I'm thinking of making a new character soon. I'm going to make either a kajiit or bosmer thief with dual wielding and bow damage. I won't smith or enchant because they aren't really "thief." Everybody keeps saying that alchemy is also OP, I haven't really tried it on my other characters, so I won't use that either. Is that a reasonable way to play the game?

It's certainly reasonable and valid to ignore the crafting skills.

All three of the crafting skills only become drastically overpowered if the mechanics are exploited to make them that way. Using them with a little self control is fine.

Leveling Alchemy is like leveling the Tab and Favorites buttons. No thanks.

They can be significantly overpowering without exploiting too.

Agree with SharkHat. If you don't want them to be OP they will not be OP.

And personally I find my Khajit "Thief" very fun to play.

I posted a build based on only the steel-arcane smith perks, no enchants, and no alchemy for a sneak/assassin. It is about 10 pages back since yesterday. It works on master so feel free to use that.

Alchemy by itself isn't all that 'overpowered' and I would argue the same really with any of the 3 crafting professions. Alone they're fine, it's combined that they become ridiculous.

I play on Master and I made a Bosmer assassin (he's actually pure archer at the moment). He uses no smithing/alchemy/enchanting and I only use the armor I find or am given and it's fun and working well. I've only put perks into stealth and archery at the moment and it was much more challenging when I first started but as I got used to playing I learned techniques to help me.

I think it's rewarding when you find a weapon/armor that's really good and you want to use. I was exploring a dungeon found a treasure chest under water and got a glass bow. I was really excited because I was using this Supple Nord bow. It's just much better finding armor. I just wish the looting was a little better though.

I'm thinking of adding Alchemy later for role-play reasons. I always role-play my characters, that is more fun to me and makes the game a hell of a lot more challenging. Next up is either my Barbarian (2H + LA) or Paladin (1H + Shield + HA + Restoration).

Its actually a really nice challenge. No tradeskills except for leveling up and selling to merchants. Just don't use your own potion/enchants/smithed items.

Even without exploiting them they can make master trivial. Trust me its happened to me