I'm most of the way through the game now, and I really love my first character, but she has a few perks that I bought that I really don't want and never use. What I'd love is to find a way to retrain perks, but I don't think there's anything in the game that'll let me do it. (I'm on XBOX, so I can't just install a mod to do it.) - any ideas? or do I just need to start over and be more careful with what I buy?

nope, not without console or mods.

There's no way to do that, no. It's designed to be a permanent thing.

I wouldn't expect that to change, unfortunately. Not on console.

Ah well, I guess my light-armoured sneakthief is stuck with the ability to craft dwarven armour for all time.

It's not going to be added by patch either... it would make the crafting skill trees even worse. People would skill up all three, make their perfect gear, and then opt out of any of them to beef up their combat skills. The whole reason for having crafting perks is to associate a cost with the reward you get from having them. Remove the cost aspect and all you'll have is reward.

While I agree that there's a balance issue with allowing retraining of crafting skills, you could rebalance that kind of thing in all sorts of ways.

For example if you attached a large financial cost to retraining, then it'd provide a different cost, you could also make retraining increase in cost exponentially with each successive use. Or, you could just deny it altogether, only allowing the retraining of "skill" trees and not "crafting" trees. You could even retroactively subtract the bonuses if you trained them away (although this'd require having kept track of them in the first place.)

The main reason I asked was that I'm so used to retraining being a feature of RPGs these days, I just started out buying my perks willy-nilly to try stuff out. Now I can't fully level the trees I actually want to use. I know there are PC mods that let you solve this already.

Cominng soon, Featured in the next DLC, a special quest to perk reset your character !!

Not really, but I don't see why not.

Hee. She's a khajit. Maybe if she drinks all the skooma she'll addle her brain so much she forgets all her perks.

And darwen weapons which you definitely can use. If only that's your problem and didn't put anything in the light branch just go with that branch up to the top. Just one perk point more than the other branch but daedric weapons will compensate. Also if you are going for lvl 81 you'll have to start using heavy armor with low skill at high level with no intent to perk it and being able to improve that armor will help imo.

Nah, I've got a full suit of dragon plate for when I want to move to heavy.