Skills

These days I GM Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Grindhouse edition.

The reasons for this are as follows, in order of importance;

• it is easy to learn, especially for people who have never played an RPG before.
• it is highly compatible with 40+ years of published gaming material. 
• it is supported, with new material being churned out constantly.
• it isn't the vanilla crap that corporate DnD and 90% of other publishers shit out.

 I never quite liked the skills though. The mechanical aspect of skills in LotFP are great, it's the skills themselves that bug me.

A first level character gets 2 skill points to disperse however they see fit. Every level after that, they get 2 more skill points to disperse.

So these are replacement skills I've come up with.

• Assassin: Applies to using/recognizing poisons, detecting ambushes, backstabbing, sneaking, etc
• Fighter: Applies to appraising weapons and armor, knowledge of legendary warriors and weapons, and military history
• Magic: Applies to recognizing enchantment, wards, magical devices, as well as indicating the maximum spell level the character can cast on their own without help.
• Ranger: Applies to outdoorsy stuff like tracking, wilderness survival, and camouflage
• Religious: Applies to religious etiquette, history, lore, trivia, famous figures and historical events. Indicates the number of prayer points the character can spend in a day.
• Sailor: Applies to anything boat, ocean, and sailing related
• Scholar: Applies to basically anything that isn't covered by the other skills
• Thief: Applies to pick pocketing, forgery, recognizing and deactivating traps
• To Hit: each point gives a bonus of +1 to hit. This skill doesn't have a max amount 

So what if a character wants to sneak/prowl/stealth around? Which skill do you use for that? Easy, whichever one seems most appropriate!
If a character is sneaking and is...

• In an urban setting, use thief skill
• On a battlefield, use fighter skill
• Hunting in the wilderness, use ranger skill
• Infiltrating a magic guild house, use magic skill 
• Prowling around a monastery, use religion skill
• Assassin skill can be useful just about anywhere in any situation - such is the nature of assassins.
• If you want it to be simpler, just use Ranger and Thief skills for sneaking in wilderness and urban areas, respectively.

I originally just used the Magic skill for both and combined clerical and wizard spells. This presented the problem that there is half a billion spells from levels 1-7, and then a very severe drop off for 8 and 9. There is also the issue that some players actually want to play a cleric and don't want to play a magic user with cleric-type spells. Plus it gives another skill category for players to spend points in. So, whatever. Now there is a Religion skill.

Skills still max out at 6, except for To Hit which has no cap limit. For magic users, this means that 6th level spells are the highest they can cast, without the help of other magic users, magical devices, or divine/infernal help.