Here is what I wrote for an optional skill system when I worked on Fantasy ICON many years ago. Sorry but the table formatting got screwed up. 
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Skills (Optional Skills System)
Presented here is an optional skills system you can use in Fantasy ICON. While it remains compatible with other ICON games, some of the finer details work a bit differently than what you may be familiar with. The specific changes have to do with skill specialisations and how they can be improved over your character’s lifetime.
In Fantasy ICON, your character has skills and specialisations in those skills—just like in other ICON games. However, your character can only gain a specialisation in a skill at up to two levels higher than his base skill. When you first acquire a skill, you automatically gain one specialisation at +1. The cost of the first specialisation your character gains in a skill is included in the cost to gain the base skill—you don’t pay extra for it.
Furthermore, once your character gains a specialisation in a skill, he never loses it, even if he improves his base skill afterwards. In other words, your character’s specialisations never actually “bottom out” with his base skills if his base skills improve—although specialisations can increase when you spend points to improve them separately from base skills.
Specialisations are listed alongside your character’s base skills as modifying values, or ‘+X’. By improving a specialisation from +1 to +2, you are stretching your character’s knowledge of the specialisation to even greater heights. This expertise, however, doesn’t affect your overall knowledge of the base skill, so it remains at the same level when you improve a specialisation. Improving a single specialisation to +2 (or gaining a new one at +1) always costs less Experience Points (or Development Points during character creation) than improving your overall base skill by one level.
For instance, if your character has the History skill at level 1, and his specialisation is Ancient History +1, his skill is listed as follows: History (Ancient) 1 (+1). What this means is that when you roll dice for your character to make a History test, you add the skill level of 1 to the highest die rolled if the test uses the base skill History. You add the skill level of 2 if the test uses the specialisation Ancient History (because the specialisation adds +1 to your base skill).
The main changes under this optional skills system are that your character can only have specialisations of +2, and when you combine his skill levels and specialisations he can wind up with +8 bonuses to most skill tests.
For instance, in other ICON games, the maximum skill level a character can have is 6 (including specialisations). Under this optional system, the maximum skill and specialisation total is 6 (+2), or 8, for most skills or 6 for skills without specialisations.
Skill Groups
Some skills, such as Languages, Area Knowledge, Artistic Expression, Craft and Weaponry (to name just a few) cover a wide knowledge base and are termed Skill Groups. Each of the skills within these groups is actually a separate base skill in its own right (sometimes called a sub-skill) with its own specialisations. You improve each of your character’s skills and specialisations in a skill group separately.
For instance, if your character has levels in the skill group Weaponry, you must choose the specific skill (such as Bladed Weapons or Axes) as well as a specialisation (such as Longsword or Battleaxe). When recording these skills, you note them as follows: Skill Group: Skill (Specialisation). For example, if your character has 2 levels in Bladed Weapons and a Longsword specialisation of +1, record his skill and specialisation like so: Weaponry: Bladed Weapons (Longsword) 2 (+1).
Skills without Specialisations
Some skills do not have specialisations, such as Fast Talk, Research, Runes, and Search. These kinds of skills are very broad in application and don’t require any degree of specialisation. Your character is just as capable of using his Search skill in a dungeon corridor as he is in a city alleyway, for example. When you make a test for a skill without a specialisation, you simply roll the appropriate number of dice based on the controlling attribute and add your character’s skill level to the highest die to determine the overall test result.
Improving Skills and Specialisations
In Fantasy ICON, you improve your character’s skills and specialisations the same way you do in other ICON games: You spend either Development Points to improve them during character creation or you spend Experience Points to improve them during game play.
During game play, you are only allowed to improve your character’s skills by one level at a time. You cannot improve a skill from level 1 to 3 in one shot, for example. However, you may spend the points to improve one of your character’s base skills by one level as well as improve a specialisation by one level, or gain a new specialisation completely.
For example, you could improve your character’s History (Ancient) skill from 1 (+1) to 2 (+1) or even to 2 (+2), but you could not raise it to 3 (+1). Alternately, you could raise his History (Ancient) skill from 1 (+1) to 2 (+1) and add a second +1 specialisation in Elven History. Your character’s new skill would look like this: History (Ancient, Elven) 2 (+1).
There are no limits to the number of specialisations a character may have in a single skill. If you want to spend the points for your character to specialise in every aspect of a skill, knock yourself out.
For your reference, below is a modified table that lists the costs of improving skills at different levels under this optional skill system. In the Narrator’s chapter, you’ll find a complete table listing the costs to improve all your character’s features: attributes and edges, skills and specialisations, advantages and disadvantages, and so forth.
*Characters cannot start the game with a skill level greater than 3 (+2) or 5 for skills without specialisations.
Included below are some examples showing you how to improve a character’s skills and specialisations, and the associated EP and DP costs.
For example, History is a base skill with numerous specialisations. Therefore, it costs 3 XP (or 3 DP during character creation) to raise your character’s History (Ancient) skill from 1 (+1) to 2 (+1).
To raise your character’s Weaponry: Bladed Weapons (Longsword) skill—Weaponry is a skill group with sub skills and specialisations—from 1 (+1) to 2 (+1) also costs 3 XP (or DP).
If you decide to improve your character’s History (Ancient) skill specialisation from 2 (+1) to 2 (+2), you must spend 2 XP (or 1 DP if you are improving the specialisation during character creation). In this case, you want to improve his specialised knowledge of ancient history but not his overall knowledge of history.
If you want to add a second specialisation, elven history, to your character’s History (Ancient) 2 (+2) skill, you have to spend 2 XP (or 1 DP during character creation). Your character’s new skill would be History (Ancient)(Elven) 2 (+2)(+1).
If, after many successful adventures, your character has the skill History (Ancient) 4 (+2) and you want to raise it to 5 (+2), you have to spend 5 XP. Likewise, if your character has Weaponry: Bladed Weapons (Longsword) 4 (+1) and you want to improve it to 5 (+1), you have to spend 5 XP.
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Drunken DM and the Speak with Dead spell: "No, I'm not the limed-over skeleton of the abbot, and no this special key in my boney fingers does not open the door to the secret treasury! ... Oh crap."
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Originally Posted by tonyg
