I think so. I know there's a bunch of mods that change them around a lot. I've got no experience with it, so I don't know how much you can actually do with the CK with respect to perk trees.

Edited OP: 4/22/12. This is, in my opinion, what I believe the Smithing skill tree, and smithing in general, should have been. http://imgur.com/hpv3U Smithing in general, should have been recipe based like Alchemy, not a simple place Perk and instant unlock the next level of equipment. First Perk: Focused Smithing (No level requirement) 1 point Choose either Weapons or Armor to specialize in. Chosen equipment will gain X% bonus to Damage or Armor when crafted. What this means is that if you choose to specialize in Weapons and then make say, an Iron Dagger, if the Dagger normally has a base damage of 5, because you specialize in Weapons it would get a % added to its damage when crafted. Second Perk: Cloth Maker (No level requirement) 1 point Can now make Cloth gear. What this means is that... well, you can make Clothes. Third Perk: Jeweler (Level 20) 1 point Allows the Smith to improve upon jewels. What this means is that you could find a Ruby and, because of training, know how to cut it to become a Flawless Ruby. Fourth Perk: Geologist/Tanner (Level 30) 1 point Allows the Smith to choose between either always finding a jewel while mining ore or yielding an extra Leather/Leather Strip when Tanning. What this means is basically, if you mine for ore then for every piece of ore you gain you also gain a gem, or for every time you create Leather or Leather Strips you get 1 additional Leather or Leather Strip. Fifth Perk: Dedication (Level 40) 1 point Choose a specific type of Weapon or Armor (based on Focused Smithing) to specialize in. Chosen equipment will gain X% bonus to Damage or Armor when crafted. What this means is that if you choose to specialize in Daggers and then make say, an Iron Dagger, if the Dagger normally has a base damage of 5, because you specialize in Daggers it would get a % added to its damage when crafted and stacks with Focused Smithing. Basically this allows you to create a character, if desired, to be the best Swordsmith, or Curiass smith, etc. Sixth Perk: Blueprinter (Level 50) 1 point Allows you to breakdown a piece of equipment to see how it is made, therefore learning its Recipe. What this means is that it's Disenchant for Smithing. Seventh Perk: Arcane Blacksmith (Level 60) 1 point Upgrade enchanted Weapons and Armor. Eighth Perk: Enchanted Materials (Level 70) 1 point Allows the player to bring out the hidden traits of specialized materials (Elven, Dwarven, Orcish, Glass, Ebony, Daedric, and Dragon) that are imbued into the item on creation. What this means is that if you create a Sword using Quicksilver (i.e. an Elven Sword) it would have some sort of special enchantment on it on creation that does not count towards the normal Enchantment craft. Basically, a weak, and free, 3rd enchantment. Ideas for this include: Elven Weapons: Swing 5% faster Elven Armor: 5% Stealth bonus Dwarven Weapons: Cannot be Disarmed Dwarven Armor: 5% magic resist Orcish Weapon: 5 poison damage Orcish Armor: 5% poison resist Glass Weapon: Weak Candlelight Glass Armor: 5% lighter Ebony Weapons: +5 damage Ebony Armor: +5 Armor Daedric Weapons: 10 point Life Leech Daedric Armor: Lowers Health by 15 Dragon Weapons: 10 fire damage Dragon Armors: 5% Shout time reduction (Those are just off the top of my head ;;; ) Ninth Perk: Master Worker (Level 80) 1 point Material costs are cut in half. What this means is that if your sword requires two ingots to make it will now only require one. Cost cannot go below one. Tenth Perk: Jeweled Equipment Fortified Materials (Level 90) 1 point Infuse a piece of enchanted jewelry onto a piece of equipment. Reduce the amount your crafted items degrade by. What this means is that if you have a piece of Glass Gauntlets (with 5% lighter enchantment) and a Gold Ring (with a 20% Stamina Regen enchantment) you can fuse them together to get a pair of Golden Glass Gloves which are 5% lighter with a 20% Stamina Regen. What this means is your gear degrades at a slower rate. Eleventh Perk: Baneful Crafter Inventive Craftsmen (Level 100) 1 point Your equipment is designed with your most hated rivals in mind. Gain an additional X% damage or reduced X% damage when facing off against those you hate the most! Your trained eye for all blacksmith goods has been toned so well that you can craft gear of a certain style with various new materials. What this means is that you choose a type of enemy (Beast, Human, Daedric, Dragon, Machine, Humanoid, Undead) and every Weapon you create will do X% additional damage to that enemy and every piece of Armor you make will give a X% damage reduction to the damage received from them. What this means is that if you particularly like the Dwarven weapons for instance, the look of them anyway, but want to make them out of Ebony to have the black blade you now can as long as you have the recipe for the Dwarven item of choice. You would simply replace the Dwarven metal with Ebony Ingots. Thoughts?

