Tonight is my "friday" and i am going to start my next skyrim character to occupy my next couple days. My last character was a thief/assassin. This time I want to play as a samurai. Here i'd like some help decided which skills to focus, what weapons and armor to go after, appropriate thu'ums and any other tips / thoughts for playing as a samari as you can. This is not a stealthy / ninja type character but a moderately armored fighter that wields a katana....I read they are held in 2 hands but benefit from one handed perks & dmg bonus's.

Here's what i'm thinking so far.

Dragon's Bane for my weapon ( via the main quest line)
Dragon Scale Armor ( Decent look & protection ) ( Enchnated with one hand dmg and resistances )

Skills:
Smithing 100 (perked down light armor side )
One Handed 100 ( perked for swords no dual wield )
Light Armor 100 ( fully perked )
Archery 100 ( fully perked but done later )
Enchanting ( perked for max enchants without alchemy )
Sneak( maybe just get enough for bonus one handed dmg )

Any quests or specific items that stand out to do early would be helpful too.

Samurai, not samarai.... happy to help.

True Samurai don't sneak.

Then again, samurai don't exist in TES, so do whatever you want.

You can go hardcoe samurai, no armour! Bushido FTW!

(Put on some accessories for defence if you have to )

There is a unique two handed katana called ebony blade you might enjoy using.

Third person sprinting with the Ebony blade makes me think "Samurai", the way the weapon's held.

Pffftbwahahahahah... wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!
You just said that samurai is NOT a stealthy character and then you want to use Sneak skill?
Wow... just wow. >_>

Also... Enchanting?
Really?

Not to mention that you heard wrong about katanas.
Ebony Blade is nodachi-looking blade which is a Deadric artifact made for evil characters.
It's a two-handed weapon which benefits from some perks in One-Handed Weapons skill, and some from Two-Handed Weapon skill.
However, there are one-handed katanas which normally benefit from perks from One-Handed Weapons skill.
And it's Dragonbane, not Dragon's Bane.

Edit:
Since Dragonbane is one-handed weapon, you can always dual-wield Dragonbane and an Akaviri Katana - Miyamoto Musashi style (even though he used one katana and one wakizashi, but there are no wakizashis in the game so another katana will have to do).

Play through the main quest until you get the "blades" armor... it looks very feudal japan. I don't think the blades have a 2h katana, but they have a 1h katana AND the 2h blade you get from a daedric quest called the "ebony blade" uses the 1h weapon skills even though it is a 2h weapon. You will have to go on the imperial side of the civil war, if you don't know why then you obviously don't know much about them. Remember that they always used to keep a short sword with them at all times, even when walking around the city, so keep a 1h sword with you as well.

I was just realizing that I don't have many perks spent so then I thought about using sneak for 2 perks but in reality I probably will not. I have done a little research and found I can dual wield some of the swords as well so I might do that. Thanks for the input though.

And why upset about enchanting? I'm looking for places to spend perks and one hand dmg and resistances are pretty useful. I'm not doing power crafting with potions...

I've checked, and even without spending any perks into Sneak and Enchanting, you'll have 48 perks to spend.
And if you wish to RP a certain class, then you don't pick what's useful and what's not, but what falls under that class.
Not to mention that at latter levels you will get Dragonscale armor parts found as random loot, so you can simply find already enchanted items.

What level does this begin to happen? I'm 54 on my current character and have not found a single piece of dragon armor yet.

I don't see a problem with Enchanting. I see samurai as having a "semi-mystical" aspect to them that Enchanting works well with. They are warriors, but not magiphobic.

Yeah. As far as leveling order I plan to try and max 1 handed light armor and smithing first. I can do that with 28 perks. I was also considering using speech to help with making money and then following up with enchanting to bolster my defense. I also have that thought that they are semi-mystical. But the only mage tree I could really justify might be restoration for healing / protective properties but I"m not sure if I'll delve into that or not.

A Samurai without a good block skill seems weird to me. Block and stamina are pretty much all the game has to represent combat talent, everything else is kinda brute chaotic strength. I'm not sure how far you want to go with the Samurai thing, but from what I understand, they were spiritual and highly disciplined and fought with a zen reflexive but ideally calm style. Of course, you could always play without block and pretend you are dodging hits rather than just chaotically slashing away.

Culturally, the Orcs or maybe Dunmer seem most similar to Samurai, although the Redguards are most suited for Samurai style combat.

The blades katana and some of the polearm-looking two-handed weapons seem to fit, as well as archery.

For shouts, I would go with anything kinda spiritual, controlled, and minimalist. Maybe slow time, ethereal form, or whirlwind sprint.

For quest, non-chaotic shrine quests and any combat quests, like either side of the civil war, seem perfect to me.

He meant you find the Bone and Scales off of Dragons once they start appearing. At least I HOPE that's what he meant...

There is no LV to "find" Dragon Armor, you CRAFT it! About the only thing you can RANDOMLY find on a Corpse to help you would be Leather Strips... THAT'S IT.

Hell, I already had Dragon Armor on my character round LV20. I just skipped pass all the crap I didn't want to wear (basically everything cept the last 3 Smithing Heavy Armor perks). Ebony, Daedric, and Dragon.

What I don't get? Why is there NO SPECIAL HEAVY ARMOR AT ALL?! Theres a few spec. light armors.. no love for Heavy? WTF.

I have a lvl 57 character and I've found some pieces of dragon armor in chests. None on bandits though

I always thought of samurai as 2handed more than one.

Real men find their own dragon armor. Smithing is for power gaming wow kids.

I have considered skipping smithing but only using 1H, Light armor, Archery and Speech I dont' even know if I can make it high enough level to ever find dragon armor. I REALLY don't want to level up magic, heavy armor or shields. 2H maybe. What do?

The quickest way to get a katana is play until you get the Horn quest from the Greybeards. Retrieve it then when you meet the lady in Riverwood over by the alchemy table on the weapon rack is an un-enchanted blades sword. Leveling up block is pretty useless in my opinon unless you get elemental resist. But even that can be negated by doing the quest to get spell breaker which is the best item in the game IMHO. It may look a little strange but it lets me get in close to mages and dragons

Does the level at which you acquire it affect its base dmg?

You do know that Orcish Heavy Armor is actually based off of traditional Samurai armor?

Now that you point it out it def looks like it. I guess my armor path has been established.

Lol no worries I did this myself.
Also samurai were also known for being skilled archers as well so you can also play that to your advantage.

Yeah Archery is def going into it. Going to use it to gain leather to help with smithing.

Heavy armor means I lose the stamina regen perk but ... i do gain the punchy perk from HA.