I just had the most brilliant idea. I've been struggling with how exactly I wanted the core mechanics of my RPG system to work, and it all just fell into place. And it can be summarized as:

Big dice bad.

A skill system where the better you are at something, the smaller the die you get to roll. Imagine this:

Your character knows next to nothing about magic, but you really need to cast an arcane bolt right now. Okay, Roll d100. 95+, you succeed with style. 90-94, you pull it off. 80-89, you COULD barely pull it off but there will be CONSEQUENCES. 20-79, nothing happens. 19-, something BAD happens.

Your character practices the arcane bolt. Now you have a little skill at it. Roll d20. 18+, you succeed with style. 12-17, you pull it off. 8-11, you COULD barely pull it off but there will be CONSEQUENCES. 3-7, nothing happens. 2-, something BAD happens.

Your character is a master of the arcane bolt. Roll d4. 4, you succeed with style. 2-3, you pull it off. 1, you COULD barely pull it off but there will be CONSEQUENCES.

So skills would have ranks, 0-6, each rank would have an associated die, and each die would have a result table (maybe a different one for different types of skills as well, combat result table vs magic result table, etc) . Ranges could obviously be tweaked, but I really really like this idea. I need to get a playtest together.

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