Yo,
Awesome.

A few thoughts:
- It bothers me that weapons and armor are so 'rigid' within a class. What I mean is that every dwarven item - armor or weapon - is inferior to every orcish or daedric counterpart, and every elven item is inferior to every glass one. That strikes me as unimaginative. For instance: you would think that elven bows would be highly prized items, possibly the best bows that could be made without upgrades. Also, one would think that the dwarves could make axes or shields like no other race - after all, their metal is already a mystery, so why would they be such genius metallurgists but make comparatively low quality items from it?
- I'd be inclined to mix things up slightly differently. For instance: perhaps the elven armor is somewhat inferior to glass, but it adds bonuses to magicka enchantments that glass doesn't. Or perhaps daedric items retain their superlative ratings only if the character....I dunno, consumes human flesh on a regular basis, or something equally demonic.
In fact, let me think out loud and propose a system:
Leather, hide, studded - obviously the lightest stuff around; bonuses against non-edged weapons; bonuses to enchantments for sneak or similar thief & assassin skills; innate camouflage bonuses when out in the woods or in caves with brownish or tan colors.
Wears down fast, but repairs cheap; actually derated for cold and fire defense.
Iron, steel - extremely upgradeable; deratings for thief and assassin skills; iron requires lots of cheap maintenance, steel significantly less maintenance but a bit more costly; bonuses for enchantments of all sorts, with particular emphasis on undead damage/effects.
Dwarven - NEVER REQUIRES MAINTENANCE. Heavy and very expensive; miserable deratings for assassin/thief. Worst bows of the game. Best axes. Slowest swords.
Elven - best bows. Magicka enchantment bonus. Decent choice for assassin/thief, but poor camouflage. Relatively low maintenance.
Orc - extremely low maintenance. Best strength bonuses of the game (one and two handed attacks.) However, degrades all other enchantments.
Glass - very high,expensive maintenance. Better camouflage than Elven, worse choice for assassin/thief. Best Cold enchantments of the game.
Daedric - best fire enchantments; use and maintenance are expensive and gruesome.
Ebony - best camouflage of all heavy armor; best heavy choice for assassin/thief; high maintenance; best lightning enchantments.
Dragonscale - best fire and ice resistance; adds to shouts in some way; excellent camouflage, excellent for thief/assassin (though not as good as leather, but better than elven); extremely high build and maintenance costs.
Dragonplate - best fire, ice, cold and magicka resistance; 2nd only to Orc in strength bonuses. Worst possible camouflage and assassin/thief deratings. So expensive that it would require a noble to make and maintain.

The above would need more thought and, of course, balancing.

Your approach inspired my thoughts - the credit belongs to you. Anything poor about my proposal is my responsibility alone.

I dont think Clothes making and Tanning should go under Smithing, as there completley diffrent skills.

I don't like the fact that you can't make weapons or armor until level 50, and have to make a choice between them. Bethesda had the right idea staggering at what level you can make which armor.

I do like the idea of breaking down armor in order to learn how to smith it though. This, however, means you'd have to be at a very high level to make Daedric and Dragon armors, and characters may not reach this level if they're only focusing on a small amount of skills - one handed, light armor and smithing, for example.
Perhaps a way to balance this would be to have each blacksmith specialize in a certain type of armor, and be able to teach you how to make it for a (large) sum of gold. It would start with gauntlets - for example, make five Dragonborn gauntlets for me - and then work up to full armor. The sum you'd need to pay would be increased the rarer the armor is - Daedric could carry a price tag of, say, 30,000 gold, plus the cost of materials the blacksmith will need to supply to you. A nice money sink, as well.

