Reminds me of a dice system I was considering using in a game I am contemplating actually writing up.
Basically, ranks in a skill determine how many dice you get to roll to overcome difficulty. Kind of like the WW system, in that it uses a number of d10's, only instead of each die trying to overcome a number, the total has to overcome a number. So if the DC was a 40, then you'd need at least 5-6 ranks to be able to have a chance in heck of hitting it, but at 8-9 ranks, it wouldn't be too difficult.
Also reminds me of the 'other' way of doing percentiles: 11d10-10.