The one thing that I absolutely love on Skyrim is the ward spells that block incoming magic attacks. Nothing makes me feel more like a bad ass than when I am blocking a dragon's fire breath while running towards him. However, it leaves me at a loss when I want to play other types of characters. For example, I'd like to play some kind of Orc warrior with two-handed weapons. But I'm just going to have to take all magical and fire attacks unless there's something I'm missing.

Is there any way to block in-coming magic attacks without using ward spells? If so, how do you do it? What about shields? The thing I like the best about the ward spells on dragons fire and frost is that you block the visuals, you don't catch on fire and you can still see everything.

Spellbreaker?

Well the Spellbreaker Shield throws up a ward when blocking, and it's strong enough to block a full dragon breath from anything below an Ancient dragon.

Edit: Ninja'd

This or a lot of magic resist. On one of my characters with high magic resist spells bounce right of her.

What if I'm using two-handed weapons?

The Atronach Stone completely negates 50% of all spells hurled at you. If you are Breton, couple that with their dragon skin ability and you have complete immunity to spells for 60 seconds.

Pray?

Spell absorption with magic resist plus stagger from bash is the standard tactic against dragon breath

Actually, using a 2H weapon with spells hotkeyed is a smoother transition than 1H and spells.

EDIT:

Place the Ward spell in each hand.
Hotkey the Ward to the left Hotkey.
Hotkey the 2H weapon to the right hotkey.

This will allow you swap back and forth from dualcasting the ward to using the 2H weapon.

Magic resists from alteration or enchanted items...potions also work very well

Edit: Lord stone also provides 25% resistance against magic

Shields have the perk that blocks 50% of magical damage, which is pretty effective. My Nord is immune to frost damage with a shield.

Aside from the shield, I also look for any enchanted equipment to go along with the alteration perk to further reduce magic damage taken. Eventually, you'll find pieces of equipment that give you 50%+ resistance to fire, ice, and etc., from dungeon loot.