Scars of War - Cross Training

Over at the Scars of War blog, Gareth has been musing about the way players tend to specialise in one weapon skill and thinking of ways to change this paradigm.  I like his thinking - here's the intro:

You know, it’s funny, sometimes little things make you realise that your thinking is trapped “inside the box", as it were. No matter how hard you try your design philosophy is often heavily influenced by what has gone before.

For example. I was looking at combat skills again last night. I’ve never been quite satisfied with how the weapon training works. SoW is a skill based system, right. No classes, you just choose the skills you want your character to have. However, people generally like to build “the best” character they can. Which means, if you offer a range of weapon skills, people tend to choose just one (most often Swords) and max that, neglecting the others. Perhaps they take a ranged weapon as well. In a class system the warrior classes tend to automatically confer at least some skill in a broader range of weaponry. But players in a skill system tend to look at this as a “waste".

Instead what they will tend to do is use any leftover skillpoints or training on skills outside their archetype, like taking healing magic. Because it offers more utility than skills they will never use. Now there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, especially if it is within your character concept. But it bothers me that training in other weapons is seen as a waste. Cross training should be desirable, an inner voice insists.