Trait points to Skill Levels

[GG Cannon]

As much as I genuinely love the trait system, there is a pretty significant limitation to it, which is that even if you were given infinite free trait points, you don't really have full freedom to create a character min-maxing a certain ability above a certain point.

Considering some servers might have some free trait points given or that a coop group could each take a certain profession and min-max that profession as much as possible, each player will still be pretty average in their profession of choice.

Further still, there is the issue of character death which, if you spent dozens of IRL hours practicing a certain craft can be EXTREMELY frustrating when you can't even sacrifice points you would spend on a few crucial traits to min-max that skill as much as possible.

My suggestion would be to take inspiration from the "storytelling" tabletop RPG system on a way to directly purchase skill levels.

The idea is simple.
On character creation, to purchase a level of the desired skill you would spend:

Next level / 2 = cost in trait points [rounded up].

This would be calculated only after bonuses and demerits given by traits and take those values into consideration for limits.

Explaining and examples:

To get "Axe" level 1 with this system alone, you'd spend 1 trait point, but to get Axe level 3 you'd spend 1+1+2=4 trait points. 10 for level 4, 15 for level 5 and so on.
To start with Carpentry level 10 you'd spend 1+1+2+2+3+3+4+4+5+5 = 30 trait points.

To get Strength level 7 without any trait that give you strength you'd spend 7 trait points since you already start with level 5, which is close to "Stout" that gives +2 strength which is within the margin of the traits already provided, but allowing more freedom on how many levels to get. (for Strength 9 it is 16 trait points and level 10 is 21 trait points)

Now, if you had the "underweight" trait, that gives -1 fitness but can be solved by gaining weight, the maximum amount of fitness levels you'd be allowed to buy with direct trait points would be 9, since if you solve the negative trait you'd be at 10.
Meaning, any solvable negative value by a trait lowers the limit of how many skill levels you can buy with trait points directly.

The amount of trait points used in character creation would take into consideration first the traits and then the points spent, so you can't raise your strength to 7 and then get stout to reach strength 9 for cheaper, it would always consider the trait first meaning you'd always have to pay the highest value for direct trait points to skill levels.

This would be EXTREMELY useful for a server that says the story started 10 years in the future and gives players a high value of free trait points to create their characters or for a more RPing friendly server, or even a more casual friendly server.