There should be an equivalent of holdback for skills.
You should be able to nerf your skills to fit certain persona's and the like... Nothing worse than being disguised as Chester McNerd who's never fought in their life, and then suddenly, when targeted by Mixa McBlastman, it's revealed that you're really Chesta McSmash who dodges barrages of bullets on a daily basis. But it shouldn't be something that's easily done. Maybe a certain level of mastery involved in the skill might help, but I think a simple thing like just a basic int and related stat check would be a good idea to enforce people playing to their stats.
I wanted my character to fail a skill check.
I did a full 60% hold back and they still passed the check.
In my mind, someone who is competent enough to do something successfully, should be able to intentionally fail at doing what they otherwise could do.
In its current form, holdback does not facilitate that.
A tailor intentionally making clothes that are of low value.
A handyman/mechanic installing something so that most anyone can remove it.
A character hiding something so that most anyone can find it.
A performer tanking a performance.
A candyman wanting to make a low quality batch of drugs.
An expert knifer wanting to miss the dartboard or do poorly without anyone who looks at them seeing their condition drop.
Yes, @holdback as it is can help here. But as your skills/stats increase your '@holdback 60' can fail to do what you want it to do more and more often. And I get that it's hard for someone with a high stat to hold back too much. But I feel skills are different. A great mechanic can easily choose fail or do poorly at a job. They don't have a minimum level of performance that's just impossible for them to dip under.