I was able to work again on playtesting today and started making a variety of different characters. I have found this out... the skills format in the alpha file work very well for pcs but not so good for npc classes (well, at least npc classes as they currently exist). Personally, I am all for keeping the npc classes and feel that their old format is good as it followed very closely to the pc classes... though weaker of course.
The problem is this, in order to have a decent blacksmith, tanner, historian, taxidermist, saddle maker, cartographer, etc. etc. etc. with the alpha rules, you have to tack on a few more levels, even more so than with the 3.x rules as standing.
My proposed option is to bring back skill points but remove the old "may not spend more than level+3" in ranks on any skill cap. Thus, if you really, really wanted to burn alot of points in one particular skill, even starting out, you could... but then you would naturally sacrifice your points going into other areas. (thus, you could have a 1st level rogue that was one of the world's greatest lock picks, or even trap finders/disablers, but significantly weaker in other areas of interests as similiar rogues).
The other solution would be to raise the cap... say "may not spend more than level+5", or even "may not spend more than level+10"/
What does everyone else think about this?