Hey everybody,
I need some help making a particular assassin. I want to use destruction, alchemy, daggers and sneak. It seems like this character would be too weak though. Can anyone help? thanks

I only play on adept lvl (so far) and I find destruction works pretty well for me. With the skills you've listed, if you perk it right, I don't think you'll be too weak....but that may depend on the difficulty lvl you want to play on

If you have daggers and sneak you'll never need destruction. All casting spells will do is give your position away. With your sneak attacks your doing far far more damage then casting a destruction spell.

If you don't kill em in one hit then just crouch, pop out of combat, and line up for another shot.

what about draugr? you can't sneak attack them.

Sure you can. I'm doing it right now on my assassin in Ansilvund Burial Chambers.

really? don't you have to wait for them to pop out of the coffins?

Well if they are in coffins then yes but why does that matter? You still can do sneak attacks you just won't get the kill cam.

but once they come out of the coffins they start chasing you and you can't sneak anymore.

When you see them just go into sneak mode. Maybe your sneak isn't high enough yet. Once you get the highest perk you can go into stealth whenever you want, even during combat and get away. Just find a random npc and find a wall close to them and hit auto-run, you'll max it out in about 10 minutes.

I run my nightblade almost identical to this with just a few personal touches. specialty in flame magic including fire enchants, and the Quiet Casting perk. Destruction is a wonderful fallback for when you get caught out of the shadows or for setting traps.. like a flame rune in an oil slick . Also with the aforementioned perk, you can snipe with your favorite spells from the shadows.
Alchemy is hands down the most versitile skill in Skyrim and can make up for the slack in other skills. glowing mushrooms and nightshade are great for boosting destruction damage if you didn't know. as you progress you'll be able to brew invis pots that last longer then the spell you can cast.
if you can find it, the muffle enchant is quite handy. just grab a petty gem and your favorite pair of boots and you can cross that spell of your list of things to recast.

wall grinds like that take closer to ten hours. find a non-killable friendly npc and sneak attack them with dual daggers if you want to insist on speed grinding. Greybeards make for wonderful training dummies if you catch them meditating. just make sure to let them resume said meditation before stabbing them again. this prevents them from all going agro on you.

I've played a lot of characters (bought the game on 11-11-11) but haven't gotten through the dark brotherhood quest or main quest for that matter. (major restartitis). I'm trying to make an assassin that ins't too overpowered, so I want to avoid archery, enchanting and illusion. I definitely want to use alchemy for weakness to destruction poisons and fortify destruction, but will I be able to use destruction at all without enchanting or quiet casting? I guess that is my main question.

I've never used shadow warrior perk. Has anyone tried it with destruction magic? If you've got some distance can you cast a spell, then go into sneak and hide behind a wall or something?

Sounds like you need a nightblade.

Invest in illusion at least until you get quiet casting. Might as well get to expert level in illusion as well, and get that invisibility and muffle.

In Destruction, take the rune master perk. You can fire a rune at the ground under sarcophagi to force the lid off (you can also fus ro dah it, but that is less sneaky and has cooldown).

Novice and apprentice conjuration and both levels of summoner will allow you to summon a flame atronach (or use staves from the atronach forge to summon other atronach, or the Sanguine Rose for dremora) quite a ways away, meaning they can fight your battles and the enemy need never even see you nor you touch them, if you desire it. However, this is mostly extraneous information and something you amy want to work on after your character's main build is complete.

Don't bother with the bladesman perks, they don't affect daggers.

In Illusion, Aspect of Terror also gives a ten-point boost to the damage output of your fire spells because they include a fear effect, which makes even the basic flames spell pretty good to use if you do wish to continue working on illusion aside from quiet casting and invisibility. Additionally, augmented frost, fire and shock all multiply each other if you're enchanting a weapon, meaning if you have augmented frost and augmented shock, for example, and put those two elements on a weapon, and also have frost and shock enchanter perks, you'll get 76 damage of each.

The final perk list I see for the basis of this kind of character is thus: http://skyrimcalculator.com/#169272

The level required is 51, that shouldn't be a problem with a nightblade character. In my experience they level very quickly and use a wide enough variety of skills efficiently that they can easily be expected break 60 without any sort of boring or unreasonable grinding.

That is a good build, but this is not the character I want right now. I just got done playing a master illusionist who took every perk in that tree and used a lot of runes and it was a ton of fun, but now I want to stay away from illusion and enchanting too (enchanting is too much buying and selling and grinding). I will stick with alchemy though. I will use muffle in illusion, but don't really want to put many perks in it.

but what about defense? If I'm ever caught, would I want to have any perks in armor?

I think that your build is very doable, could even be a very strong character.

I'd suggest relying on Destruction for the Draeger you can't kill by backstabbing. Specifically, use fire. They're fairly vulnerable to it. I'd suggest that you find daggers enchanted with a draining power. Since daggers are fast, you'll svck an impressive amount of health from any adversary you weren't able to sneak up on.

If you're using alchemy, I'd suggest lots of Invisibility potions. Get as many Luna moth wings, Chorus eggs, and Vampire dust as possible. Buy them if necessary. And I'm assuming you've joined the Dark brotherhood, so those boots they have, supplemented by a ring or necklace of sneaking, will make you even harder to detect. If you're willing to devote some effort to Illusion as well, consider learning the spell to make yourself invisible. Since you pop back into sight every time you open a door or interact with anything, it's useful to be able to disappear unlimited times.