Olaf the Stout
Hero
My players get 10 points to spend on background skills for their character. These are generally spent on things like various Knowledge skills, Profession:Farmer or Craft:Basketweaving, etc., I generally don't let them spend it on skills like Listen, Spot, etc., unless they can come up with some good explanation as to how it fits in with their background. I also ruled that no more than 3 points could be spent in one area (since they were effectively 0-level characters when they earned the skills).
The other thing I have thought about doing but have never actually tried is to give people bonus skills if they succeed in a skill check at a particularly crucial point in time. For example, picking a lock just it time to avoid some enemies that were about to attack the party or climbing a wall while being attacked and failing would have meant falling to your death.
I don't know how this would have worked since it would reward either pure luck (i.e. a high roll) or increase a skill in which someone already had a large bonus in (i.e. average roll but succeeded due to high ranks/modifiers).
Olaf the Stout
The other thing I have thought about doing but have never actually tried is to give people bonus skills if they succeed in a skill check at a particularly crucial point in time. For example, picking a lock just it time to avoid some enemies that were about to attack the party or climbing a wall while being attacked and failing would have meant falling to your death.
I don't know how this would have worked since it would reward either pure luck (i.e. a high roll) or increase a skill in which someone already had a large bonus in (i.e. average roll but succeeded due to high ranks/modifiers).
Olaf the Stout