Keeping (some) skills relevant

[Ashtagon]

Simple change:

• While climbing, your BAB is capped at your Climb skill.
• While swimming, your BAB is capped at your Swim skill.
• While riding, your BAB is capped at your Ride skill.
• While on difficult ground, your BAB is capped at your Balance/Tumble/Acrobatics (pick the highest) skill.

Likely effects of this change are...?

[Ziegander]

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

Likely effects of this change are...?

Balance and/or Tumble are now required class skills for all full BAB classes and set their skill points per level back by 1.

Warriors that get stuck climbing or stuck swimming are completely and utterly boned if they have better skills on their skill list.

Ultimately, all warriors' skills entries should be identical and look like this:

Class Skills (4+Int): Balance, Climb, Swim, and Tumble.

Because they need points in at least 3/4 and Int is almost NEVER a priority. If they put points in any other skills they might as well throw their sheet in the trash before it hits the table, because that means that either they've prioritized Int at the expense of combat scores or they've screwed themselves into being worthless in one or more battlefield conditions.

[Zeta Kai]

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

Simple change:

• While climbing, your BAB is capped at your Climb skill.
• While swimming, your BAB is capped at your Swim skill.
• While riding, your BAB is capped at your Ride skill.
• While on difficult ground, your BAB is capped at your Balance/Tumble/Acrobatics (pick the highest) skill.

Likely effects of this change are...?

The likely effect is that in many situations, melee-focused characters would be worse off than they are under the standard RAW. Meanwhile, the caster-focused characters would not be inconvenienced in the slightest (except for encouraging gishy characters to further rely on magic instead of melee).

Considering the already-existing disparity between magic & melee in D&D 3E, I think that this is a Bad Rule, one that would never see play at my table. It seems like it was based on good intentions, & I can see where you were coming from, but this is a Bad Rule regardless. That's okay, it happens to the best of us. Go forth & do better.

[Ashtagon]

What if caster level was also capped by the same limit? (And if your effective caster level is below that required to cast the spell level in question, you simply can't cast it under those conditions.)

[Dryad]

That wouldn't matter. Most casters (exculding paladins and rangers) have ways to avoid climbing, having to make balance checks and other such things.
Levitate, Freedom of Movement and other effects all easily attainable through spells (like flight) would completely circumvent such a rule.

Which means non-casters are yet again behind; the disparity only grows.

Edit: Don't get me wrong; I do see where you're coming from. Having so many skills being useless is rather silly. However, the reason that they're relatively useless is that people generally avoid such terrain for combat just because it would make things so much more difficult for martial characters.