Quite a good perk tree, however, although I can't see it replacing Bethesda's tree. The current perk tree serves its purpose well, and I doubt a respected company such as Bethesda would simply put in a fan-made idea into their game nice work, in any case.

Yeah, I'm not sure if the Blueprint perk should even be a perk. I think it should be something you can already do, you just need to find the weapon to do so.

As for learning how to smith weapons from specialized blacksmiths, I've talked about this before, and I think there should be two options for it. One is paying to learn how to smith it, which would come with a little lecture about how that type of weapon or armor compares to others. Alternatively, you could go on quests to discover the weapons and armor for the smithies/gather the materials + research notes, and bring them back to the smith to learn how to forge it. This could be the way to guarantee you'll learn how to forge Daedric or Dragon Armors, as the mission is specifically to find something of that make.

I wouldn't mind if Smithing shared Alchemy's 'experiment to learn' aspect, although I'm not sure it's compatible with skill-based usage limits.

The way Alchemy works is that once you learn a combination you can make it whenever you have the necessary ingredients, and the effect strength is regulated by your alchemy skill level and perks. In Smithing, on the other hand, items of a given material have a fixed 'strength', and skill is used as a 'gating' mechanism. Thus, even if you find/learn the blueprints for an Ebony Cuirass you won't be able to make it with a low Smithing skill, which will result in people not experimenting with a given material until they have sufficient skill to craft the resulting recipe(s).

If the 'gating' aspect of Smithing skill levels were removed it would function more like Alchemy under this setup, however there would need to be a way to scale an item's efficacy with a character's Smithing skill in order to keep it in line. That would make experimenting with rare materials early on more desirable, since you'd at least be able to use them at that point.

I wouldn't mind if Smithing shared Alchemy's 'experiment to learn' aspect, although I'm not sure it's compatible with skill-based usage limits.

The way Alchemy works is that once you learn a combination you can make it whenever you have the necessary ingredients, and the effect strength is regulated by your alchemy skill level and perks. In Smithing, on the other hand, items of a given material have a fixed 'strength', and skill is used as a 'gating' mechanism. Thus, even if you find/learn the blueprints for an Ebony Cuirass you won't be able to make it with a low Smithing skill, which will result in people not experimenting with a given material until they have sufficient skill to craft the resulting recipe(s).

If the 'gating' aspect of Smithing skill levels were removed it would function more like Alchemy under this setup, however there would need to be a way to scale an item's efficacy with a character's Smithing skill in order to keep it in line. That would make experimenting with rare materials early on more desirable, since you'd at least be able to use them at that point.

This system depends on removing the current gating system (which doesn't really make a lot of sense) and replaces it with a more natural way of doing things. You learn how to smith something either from taking it apart, or by studying under someone who knows how to smith it. It's not like the current system where you spend a perk point and suddenly you gain new insight.

I always thought it would be interesting if smithing included the ability to "build-in" a degree of special enhancement outside the normal enchanting system. Like, if you have a particular material, and a particular special material, and a particular "word of power", and forge the "correct" item type, a unique item is created.

For instance, you wish to craft a new Daedric Bow, and know how to craft dragonish runes. Now you just need a non-basic material and a selection of words of power (for Dragon runes, 3 seems the appropriate number to form the best combinations). Looking through the words of Dragon that you know, you want to make "Hunter Lord's Weapon", which as I understand it, would be Ah Drogi Zun. now you'd just need to manufacture a special material, like "White Gold", or some variation of steel, silver, Ebony, etc. In this case, you could mix (yes, it would need to be added) werewolf blood, moonstone ore, and a few additional ingredients (maybe sabre cat tooth and hawk feathers) and a daedra heart for power. Combined, it creates "Blood Moonstone". As you can see, the words and the material both evoke Hircine, and the daedric bow... Of course, other combinations would be valid, but that recipe could make a uniquely devestating (and special) bow.

It might offer a little more incentive to explore the possibilities of smithing if there were unique items to be forged.

where is the poll?