For #1 you could either recreate each of the classes with a special to do this, or and I just thought of this so I don't know that it will work, make a single adjustment for the in play tab.
For this adjustment, if it is clicked, its script:
A - detects the hero.child[aSTR].field[aModBonus].value
B - If negative, do nothing, done
C - If positive, subtract that value from the hero.child[Attack].field[tAtkMelee].value
D - Halve and round down the aModBonus value, minimum 1
E - Add that number back into the tAtkMelee field
For general skills, it sounds like you want to do something similar to the Jack of All Trades gnome racial special I made. Look at this forum post
http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost....6&postcount=52 . Obviously not the exact same thing, the relevant parts are giving 1 rank for cross class skills and enforcing an error if more than CC ranks are applied.