Your crazy

Sic.

Cool idea Mark. Actually, it need not be off topic, if people here want to try playtesting full on in a campaign.

You should know that the initial skill system was not my original idea. It was introduced in the Dragon magazine, around but not in issue 100, for Basic D&D. I took the core concept for thief skills and NWPs, gradually evolved it over several campaigns to get rid of the 'class' system, adding a bunch of skills from Oriental Adventures (e.g., the infamous and deadly Iron Cloth). Different things were tried, tested, and discarded for different campaigns, such as spellpoints (ultimately, no), fluid priest magic (no again, but 3E does it right), and several ways of doing hitpoints, THACO, saves, and thief skills.

It's hard to find balance. For example, you don't want to discourage people from taking fluff skills like Poetry, but make it too easy, and pretty soon you've got a 4th level World's Greatest Poet. And despite having the longest description in my handouts, no one ever took Tightrope Walking.

In any case, please send me a copy. It's probably best if you stay in the d20 framework for ability scores and combat mechanics... do we really need to redesign 'skeletons'? But getting rid of classes entirely and making it all skill/feat based would be good. Balance and a wide range of skills is most important. Regardless of all the expansions WotC have put out, whenever I design PCs or NPCs, I find I'm always taking the same five skills.