Like little or no combat (besides the escape) no armor, just speech and buying and selling items for the best prices?

No, but my mage has a heavy focus on speech because of his greed.

Yes, my khajiit Coal works as merchant. The way he gets his wares is a secret.

I've never gotten speech high on any character yet. I find it very difficult to level.

Its a lot faster than in other Elder Scrolls games, the speech and mercantile use to be different skill sets.

how exactly do you "play" as a merchant, besides, purely within your own mind?

how do you sell to people other than other merchants? is thieving a part of being a "merchant?"

how do you give gold? by committing a crime?

who comes up to you and asks to buy stuff from you?

"Has anyone played a merchant?"

I like to kill them instead and take their stuff.

Not with no combat, but I have done a hunter/gather of items...from...places if you catch my drift (it means I stole them) and wopuld take them to towns sell what I had "gathered" buy some food/arrows and maybe make a new set of gear and stuff like that.

how exactly do you level it :S .. mine hasn't gone up once yet.

Sort of... I mean, technically I played a thief, but I did try to not engage in combat since I imagined the character to be extremely cowardly and lazy. I would avoid any kind of danger if at all possible, and when it was required to go to dangerous places I would find a companion I could hire and get them to do all the fighting for me. It was actually pretty fun, playing a coward.

Is that not a tad boring no offence like.

I found it quite enjoyable, for a short while anyway.

How do you play a merchant? As in where do you get the gear to sell and who do you sell it to? Sorry if they are stupid questions just curious.

MURDER! ... Not as innocent as he seems

I'm pretty sure the game is set up such that it's impossible to turn a profit by purchasing something and then re-selling it. At the very least you'd have to be using every Haggle / price boosting benefit you can, and maybe boost them beyond normal limits with something like the FortRefGlitch. None of which would really be achievable at low level, but I suppose you could level of crafting... which is really the most effective way to make money outside combat anyhow. I could see playing a non-combat alchemist, for example.

One can buy ingredients, create potions and make a big profit. Armor and weapons can be forged and later improved and should give a profit, too.