>First I can see the appeal of a system like this, I just
>don't think it would work out very well.

Define what is "very well".
It is hard to estimate a system in vacuum, compare it with ROM(CF) system.

>If you were to recieve the majority of your skills at the
>start of a characters life and they would then improve with
>use, I see two possible outcomes.
>
>A) The skills don't work well at all at the beginning and you
>need to spend significant time to make them reliable. So your
>assassin CAN assassinate as soon as he is rolled but he will
>fail 99.99% of the time. Thus, long lived characters, say with
>200+ hours, will still have a very large advanrage over new
>characters because of the practice they have put in.

Right now your assassin can't assassinate at all at the beginning.
He needs to spend significant time to get to the point where he can make at least first his attempt.
What is proposed: you actually can assassinate at the beginning, though with low chance. How low? It is a question of implementation, right answer will be as low as needed to make system work well.
Older characters will have advantage, how huge it should be it is also a question of implementation. You can make it larger, or lesser. I'm personally wouldn't mind if all chars would be equal at all. Then the player own skills make the game. But I don't propose that because we discuss RPG games, where people want to have advantage coming not only from their skills and knowledge, but from direct time investment. So they actually want to have some difference between newbies and experienced chars and I don't mind it.

But keep in mind, if you will make it too large, you would have to implement PK ranges (so new characters will not be completely wasted) and the result will be CF-like system.


>or
>
>B) The skills are reliable, or reasonably so, at the start of
>a characters life and there is less incentive to improve the
>skills because they work well right out of the box. If this
>is the case I don't see how you end up with anything but a
>mindless PK mud, there is no reason to invest time and effort
>into a character if the pay off is so small or the need does
>not exist.

Again, if you like to have advantage from time investment, not only from player's skill then the system can maintain that difference.
But the whole question is not connected to PR atmosphere. Mindless PK mud comes not from skills out of the box but from the players approach to RP. There can be mindless PK mud based on any system. In fact, you have many mindless PK muds around here based on levels + PK ranges system.

>
>Maybe something else could come out from it, but this it what
>I see as happening. I just wish low level characters would
>just get smitted every now and then for Sh*t talking to heros
>then who cares if you can't pk them