Absolutely, the quality of the rest of it is what made this part stand out to me so much. Easy enough to house rule.

This was the one part of 1e that put me off real hard. I could not fathom how this was…believed to work or provide a good experience? Your character will be dead in a session or two no matte what, just let them have an extra +1 to a skill they might not even use, damn.

Making the Tens die actually be two digits seems to be confusing people. 90 & 0 is the same as 9 & 0 (90). 10 & 0 is 1 & 0 (10). 00 and 0 is kind of an anomaly, but in that case the Tens die 0 is read as 10 (so it’s 10,0…100). If the modern Tens die had 100 instead of 00 it’d be clearer.

and, relatedly:

dethroning dnd will require many things, and one of those things is allowing there to be a thriving, well-populated fantasy adventure genre; lumping all such ttrpgs together as "just more dnd" is doing the hegemony's work for it

Games that fill that niche already exist. We should point people towards those instead.

I think the best way to handle old school thieves is to treat their abilities as “above and beyond” and to not let the existence of thief skills suggest skills for all. I think this blog explains it better than I could. Obviously you’d have to adjust assumptions based on whatever core rules you use.

I think all this is why, despite being interested in seeing what's different in a NG+ and wanting to build more cool mechs, I won't pick it up again. I've played enough "good games" to last a lifetime, in order for me to be invested I need something more/else.