So, as it exists in its current playtest form, I find the Lore skill to be rather lacking. A lot of my feelings toward Lore stem from the vagueness of the skill in terms of what you're actually getting, and from the bizarre (in comparison to other skills) way in which it represents a seemingly infinite number of skills in a rather unsatisfying way. Sure, I can have all the Lore skills I could possibly want, but there's little expectation that any given one of them will be useful (barring GM guidance) unless you have a whole lot of downtime.
But I recently had a thought about how the skill could be improved into a more satisfying interaction with the game world without actually changing it a great deal. The crux of the change is that Lore is no longer a potentially infinite series of separate skills, but one single skill that functions in both a general and specific sense. How do I mean? Let me explain by showing specific examples:
Lore (Int) Overview:
Lore represents specialized information about a narrow topic, as well as general information absorbed over a lifetime of experiences. When you become trained in Lore, choose an appropriate subcategory to represent the specialized nature of your knowledge. This category can represent a profession (such as a baker or blacksmith or sailor) or it could represent a field of study (such as a creature type, like vampires or dragons, or a plane of existence other than your native plane, like the Abyss or the Ethereal Plane), or a historical concept (like Ancient Thassilon or the Dominion of the Black). It’s always a good idea to consult with your GM about the subcategory of Lore that you specialize in, as some options may be more or less appropriate for a given campaign or setting.
The Three Main Uses Of Lore:
{A} RECALL KNOWLEDGE
[Concentrate]
You can attempt a lore check to try to remember information related to a subcategory of lore you specialize in. The DC is set by the GM and is determined by the obscurity of the information you try to remember.
Success: You recall a relevant piece of information.
Critical Success: As success but you recall an additional piece of relevant information.
Critical Failure: You recall an incorrect piece of information.
{A} RECALL GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
[Concentrate]
You can attempt a lore check with a -5 penalty to remember information not related to a subcategory of lore you specialize in. The DC is set by the GM an is determined by the obscurity of the information you try to remember.
Success: You recall a relevant piece of information.
Critical Success: As success but you recall an additional piece of relevant information.
Critical Failure: You recall an incorrect piece of information.
PRACTICE A TRADE
This is a very long entry because of the complicated nature of Practice A Trade, but the gist of it is that you can practice a trade in a profession you specialize in, or you can attempt to work in a profession you haven't specialized in at a -5 penalty (subject to GM discretion, etc, because some jobs are unsuitable for those with no experience).
Other Rules Interactions:
I think this change from many skills to one with binary functions (specialized or not) makes many of the interactions with other places in the rules a whole lot cleaner. Because it isn't taking up many different skill slots, it no longer competes as badly with your other skill increases. So something like Additional Lore could just let you choose another Lore subcategory to be a specialty, and for all your specialties you just use the same proficiency rank and bonus in Lore.
And then there are things like Bardic Lore, which could be simplified to the following sentence: "When you use Lore to Recall General Knowledge" you don't take a penalty.
You now have a single handy catch-all skill for what your character could possibly know, like Athletics is a single handy catch-all skill for feats of physical strength. Because of the inherent penalty (which can be tweaked to suit the success rate desired, -5 is just a nice round number), you're still much better off having one or more Lore Specialties, and Recalling Knowledge (even untrained) in the other skills that can Recall Knowledge is still desirable as well.
And, when designing rules elements where it matters whether you've studied in a given area or not, one can reference Recall Knowledge and Recall General Knowledge as separate entities. Option X might apply to Recall Knowledge, while Option Y might apply to Recall Knowledge and Recall General Knowledge. Furthermore, it can also cut down on one area that I've seen can take up table time flipping through rulebooks: if you can't find which skill knowing about something should fall into, just call it a General Knowledge check and move on.
So, what do people think about making Lore just one skill? I think it has potential to fix the most glaring issues I have with the skill, but I'm curious to see whether or not this addresses some of the other problems people have been having.
I'm really not sure how this is different from rolling a Lore Check you're trained in, and rolling a Lore Check you're not trained in. Specific Lores already do what you want: allowing you to roll for knowledge, and resolving pay for profession. Theoretically, any PC can roll a Circus Lore check, or any imaginable type of Lore either published or imagined on-the-spot, with the penalty for untrained checks, at a -4 penalty IIRC. Even in formatting, it visually would look very similar: Lore (Blacksmith) to General Lore (Blacksmith sub-category).
I disagree with you that having Lore be very specific, not always useful, and up to the GM to discern if it's applicable to be a bad thing. I think it's a feature that every class gets a free venue for random lore and profession. But your proposed solution doesn't seem to be solving the problems you have with it.