From all this only cutting down trees with axes might make some sense. The rest is either baffling or ridiculous, depending on how you want to look at it. Did you try to imagine how it would work in real life or are you just suggesting adding shortcuts to the game for your own convenience?

Well, you can technically pound rock with mallets or hammers; not as effective at smashing rock as a pickaxe is, but it can be done. It's easier to pound down walls with mallets/hammers if it is a thinner wall, so that the rock thus pounded can go somewhere. Though, thinking about it, Axes and Flails wouldn't work, so ignore those.

Although a hammer is definitely the best for smithing for it's flat surface, in a pinch a club or mace could be used to pound metal into proper shapes; not as effective, but if you pounded with a mace or club enough, eventually one side could become flat enough to work in a similar manner.

I had suggested those above, so that you could utilize tool use with a variety of different items. An alternative of course is to just increase the drop chance on tools so that they occur naturally in loot more often.

Also, it is a video game. Why does something have to work in reality, in a game not based on reality? You can't cast spells, become corrupted, or play as a different race in real life, so why does real life applications of items NEED to apply here?

I agree about axes, even without the added destruction rate for cutting trees.
I never understood why you specifically need a hatchet to cut down a tree.
A hatchet is just a small axe, why would using another axe not have the same effect? Ridiculous.

As for hammers, they are common enough that no other weapons have to serve similar function.
Making clubs and maces work like hammers is both pointless and questionable from a practical point of view.

Pick axes are also quite common, though less so than hammers.
I think there is no need for other tools/weapons that perform the same function.
On the other hand, weaponsmiths should absolutely be able to repair broken pickaxes and there is no reasonable argument against it.
Pickaxes themselves break too often in my opinion. Ability to dig walls is not such a huge advantage to warrant extra measure to restrict it.

Only downside with no weapon substitute for pickaxes is that unless you have an anvil+forge+iron ingot, or a scroll of repair, you can't repair those pickaxes.

If you can smith with a warhammer you should be able to cut down a tree with a battle axe. The rest of the stuff doesn't really make sense to me.

You can't repair a broken pickaxe even as a smith with all the equipment.
Only other smiths can repair it (Glod, for a crapton of gold) or a scroll of repair.

Well, I always assumed that what breaks first on a pick axe is the shaft. Which is made of wood. So maybe woodcraft should be necessary to repair it, not smithing.

I agree with that but there are more weapons in the game that are made in part of wood and part of metal, like spears.
Those can be repaired normally since the game tags them as made of iron, while pickaxes are tagged as made of something else.
All it would really take is change pickaxes to also be made of iron.
On the other hand, giving weaponsmiths woodcraft as class skill and making certain weapons require that skill to repair them would make a lot of sense.
A weaponsmith has to have extensive knowledge about woodcraft since wood is so important in the production of hand-held weaponry.

I think most importantly it would add a tiny bit of value to an otherwise not very useful skill.

Simply changing the pick axe material to iron just to add some convenience still doesn't make much sense to me.

Since spears, pole arms in general, axes and maces are considered made of metal (mostly iron), despite obviously being in large part made of wood, then I don't see why pick axes could not be in the same category.
It's not for the sake of convenience but for the sake of reason and consistency.

On the other hand, nothing I can think of can make woodcraft an even remotely useful, much less a desirable one.
Considerable portion of the game mechanics would have to be overhauled to change that.
I think it's better to leave it as the most useless skill in the game and instead introduce a minor change to pick axe that serves the same final purpose.

Well, regarding woodcraft I think it should replace bridge building completely, and also be used to make wooden items (such as shields) and to build doors and bridge sections. It should be a pre-requisite to repair and improve weapons that are partially made of wood. Boom, one useless skill out of the game and another one made useful.

Regarding repairing pick axes or not it doesn't really make much difference, so why not I guess. But it's just a minor tweak.

What??? I assumed pickaxes were made of iron and thus have been saving a large pile of the broken ones for when I have the ingots. Dang it.

palandus, examine them with metallurgy and all will be clear.

I didn't know you could use metallurgy like that? I thought metallurgy was automatic only

It's a typical skill for a smith, a class however, that already has a class power (lvl 25) which allows them to automatically detect the type of metal an item is made of.
This means that players playing weaponsmiths pretty much don't use metallurgy skill explicitly and instead rely on their class ability, which acts passively.
On the other hand metallurgy itself can both be used specifically on a given item or left to work in the background - the manual states it is automatic - though as a passive check, it's not always successful.