I am a little torn on the 'average joe' argument. First off, it is not hard to grow plants. It is difficult to treat plants if they start having problems (this i think is fairly well reflected in the current skill system). It is not hard to do basic carpentry, and with time I could see those basic skills evolving to the point where you could make your own bookshelf or fence that is more or less sound and straight. Fishing if anything is harder to master in this game then in the real life. Trapping might be a little too easy as initially it would be almost impossible to learn how to do it effectively without prior knowledge. I think the skill system works as it is but could be tweaked a bit. Each time you level a skill you could add a time modifier to learning any other skill, for example if you have a point in blunt and a point in carpentry this could add a .1 increase on learning a new skill (.05 modifier from each. time modifier 1.1), as you learn more and more skills the modifier gets larger and larger until eventually skill progression moves to almost a crawl. This forces you to choose which skills you really do want be a specialist in and concentrate on those. It would also encourage players to stop putting all skills up to 5 and add diverse character builds. You could expand this to the initial player class build as well, perhaps if you are a police officer you never get penalties leveling ranged weapons, if you are a construction worker you don't get penalties on carpentry etc.
