Incorporating "Aspects" in C&C

[DocEldritch]

I've been puttering around off and on with adding in a proficiencies system to C&C for my games, but every time I work on it, I end up realizing it is more crunch than I really want to include, even though I love the idea at heart, and kinda want something to give a bit of "background flavor".

The other day, I had been reading over the Spirit of the Century SRD, and it hit me that Aspects would be an interesting way of handling this. For those who don't know, Aspects in SotC are defining traits of a character, anything from "Sneaky Little Bastard" to "Master of the Seventh Veil Magics". Something similar would be pretty interesting in C&C I think, and could handle both flavor stuff and proficiencies (say someone has an Aspect of "Burly Blacksmith", that could cover item creation type stuff or anything a smith might know or be able to do).

Now the issue I am having is deciding what kind of bonus an aspect should provide, in the cases a roll of some type is required. I'm thinking of making it a bonus of + 1/2 the character's level (or HD), mostly so that it does not step on the toes of class abilities in the case of overlap (someone who is a "Sneaky Little Bastard" trying to use Stealth, for instance), but is still useful. And if the character has a class ability that would benefit, instead giving them double their stat bonus (so that the benefits don't get TOO high mechanically).

I am sure there are folks here far more familiar with the numbers in play than I am, so I am curious how those look. Too high? Not high enough? Maybe try something else?

The other thing, is how many Aspects to allow. I am thinking 2 of them at level one, one of which must be a background type aspect (related to what you did before you started adventuring). And then every X levels, you get a new Aspect, to reflect your character growth in some way. I am thinking a new one every 4 or 5 levels would be plenty.