Weapon skill levels are tricky to implement... I've thought of a very simple system that doesn't unbalance things.

Firstly, I've made a very subtle change to the rules - weapon damage is now proportional to the character's level, rather than the character's level squared. Therefore, to do decent damage, another multiplier equal to the character's level is needed to give the weapon a little extra punch. This multiplier is the weapon skill level. It starts at level 1, and remains equal to experience level *if* the weapon type is being used. If not, the weapon skill level doesn't advance. Therefore, upon picking up a new weapon at anything beyond a very low level, a character will find it virtually useless in combat and need training of some sort with it before they can use it to any real effect.

I don't think we should have weapon skill levels for parrying and shield defence just yet until we figure out a balanced way to implement them - this system doesn't translate well into defence.

Oh, and under this system, warriors' spells are slightly more powerful than their weapons, and mages overall are slightly more powerful than warriors. Therefore, we probably *do* need an MP system of some sort, or at least a not-overly-restrictive Wisdom-based limitation on the number of spells that can be cast without needing to rest. Heck, maybe just making the number of spells castable in one day equal to Wisdom, or to half of Wisdom or something, would work