After playing through the game several times now, I've decided the pickpocket and lock picking skill trees aren't worth a significant investment. Lockpicking is easy: even with an inept brute of a character, I can get through a master lock with maybe 5 lockpicks, no perk-investment required. Pickpocketing, I just haven't had much use for at all (except, of course, various exploits).

Were I making the calls, I would have combined them into a single skill tree, "thievery". Advancement of the skill itself would be an abstraction, representing how generally nimble your fingers are, while investment in the various perks determines how skilled you are at actually picking locks and pockets. This would also allow for more general thievery/manual dexterity related perks and abilities not directly related to pick-pocketing or lock picking, such as disarming traps (removing tripwires without setting off the trap, disabling pressure plates, and shutting down those swinging blades, dwemer spinning blades of death, dwemer pistons and flame spots, and so on) and even things like cheating at cards or dice (which would, of course, require the addition of card/dice games).

At the same time, the hole in the thief playstyle would be filled by the "athletics" tree, which would be a combination of the old "athletics" and "acrobatics" skills, with levels in the skill itself increasing how efficiently you sprint, how high/far you can jump, and how much falling damage you can take. Just running and jumping all the time would not increase the skill: that was pretty dumb in Oblivion. Instead, the skill would act like several other skills, where sprinting and jumping would increase the skill, but only in combat (but much faster than the skills leveled up in Oblivion, of course)

Taking it a step further:

In addition, all around there would be climbable surfaces of varying difficulty (novice to master, naturally) which would lead to a sort of mini-game. Your character would begin to climb while you select handholds (using your right/left hand buttons) Your stamina bar would be drained by this, adding a ticking clock of sorts: take to long to find the handholds, and you run out of stamina and fall. Rush, and you could reach for a bad spot, and fall that way. Once you've successfully climbed a surface once, you "know" it, and you can climb it automatically. Your athletics skill improves when you succeed in a climb (you don't need to be in combat) but since you can only beat any single climb once before you master it, you can't just beat the same low-level climb over and over again to grind the skill.

Climbing would allow access to shortcuts and treasure in various dungeons, like lockpicking sometimes does. Climbing can also gain a thief entry into various homes and shops: climbing up to a second-story balcony with an unlocked door, or onto the roof so you can slide down the chimney. Archers will find they can find their way to some excellent places to pick off their enemies using climbing as well. Climbing might provide some guard-free backdoor paths into the walled cities and castles, for those of us who don't quite get along with the law. While in an urban environment climbing would have relatively few applications compared to lockpicking, the wilderness is where a climber is king. High Hrothgar? Just head east from Whiterun and dust off your hands for a master-difficulty climb. Other guys might walk wound the while mountain looking for a way up to the big statue of Azura, but not you. Sabre-cat ambush? Climb a tree!

Athletes would also find themselves swimming better as well. Perhaps a perk to allow them to attack things while swimming? Not sure why that was removed, very annoying.

On the acrobatics side of the tree, in addition to better jumping and reduced fall damage, these perks could allow a player to engage in a more acrobatic combat style. One of these perks would allow for quick flips: quickly tapping the sprint button while holding a front, back, or forward would execute a front/back/side flip which could help dodge an incoming attack. Another would allow the character to attack while in the air. Perhaps the final perk in the tree would be the ability to slow time at-will at the cost of stamina, allowing an acrobat matrix-style arrow-dodging skills. (I have a blast dodging incoming projectiles in slow-motion on my archer, I just with some of my other characters could do the same!)

In conclusion, it seems to me there was quite a bit they could have done with athletics/acrobatics: it could have been a fun and useful skill tree to have.

TL;DR

Agreed, but it would mainly be a good idea for the next TES game. Hopefully with a new engine that allows climbing on various terrain and buildings. And yeah, pickpocket and lockpicking are pretty limited skills to train.

Climbable surfaces might take care of the odd interactions with steep mountainsides and such, and make getting into places much more interesting (but not necessarily easier!) Nice idea. I doubt we see it implemented until the next game though, it would require recoding half the known universe in game.

The idea of a combined athletic/acrobatics skill is a good one. You could put athletics perks on one side of the perk tree, things that effect running, jumping, and climbing, and on the other side you could include some boosts for armorless warriors, swashbucklers, and monk types. The "no armor" warrior/rogue path isn't supported well in the game.

I dislike the idea of combining pickpocket and lockpick, I think those skills need emphasized by making them more important in game. Lockpick perks are not taken because lockpicking is WAY too easy. A brand new character can pick an expert lock with 5 or 10 picks if you are good. They need a hard cap on locks you can pick, instead of perks that make lockpicking easier, the perks should allow you to open certain levels of locks. You should need to perk the skill up to get to the master and expert locks.

Pickpocket is the same way.... even if its only a 10% chance to steal, abusing saves can get you what you want. Pickpocket needs some hard caps opened up by perk choices, then people would actually invest in the skill.

I would make this athletics skill not fall under thief, mage, or warrior, because in theory all three archetypes can benefit from it. All three types of characters can benefit from the additional movement options, and a "dodgy" alternative to light and heavy armor would be a nice addition.

This is less of a "this is a mod/DLC I want" post and more of a "I wish they had done it this way" post.

Man this is EXACTLY what I was thinking of too. I kept dieing from fall damage and thought an Acrobatics skill would be nice. Most people don't perk pickpocket or lockpick so combining them would be somewhat better, leaving room for an Athletics skill..