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This is not a duplicate post about refurbishing unique melee weapons (I dislike the idea of plainly reforging them anyway).
The anniversary update hit psiless tanks harder than any other build archetype, as crafting a high quality quad plate metal armour now involves skill values borderline insurmountable for characters already spread very thin between Constitution, Will (Stoicism), Strength and the main damage stat (which could be STR as well but nonetheless).
Now, even though squeezing higher Intelligence score into the equation is still sort-of-kind-of feasible for many tank builds, the moment they get to meet the crafting requirements for desired gear (not even necessarily top tier stuff; just something that is good enough for the build to function at all) is still greatly delayed compared to how it used to be, if not unreachable outright. As far as weapons are concerned, uniques - mostly firearms - present a reliable and universally accessible alternative to crafting, enabling builds to go retarded in exchange for having a tighter base ability allocation and more specialised feats. As far as armour goes, however, there are hardly any unique suits that can serve as a substitute for crafted stuff. Some would argue that there are none at all.
With all this in mind, having access to a smith character that could, for a steep fee, take your high quality plates and turn them into a suit of armour that your Int-let character could only dream of, might just present... a cheap, unearned and uninspired loophole, whose existence invalidates the very concept of crafting. That is, unless certain limitations are imposed upon it.
For starters, let's say that the workshop of the smith in question is taken over by bandits. They are a tough bunch, but you eventually manage to dispose of them, and thus the smith is ready to express his gratitude by forging the bestest of the besterest armours for you, right? Wrong, the furnace and other equipment was seriously damaged by the intruders, locking the quality of components the smith could work with to measly 80 (for example). Life sucks, but you may improve the situation by procuring replacement parts, looking for experts who could help, etc. At first these would be simple chores, scaling in difficulty to the point of demanding herculean deeds in order to increase the smithy's capacity to components of around 150-160 quality (my condolences to quad q170+ SS enjoyers).
Additionally, to make this more flavourful than a bland substitute to crafting, armour created by the smith could function as custom-made unique gear, in the sense that he could possibly add features to it that would not be available on what you'd craft yourself (nothing is coming to mind as to what these features might be so I'll leave it to your imagination). For instance, once the smithy has been sufficiently restored, the smith will become capable of forging several distinct models of each item, or will offer to add various mutually exclusive details upon your request, stuff like that.
All in all, this kind of smith character would present the following:
1. An alternative to crafting for builds that struggle greatly with acquiring desired gear themselves (suits, helmets and boots only; the smith is a pacifist and shall create no tools of murder).
2. A potentially interesting mini questline with meaningful rewards.
3. Unique gear custom-tailored to each build's demands (within reason; this is about giving a certain variety of tanks an option, not making them overpowered).
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