Digging through splatbooks 85-92 skills and kits

Rewriting my home brew

also check out this collage architecture
https://socks-studio.com/2012/10/07/atemporality-at-work/

I'm making lots of first-level characters with various builds to partly test my system and for a quick start. This has also been good for followers and NPCs on the fly. So looking in the kit era of D&D has some interesting ideas.

Im also looking through skills of 85 to 92 2nd ed and late becmi skills too

I have found some odd stuff

A dowsing skill lets you use a stick to find minerals 100 foot deep

Thaumaturgey skill +5% to learn a new spell you find and some lore fluff

Body Manipulation - give ppl super powers like flight and extra stats -5Charisma per go with surgery. Spelljammer has some odd stuff.

Skill to work a crows for bards seems like performance basic 

Anatomy skill at least +2 all your healing skills and i guess for autopsies and this

"Secondly, the wizard can use this skill to repair corpses that have been badly damaged. With a successful proficiency check, the wizard can strengthen and reinforce a body, making it more suitable for animation as a mindless undead. This provides a hit point bonus of +1 per die for skeletal remains, or a bonus of +2 hp per die for a creature to be animated as a zombie."

I added morticians can first aid undead and make undead tougher its cool fluff.

Light sleeping (a second sleeping skill) full benefit of 8 hours sleep in 1 hour once per week (i thought it might help you sense danger asleep but that's probably just trauma). Orcs of Thay book the sleep skill lets magicians sleep undisturbed while violence around you or possibly while being tortured. I kinda like both these in one skill is acceptable as 8 hours sleep and 8 hours spell prep are different to me and you need to be rested to start recovering spells. 

Feign sleep skill to pretend to be asleep or detect ppl faking it.
Im trying to think of when id ever have used it in 40 years of games

A skill to sense strong emotions on the astral plane. Another skill that you draw nutrition from other plane which seems OP for a slot. There are some other skills for the astral plane. Maybe when i write up shamans.

Nutriment (Proficiency)
A body with this proficiency can draw sustenance and nourishment from ethereal mists with a successful proficiency check.

So some ppl hate skills.
They don't have to replace roleplaying or good ideas.

I played brp for 20 years and no dnd im fine with skills.
They can be shortcuts when I don't want to roleplay smelting some ore. 
I don't punch my dm or wave a sword around to simulate combat.
I don't french kiss the dm for seduction attempts (not yet anyway).
In my game unskilled people get a reduced chance but can try at least once.
Thieves are the skill class in my game and they get the most
Weird skills that make later edition ideas like feats and other abilities obsolete.
Synchronous bonuses for similar skills combined 

CGR3 The Complete Sha'ir's Handbook was a surprise 
possibly best product of that line and usable in lots of desert settings
sand wind sea and fire elemental spells are quite good
it would work with the old empires forgotten realms book desert spells 
a wizard kit that can spend spell slots to buff stats and some other magic ideas I'm interested in.

Sadly the system broke down as later kids seemed more unbalanced vs others. Some were fluff or reaction bonuses and some had penalties that were not balanced.  I like the sea ranger could ask a parliament of fish for aid and the fish would vote on aiding the ranger. Thats A-grade weird fluff. 

Id like to recreate this kind of kit vibe but less rigid and just suggestions and built in the skill system. The species race powers I especially like varients to have different abilities. Id like the Halfling to be reskinned as small animal folk, goblins and other small folk. For more magical ones Id reskin a gnome. I once wrote a thing to reskin most of my demihuman non human classes as various species of trolls (more like fairy tale variety of trolls less d&d trolls).

The complete books are pretty interesting periods of D&D and some offer extra rules for various activities like Rangers have detailed rules on tracking rules or dwarves has mining rules and craft stuff. The first 4 really helped make 2nd ed more interesting and the cleric rules made the possibility of interesting priests. Basically, by the time the Necromancer book came out they felt rushed, more book layouts wasted space with huge logos and borders and bigger fonts so I quit pretty much until i started this blog. I think around age 21 I started preferring my own writing and BRP. I am now having a bit of a dig through this era adventures I missed and maybe appreciating stuff more. I do think 85 was peak dnd for me and i like some of the 80-83 was pretty good. The Gazetteers were awesome and had lots of odd weird rule options. Glantri especially had amazing wizard schools. I also liked 2nd ed gammaworld, star frontiers, Top Secret/SI (some great books like agent 13). Probably by late 80s and into 90s i was into RQ. Cthulhu, Ringworld, BRP, Stormbringer. Marvel and GURPS. The simple monster stat blocks of old D&D got me back vs fiddling with points and hit locations.

I sometimes find languages a bit of a time waste but last game a player spoke kobold and it totally changed the situation and helped quite a bit. Overheard kobolds yelling commands so could react and warn the party. Managed to negotiate peace and withdrawal. Otherwise would have been a risky bloody massacre.