I'm playing as a Khajiit, level 13 presently, at level 45 with my bow, 25 or so with destruction and using light armour and doing quite a bit of alchemy. My destruction is falling behind since it's just not nearly as powerful as I am with my bow now. I've been trying to use it more but I always just find myself cutting back to my bow. I have Lydia with me playing a tank so having her with me as well as a lot of potions and poisons I have nothing to really worry about. For my next build I'm definitely going to have to go with a pure Mage since magic is so powerful in this game compared to Oblivion. One thing I did dupe myself on though was my dual wield daggers, I ended up reverting back to the old sword and shield early on, old habit die hard basically. So my dual wield isn't leveled at all so I think I may be too late on that one, I use the bow for sneak attacks so really the daggers would just be my "Oh sh*t" fall backs and with my two handed only at 15 and my character at level 13 I'll just get wasted.

Only things I feel like I'm really missing out on are playing the tank and using heavy armours, I enjoy playing the hack and slash type, then of course magic, I've only really looked at destruction spells, for the pure mages any tips of effective methods? Oh also, is there a soul trap spell or do I just enchant my bow with soul trap?

When you play combat only, you can:
-run into combat
-run around dungeons

When you play magic only, you can:
-use lots of different spells
-chill back while minions fight
-enchant uber clothes to be better than armor

When you play thief only, you can:
-unlock stuff
-pickpocket people's items, and steal their belongings while they sleep
-sneak around undetected
-stealth kills
-poison people
-drink a bunch of potions so you can tank a boss



I think the stealth+stealing+openinglockedstuff aspect of the game adds a LOT of variety to a playthrough. It adds more, imo, than what magic and pure-combat does.

Basically, by playing a thief, you open up a lot more of the game, and you give yourself more things to do.

This is why, when I play a mage or combat character, I always end up taking the 3 ESSENTIAL stealth skills - lockpicking, pickpocketing, and sneak. Without these 3 skills, the game feels MUCH different (and smaller) to me.