receive 1 + 0.2 x intelligence skillpoints per level that you can ONLY spend on adventuring skills
At the moment there is a lot of choice, but your Player character(s) are the only ones who interact and therefore adventure. So I increasingly find that I have to spend a lot more into adventuring skills, leaving my player characters severely underpowered. Or if I want to be on-par with my companions, then I don't get to take advantage of a lot of the adventuring skills.
Having said that - the initial version (.37) was too generous.
Just a thought
Forgot to add - there is precedent for player characters gaining skills differently - Mass Effect (Shepard got an extra 2 skills per level) and Dragon Age (again the Player's character had more skills to choose from than the NPCs).
