In D:OS, once we had the active skill abilities at level 5, we could learn an unlimited amount of them.
In D:OS EE, even at the max level the skill abilities had a limit to the number of skills we could learn.
The D:OS system was better, IMO. It was a middle ground between learning everything all the time and having only limited abilities:
* Someone who is just dabbling or using a few spare points in a given ability is limited.
* It requires a huge investment to master an ability, considering how the ones with active skills don't have any gear that increases them (in D:OS 1 at least)
* There is more freedom in making the skills if players can reach no limit. In D:OS EE, it's very silly that we are told we can learn 6 Novice water spells when the game has only 5 Novice water spells. Removing the limit at high levels would lessen this problem and give freedom for the designers to make as many or as few skills as they want.
* Many of the skills in D:OS EE are underwhelming, just like many of the highest level skills were in D:OS. In the original game, this wasn't much of an issue since you could just keep them around until the rare situation in which they would be useful, but in the Enhanced Edition this doesn't work - it's better to simply not ever learn the underwhelming skills, since they are going to take the space of something else. This becomes even worse, for the records, when a given ability doesn't have many useful skills in a given rank - rogues don't have two useful Master abilities, for example, but we can't use the Master slot to learn one more Disciple-level skill.
If this allowed characters to become too powerful in D:OS - which IMO it didn't, considering how this was something available to all roles (as opposed to, for example, only spells being unlimited) -, it could be balanced by tweaking the skills themselves.
But I think the skill system in the original version of D:OS was much, much better than in the EE.
Well, I honestly dont see much of a problem with the EE system simply because there arent that many great mastery spells. In fact, aside from Man-at-Arms (which only has 2 master spells anyway), none of the other trees are worth maxing out to 5. I keep them all at 4 and even if we reverted to the old system, I would probably do the same.
If you are a wizard:
The final level of each tree was never worth the 5 skill points. You can easily get another tree up to 3 with just 6 points and that is much more powerful than having master spells in just 1 tree. In other words, even in the old game, you were much stronger as a wizard with 3 or 5 schools at 4-4-4 (30 skill points) or 3-3-3-3-3 (30 skill points) than two schools at 5-5 (30 skill points).
If you are a warrior:
You max out man-at-arms for its relationship with talents (they scale with man-at-arms level).
If you are a dex character:
You are better off as 5-0, 0-5 or 4-2 (archer), or 2-4 (tanky rogue). Regardless, the master level stuff isnt really going to change the character enough to matter. But the lower level stuff can.
The next game will really depend on the skills. If they are also underwhelming at master level (which is not necessarily a bad thing... I kind of like it that way) then there is no point to changing it again.
