Token Proficiency System

My character got killed by some harpies the other day. I'm pissed. So I'm going to think about game mechanics for a bit to calm down. 

Proficiencies still rub a raw nerve for me. I want to obliterate them. The question is, how do you represent specialized skill without forcing characters to choose from amongst pre-generated skills? 

General skill systems can be a problem because they the curious habit of ‘bland-izing’ characters--for some reason the more general your skill system is, the more similar characters seem to become. I have been a big fan of skill systems in the past because I found them more uniform than feats or proficiencies and more versatile. At one point, I thought an interesting way to handle skills in Oe might be to port over the skills from 4e. Those skills were simple, generic, and easily customizable; but when I tried it in practice I found the whole setup pretty boring. I settled on a stopgap that worked out OK; just have the players write down a one-word to one-sentence 'background' for their character, like 'Viking' or 'third son of an impoverished noble' or 'raised in a monastery'. That gave me a sense of a PC's abilities, and from there it was up to the player to be really convincing at the table to determine what else he can do.

But the eternal problem remains: how do we make mechanics that reflect our character's particularities? Should we try to do this?

There is a subtle shift that occurs when you stop seeing your character sheet as a reflection of your character and begin to see it as the foundation of your character. When you see the character sheet as a foundation you have the unconscious assumption that whatever your character does must in some way be founded upon information on the sheet. Randomization then becomes an obstacle to achieving your vision for your character. You desire more specific and flexible tools with which to paint your character. But despite this desire for individuality, you start choosing from options rather than inventing for yourself. Characters seem to become more alike the more possibility they get for mechanical distinction. I can point to 3e games where this has and hasn't been true, but 4e is built around allowing you to choose from options and being guaranteed safety in doing so. 

I want to view the character sheet as a reflection. Then, my stats become randomly determined lines within which I may draw whatever I like. But perhaps I have it backward. Maybe if everyone were given a sheet of paper and told just to draw, most drawings would turn out to be of the same things: a tree, a bird, etc. But then again, maybe most of those people don't play a whole lot of D&D. Besides, the character sheet is not where you draw your character. You create your character at the table when you're playing. Therefore, I created this little system to handle skills not based around flexibility or specificity on the sheet, but the way I know players like to play. I've seen something like this before, but I can't remember where. 

Token Proficiency System: Give the players a set of tokens for each level gained. They get a number of tokens equal to their INT modifier at first level (minimum 1) and 1 for each succeeding level. Each token can be turned in to the DM mid-play to declare a language or skill or bit of lore that the character knows how to do.

DM: ‘You cannot tell which mushrooms look poisonous. They are very unusual.’

Player tosses in a token. ‘Not to me. I majored in Mushroom Studies.’

DM: ‘You sure did. The greenish-capped ones are poisonous.’

This system is intended to function specifically rather than generally; in other words, we want to avoid generic words like ‘Appraisal’ and instead use things like ‘Atlantean Artifact Expertise’. Also, I would like for it to enable non-knowledge-related abilities—for instance, a token could be spent to design a weapon that only a PC knew how to use. Highly obscure information or knowledge might mean that a character has a chance of being mistaken. Otherwise, 3d6 ability checks work fine.