I just noticed that ACP applies to Ride. This is a BAD idea. What armor you have on has little to no effect on controlling a mount. Look at the list of things you have to make a Ride check for:
Guide with knees
Stay in saddle
Fight with warhorse
Cover
Soft fall
Leap
Spur Mount
Control Mount in battle
Fast mount or dismount
Of those, only 4 (less than half) really could really be argued to be different in armor - stay in saddle, cover, soft fall, and fast mount/dismount. Staying in a saddle, especially a military saddle, is actually quite possibly EASIER in armor than without. Cover could easily be restricted to light armor only; it's hard to imagine a cataphract ducking behind his horse. That leaves soft fall and fast mount/dismount, and those are frankly minor.
Take a 5th level Fighter with Full Plate Mail as an example. He has a 10 Dexterity and has Ride as one of his four skills, meaning he should be DAMNED good at it. However, his Ride check is a -2. That means he cannot hope to control a non-trained mount in battle, has a 20% chance to get his mount to jump or to spur his mount, and most importantly has a less than 50% chance to get his warhorse to fight with him. Even guiding his mount with his knees has a 30% chance to fail.
Note that this is a change over 3.5, as Ride does not have an ACP in the PHB or SRD (nor does Use Rope, but that's removed and gladly so).
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I looked up the SRD description for Ride, and based on the DC chart for various actions it looks like ACP only applies to fast mount or dismount, which sounds right to me.
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I looked up the SRD description for Ride, and based on the DC chart for various actions it looks like ACP only applies to fast mount or dismount, which sounds right to me.
Good spot. There's no write-up for Ride yet in the alpha rules so the assumption must be that it works as 3.5.