Bonus question: have you considered the option to allow players to switch skillsets while in combat at the cost of a certain number of inactive turns? In my opinion it would help to make things less binary (you're either are prepared or not prepared for an encounter), while adding an interesting trade-off to the game (is it worth to lose 1 or 2 turns in order to change skillset?).
That's an interesting idea to make this system less static and determining (assumed it is), so you have a chance to adapt to specific situations and enemy properties in combat. There could be a talent added ('second-chance education' or 'quick study') that allows to reduce the time of remembering/reappropriation of skills. So you could have four base types of characters: characters with bad memory but highly effective skills; characters with high amount but less effective skills; 'balanced' characters; and characters that are mediocre but flexible (or flexible and effective but very bad in memory). The talent should come with certain penalties, maybe to memory itself (the drawback of quick memorising), to balance that right. I see those characters take out a book, browse pages and study while arrows, fireballs and grenades explode all around them.
If the current system is meant as it seems - choosing your skills before every combat - I imagine it could lead to the following behaviours:
- much save reloading due to inadequate skills (as already mentioned) - to make this less
necessary it could also be an option to offer ways to gather information about enemies (before you met them), where it's consistent with story, gameworld and role (by reading, dialogs or abilities like loremaster), so you have the option to actually prepare before you've played the whole game.
- using the same skillset the most time to not interrupt the flow before every fight; if enemies are easily beatable without changing skills it would take away the strategic aspect of skill selection, but if it's necessary to change skills before most of your fights this could become a bit tedious over time.
This is just meant as some thoughts on what we currently know (and that's just a very small part of the system that we'd have to know in total to be able to really analyze and judge it).
