Institute the concept of mutually exclusive skills, which if trained, disable
or render difficult the use or training of other skills. We already some
precedent for this in the mage guild. I've seen time and again people asking
for subguilds to add masteries and flavor, but all we really need is to
implement this concept of exclusivity to existing guilds. My specific example
of this implementation would be the 'negate forcewield penalty' skill, which
hampers 'negate offhand penalty'. This would allow the high skillmax of the
smaller races to compensate for the patheticly low skillmaxes of the larger
races without being overpowered, since it would need a barb's hit bonuses
and/or great eq to be fully useable. It would also make lances not suck. I'd
elaborate further on balance issues, but I'm not that stupid. Either you
wizzes like the idea or you don't.