Pre-game character skills customization

[Jebru]

I love the latest update, and how it allows a lot more customization of our avatar's clothing and overall look. It got me thinking about the possibility of making my avatar even more unique, and the challenges or benefits that this would create. Basically my idea is that you would cut the current avatar's abilities back 10% across the board, and then give a player the option of re-allocating that 10% cut, if they wanted. I picked 10 categories that I thought could be considered for this: Strength, Speed, Knife Skills, Hatchet Skills, Firearms, Archery, Fishing, Cooking, Fire Starting, and Crafting. Some of these skills relate to the skills development in the game either directly or indirectly, while some would just be static traits that don't change. 

• Strength- changes the rate of fatigue caused by the weight of your pack (static)
• Speed- changes how fast you can run, while using the same amount of calories and energy as before (static)
• Knife Skills- improves your ability to fight a wolf with a knife, (static) and harvest a carcass (development)
• Hatchet Skills- improves your ability to fight a wolf with a hatchet, (static) chop tree limbs, (static) and harvest a carcass with a hatchet (development)
• Firearms- improves your ability with a firearm (development)
• Archery- improves your ability with a bow (development)
• Fishing- improves your ability to fish (development)
• Cooking- improves your ability to cook (development)
• Fire Starting- improves your ability to make fires (development)
• Crafting- improves your ability to craft items (static at the moment) and mend items (development)

*Hopefully, if your skill fighting a wolf with a hatchet exceeded your skill fighting with a knife, the game would have that as your first option when fighting

Basically, this system would give you 100 points to allocate. Just so that you wouldn't be able to make a completely unrealistic character, I would put a cap at 50 points for any one attribute, though that may need to be tuned. Any static skill that gets improved, you see that percentage of improvement. So if I allocate 40 points to strength, I am now 40% stronger than the generic avatar. But, that also means that I'm going to have to lose 40 points somewhere else. Any skill that could be developed, I would want the percentage to apply to how fast you develop that skill, not to how good you start out. This leaves the development aspect in the game, which is something I like. Plus, if you are a natural at something, that doesn't mean you were always an expert. It means that you can reach expert level faster than others because it comes easy to you. So, if I allocate 20 points to my fire starting abilities, I will reach the next level of the fire starting development 20% faster than the generic character. But, doing so could potentially mean that my mending skill gets stuck with a 0, which would mean it would develop at a 10% slower pace then it currently does now. (based on my first paragraph, where I cut all skills by 10% to give us a lower starting point) 

I know the explanation is a little complicated, but if you've followed this far, what do you think? Is there a skill I'm missing, that you think should be included? Is there one I have that you'd rather not see included? Or, would you just rather not have this level of customization? 

[minuteman]

This is a good idea