Not sure if this was mentioned in the past and cautious to post anything regarding the skill system considering the rage it tends to generate lately.

 

What about simplifying the skill talent merger to talent skill tiers. What I mean by this is remove skills linked to talents and simply have different tiered talents that give you access to the skills you want. Such as basic athletics > intermediate athletics > advanced athletics > master athletics. This would allow you to make balanced combat/skill characters, combat focused (no skills) characters, or even a more passive skills based character (with little to no combat talents).

 

I think it would be simple to implement and allow for varied and flexible builds. Any thoughts?

 

You need to give more detail - I'm unclear on what you're describing exactly.

What I'm suggesting is to have around 4 talents for each skill. The talents would be tiered 1 through 4 for each skill and require you to pass on a combat talent in order to select a skill talent. This would lead to balanced combat/skill characters who have talents in both areas, combat focused characters who decides to pass on all skill talents in favour of combat talents, or even a character who forgoes most combat (if not all) talents in favour of skills, making them far weaker in combat but more of a non-combat bases character.