When you're creating a character and selecting secondary skills, skills which do not give an item should not be listed. While I know that by selecting those your skill gets increase, it actually hurts you more being that you're missing a tool that would ease your survival. For example, what's the point of getting foraging when you could instead have a fishing pole? What's the point of selecting scavenging when you could instead have an axe.
I find this to be unbalanced and not very user friendly to newcomers who don't know this. These passive skills are ones that don't require a tool, so therefore what's the point of selecting it when you can already use it? Those skills that require a tool, you can't use.