I'd yell at you for reviving an old topic, but I'm not going to because this is a very important subject

But so much more could be said about bitwise operations. A better way to set and turn off specific bits than what rhuarc said is like below:

// maybe give these names for when you set skill flags
#define bit0, 0x1;
#define bit1, 0x2;
#define bit2, 0x4;
#define bit3, 0x8;
#define bit4, 0x10;
#define bit5, 0x20;
#define bit6, 0x40;
#define bit7, 0x80;

var flags;

// turn a bit on...
function turnbiton()
{
flags|=BIT0;
flags|=(BIT1|BIT2|BIT3|BIT4);
}

// turn bit off
function turnbiton()
{
flags&=^BIT5;
flags&=^(BIT1|BIT2|BIT3|BIT4);
}