Well, I'm ready to concede at level 56 that Destruction magic is not so great as a secondary support skill. And with the crossbow emphasis on the "good guy" side of the upcoming Dawnguard DLC, I'd like to give my main character some archery chops. But I've already spent seven points in the Destruction tree like a fool!

I've looked up the console commands to add and remove perks, but I don't want to try it out until I'm sure it won't mess me up. When I remove the perks, will I gain back points that I can then spend on archery as I level it up? Or does the console command not affect the rest of the leveling system?

I want my character to function as much as possible as if he'd been learning archery normally while leveling up. Would I be better off just chalking it up to experience and not trying to reclaim those seven misspent perks?

You can remove perks, and you can add perks. Removing perks will not give you back the points you've already spent.

If you want to be hard line, you can remove the perks you no longer want, keep track of the number, then give yourself the same amount of perks elsewhere. If you want to mess with as little as possible, just give yourself the new perks and ignore the the ones you have that you don't want. Another time consuming way is to console level yourself up (one level at a time) and you will get the point to spend for each level.

Alternately, you're level 56, so you'll naturally get many more points if you keep leveling up normally. Your Destruction mage grew out of his/her destruction phase and decided to become an archer. Those points spent in Destruction could just represent his/her youth?

Just use the command player. addperk ____________ add the perk level number. keep in mind that if you expected to be say lv70 archery, only give yourself what you'd have to lv 70 archery. When you add a perk, you don't automaticly get it. For example you could addperk command your smitthing all the way to allow dragon armor yet still be lv1 smithing.

As far as it messing with your game. hard to say. I've been running a few perk commands myself with no issues. Any issues I have I blame to the Nexus mods. But tven then those issues are rare.

Another bit of advice is if you add new perks via console, add them in order. ie:

player.addperk 000bABED
player.addperk 0007934A


etc. Maybe superstition, but I would be careful with console commands.