Alternatives to the pyramid system

[Wanderer]

While I agree with the spirit and apparent purpose of the pyramid system (preventing excessive specialization in a few very high skills for a character), I found sticking to the letter of the law gets increasingly dysfunctional and annoying, especially at high power levels. At some point, you're not so rarely forced to put points in skills that look useless or inappropriate for the character, use skill allocation schemes that seem suboptimal for the concept, and so on. To sum it up, the rule seems appropriate as a broad, flexible guideline, but its strict application is a pain in the butt. Has anyone good suggestions on how to adjust or replace it?

[dragoonbuster]

Raise the bottom of the pyramid.

The first time you do this, suddenly you only have to obey the pyramid rules from Fair (+2) and up, vs Average (+1) and up per the RAW. You still have to pay two skill points to get there from Mediocre (+0) but you don't have to worry about how many Average skills you have when judging whether your pyramid is balanced.

You can repeat as necessary. It opens up a lot of room.

[Wanderer]

Sanctaphrax made a similar suggestion, but his solution included raising the skill bottom and lowering the skill points pool, which I unfortunately found too awkward and troublesome to implement. As I understand it, your solution does not shuffle skill points around, and so may be more acceptable for my character-building aims. As it concerns your own idea, at which power level would you implement raising the bottom of the pyramid? I have defined a power level scale ranging from 10 refresh, 35 skill Points to 22 refresh, 70 skill points.

[dragoonbuster]

I forget exactly when we did it but it was around the time we were a handful of points shy of maxing out people's pyramids. We also had combined several skills, however, so it happened sooner than it might a typical game. We pretty much played it by ear. As you should with Milestones in general.

[Stormraven]

Don't forget, though it has similar issues, you also have the Column system. For a relatively focused character, two or three wide columns will serve quite well.