In my current play through I decided to be an archer, but decided that relying on archery alone wasn't a good idea in case I get into a fight with a challenging melee focused enemy at close range. So I started using one-handed weapons as well, and while I was at it I decided to use my free left hand to throw jets of flame at people. So that's three combat skills I have been training myself in, archery, one-handed, and magic. I feel like I am crippling myself or something. I'm getting my ass kicked my enemies that I think I should be able to deal with. Is training in so many different damage dealing skills as bad an idea as it feels like now? Should I start over and just focus on archery? I'd just pay for archery training and go with that from here on out but I already wasted perks on one handed weapons.

Sorry for any confusion, but I'm actually only talking about skills that deal damage. I think I'm using too many different types of weapons and I'm not really getting good enough at any specific one.

I think 4 is good. You'll have plenty of perk points to give out. I do 2 main skills which are one handed and light armor and two secondary skills which archery and block.

If its getting to hard then you should stick around Whiterun and do all those quests. It seems most of them are easier. I've tried to venture off further but I find it a little hard also. So now I just do the quests that are around Whiterun and I feel like I'm ready to go further.

What's up Raiderz! You can't waste perks, unless you don't use them ever not even once (like the steal gold fiasco). Each encounter tries to be your take on it, if anything remember how you used the damage dealing skills in case of a difficult battle. You might need a damage mod http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekd5L3a1s68 www.youtube.com/watch?v=onoqx1ZbVy0

I said I wasted those perks because if I planed on only using archery then the points I put into one-handed weapons would never be used. So they would have gone to waste.

Yes but only two of those skills you mentioned are damaging skills. I have three damage dealing skills. And since there are only so many enemies to deal damage to, if I level up all three of them evenly I become jack of all trades and master of none. No one skill is strong enough to make me really effective.

surprisingly with every character there are 7 main skills:...
full rogue:
sneak
1h
bow
light armor
illusion
ench
smith

my shaman:

sneak
1h
resto
light armor
illusion
ench
smith

my fully main - force knight:

resto
alteration
conju.... thing (sry im not english and always forget the word -.-)
heavy armor
smith
enchant
1h

I am wondering the same thing....I like to mix it up a lot in combat, so I am adding perks to one-handed, two-handed, destruction, conjuration, restoration, blocking, archery.....is that going to screw me when I am high-level but not highly specialized?? Basically I want to add perks to almost every skill tree....maybe not the stealth oriented perks so much.

Exactly. Think of it this way. You use archery as your sole combat skill, and you kill 100 enemies. That's 100 "points" that goes into archery skill. However, if you use destruction magic, archery, and one-handed weapons and kill 100 people with those, that's about 33 "points" that goes into each of those three skills. You end up being one-third as powerful in each skill than if you focused on just one of them. At least I think that's how it works. That's what this thread is for, to try to clarify this.