I'm at level 15 with my Nord Warrior (Sword & Board build). One-handed skill in the mid-50's, Block & Heavy Armor in the high-30's.

I'm not grinding, nor am I interested in that. Just curious if I'm on pace, based on your experience? My first character in Oblivion got outclassed by pretty much everything once I hit the mid-20's in XP Level. I'm aware that Skyrim features a revamped leveling system for mobs. My Skyrim character seems to be doing fine, but I'm just looking for anecdotal confirmation that I'm not digging a hole for myself.

Thanks for your input on the matter.

Is it even possible to fall behind with Skyrim's Level system? I know You could easily [censored] up your character in Oblivion if You didn't level the correct skills to receive the maximum Bonuses (+5) but I had just assumed that If You get all 18 skills to Level 100, automatically You should be Level 81 in Skyrim.

Don't worry about it. You're doing fine. Are you having fun? Then shut up and keep playing.

As far as I can tell, you should be fine unless you have no damage dealing skills, and lots of Speech, Lockpick, Stealth, etc....

Keep the one handed skill high and don't worry about it.

Anybody care to post their XP Level / Skill level ratios for reference here? I'd be curious what people have been able to achieve at various levels. (Focused on your primary skills for your build, I'm assuming.)

I'm going to jump to the defense of the OP here. He said he wasn't trying to "grind" but wanted to make sure he wouldn't get messed up later on. In Oblivion I found out the hard way that you had to make choices early on for the game to not own you in later levels. I would actually not sleep to level up in oblivion until I was sure that enemies wouldn't own me later on. In skyrim there are many more levels and its harder to level faster than your skills.

To the OP: Yes you are perfectly fine. There won't be any problems if you level naturally. The only time scalling will svck is if you speed level speechcraft or some other non combat related thing. You will still die, but having the game be challenging sure helps You can always slide the difficulty if anything makes it too hard/too easy.

It all depends on how you want to play the game. I like to focus on building up my characters first by focusing on smithing, enchanting and speech before I start taking them on lots of quests. So it's not unlikely for one of them to be lvl 15 or 20 before their combat skills are even at lvl 30. My take is, if I was going to go out and brave some harsh environment where everything is trying to kill me, I'd want to "train" myself a bit first.

Breton Mage at level 40:
Illusion 100
Alteration 100
Enchanting 85
Destruction 78
Conjuration 76
Sneak 66
Restoration 48

Redguard Thief at level 47:
Sneak 100
Smithing 100
Archery 96
Lockpicking 85
Light Armor 83
One-handed 76
Block 70
Alchemy 69

Orc Battlemage at level 36:
Smithing 100
Enchanting 100
Two-handed 80
Heavy Armor 71
Conjuration 59
Restoration 51

Speech is just wherever it ends up from quests, all the rest are not improved, or just by a few points in one or two cases.

@tipbruley: Thanks for the input. I'm mostly just leveling "naturally", with a bit of training here and there to keep my main skills at what I assume is near-to or ahead of the curve.

@justb2: I hear ya about play style. I'm playing this character in the go out into some "harsh environment where everything is trying to kill me" style.

@Mujokan: Cool! Thanks for the breakdowns. Did any of your skill(s) come from training, or just in the run of play?

I would say about 5 points of the thief archery come from training, but that is all.

Just check the thread about Forsworn, must be around first two pages. I am lvl 30, exprience was fantastic so far but I'm worried like you because I reached one handed mastery and I don't plan on investing in armor or smithing.