» Tue Jun 19, 2012 12:48 pm
Personally, I agree with both Wyatt and Ken. In addition, some of these you really don't need to spend any perk points in at all. For example, Speech really should be called Merchant and you can earn plenty of money w/o bothering to spend any points here. Also, I've never put a single point into lock-picking and between gear, an embarrassing number of picks and infinite patience, I can open any lock in the game.
Here's my recommendations:
Major:
Archery - this is one where you should go big! Every damn perk is a good one. There's nothing like being able to one-shot a dragon.
Sneak - You might not need the whole tree, but you definitely want to get far enough to get the archery perk (3x bow damage from sneak) and assassins blade (15x damage from sneak when using daggers).
One-handed - You definitely don't need the entire tree. You definitely want to max Armsman and get Dual flurry and Dual savagery. I don't really recommend anything else in this tree (I would have suggested Bladesman, but I've found out that the bonuses don't apply to daggers; and Savage Strike, while cool, isn't really necessary).
Light Armor - Most of this tree is useful, depending on how heavy you depend on your archer abilities. I mean, when you can take out a dragon from a distance, do you really need to spend a lot of points in armor, lol).
Minor:
Pickpocketing - I personally don't spend any points here. I rely on f5 and f9 (I know, it's OOC, but as my Marine buddies say: If you're not cheating, you're not trying, lol). That said, you could easily take some of these (I laugh at stories of characters who strip guards of all their clothes and weapons w/o getting caught, lol).
Smithing - Here's where you generally have a decision to make: the left-hand side of the tree focuses on making and improving light armor and weapons; the right-hand side focuses on the heavy. For a thief/assassin, your armor should be light; however, the best weapons are generally considered to be heavy. I won't make a general recommendation here, with one exception: even if you decide to focus on light, get dwarven simply because of the wealth of dwarven ingots that you can make from the trash at the dwemer ruins.
Alchemy - If you plan on using poisons, go heavy here. Go all the way through green thumb with one exception: ignore the Experiments perks. By the time you get to a skill of 50, you've probably pretty much filled out the effect of the ingredients.
Enchanting - Somebody else should express an opinion on Enchanting. I enchant items quite frequently; that said, this is where I put perks when I have no good combat-type perk available.
Hope this helps.