A minimum-impact way to consolidate skills (3.5)

[Grod_The_Giant]

A lot of people out there, myself included, find 3.5's skill list to be too long and finicky, requiring way too many skill points to be good at things. The obvious solution is consolidation-- merging two or more skills into one. That's easy enough-- the problem comes when dealing with the rest of the game that's expecting to have, oh, separate Hide and Move Silently skills. It's not hard to fix, but it is a constant irritation.

What I propose, then, is a sort of compromise-- Linked Skills.

• One or more existing skills may be Linked together.
• If a character has one skill from a set of Linked Skills as a class skill, he also has the rest as class skills.
• Whenever you invest skill points in one skill from a set of Linked Skills, you gain an equal number of ranks in all other skills from the set.
• You can't exceed the normal cap on class or cross-class skills.

Personally, I'd then link:

• Balance and Tumble
• Bluff and Disguise
• Climb, Jump, and Swim
• Disable Device and Open Lock
• Handle Animal and Ride
• Hide and Move Silently
• Knowledge (Arcana) and Spellcraft
• Knowledge (Nature), Knowledge (Dungeoneering), and Knowledge (Geography)
• Listen, Search, and Spot

But that's just me-- you can use Linked Skills however you want in your game.