As a part of removing tedium from character creation, I think we should remove the idea of leveling discrete skills like swim.
Issues:
- Say you put 2 points in swim because your character is from an island or something. You can, and probably will in the average setting, go the entire campaign without swimming once. That's dumb.
- Not putting points in spot is handicapping yourself, given how we tend to play.
Proposed solution:
Combine feats and skills into a single concept: Abilities
These are things you take in character creation, or can acquire during the campaign, which can change anything about you.
Carry over some feats as abilities, for instance quick cast (allows you to cast one spell as a free action).
Skills should be replaced by more general abilities. For instance, I think spot, listen and search should be combined into a generic ability called heightened awareness, which would give you +1 on a roll if you're doing any of those.
Ability ideas:
- Heightened awareness: +1 on rolls when spotting, listening, or searching
- Athletic: +1 on rolls when swimming, climbing and jumping
Abilities can, depending on the type, be leveled, such that you can have 2 levels in heightened awareness, giving you +2.
These abilities being more general should make them more interesting, make it easier to design a character's skills and actually have them be used, and remove a sizable portion of the tedium from character creation.