Study! A new history feat acquired through studying

[Green Monster]

The concept:

Books that give you a permanent history feat that adds a minor skill bonus (non-combat skills only) from having studied a subject, but you have to earn it over 5 to 10 days and you can do only 1 at a time.

How it works:

In Candlekeep and the Biblioteque [sic] and everywhere else that has books there are special books with "unique power, self only" you can study: one for each craft skill, one for each lore skill, and one for survival. Basically, the ones that are more knowledge than action (or at least equal parts knowledge and action) and don't give combat advantages.

You use the book and if you are not currently studying another subject the dialogue says
"This is a book on [insert subject]. You must study it for 5 to 10 days and if you succeed you will gain additional knowledge of the subject. You may only study one subject at a time. Do you wish to proceed?
1. Yes, start studying
2. No, exit

If you use the book and you ARE already studying a subject the dialogue says
"This is a book on [insert subject]. You are currently studying [insert subject already progressed in]. Would you like to cancel your studies in [insert subject already progressed in] and study this subject? You must study it for 5 to 10 days and if you succeed you will gain additional knowledge of the subject. You may only study one subject at a time. Do you wish to proceed?
1. Yes, start studying and cancel my previous study.
2. No, exit

If you start studying, you roll your intelligence versus a DC of 17 with a progress bar similar to the open locks progress bar starts. If you succeed in the roll, your study progression increases by 1. If you fail the roll, you make no progress. If you roll a natural 20, your progress increases by 2. If you roll a natural 1 you have misunderstood and your progress reduces by 1. In each case you may not make another roll for 24 hours. After your study progression reaches 10, you gain a new history feat:

Scholar of [insert subject]. You have +(something the dev team thinks appropriate. 2? 3? 4?) to all rolls of [insert skill].

Obviously this feat is different from and stacks with skill focus, etc, but it's minor, has no combat ramifications, and has the advantage of not using up one of your precious few feats from leveling. Also you don't have to have an inventory item on your person when you're done studying. Some of us have to be very careful with our carried weight. Once you're done studying the book you can do whatever you want with it. You have the feat, you don't need the book any more. If you RCR, you will have to start over again.

Also, additionally there could be "Field Guide" books that offer a much smaller bonus to non-combat related skills but DO need to be kept in inventory to get the bonus. They should have greatly reduced weight though, being more like pamphlets than books.

[edit] I'm aware that there are numerous far more important things to implement so that even if the devs like this idea it would be a very low priority but I just thought of it so I put it out there