I JUST got Skyrim, so excuse my noobiness please.

I started a mage, and I'm working primarily as a Battlemage...Heavy Armor, One handed conjured sword, familiar. Some flames tossed in, and of course healing.

I'm thinking of adding pickpocketing and lock picking to him. I do not want to make a sneaky mage. I'm having too much fun running into rooms and slashing things apart Would I *need* sneak to use pick pocket effectively, or do I just need to go into sneak mode behind someone before i pickpocket, and be ready to kill them if i fail?

I don't think the odds of succesfully pickpocketing are affected by sneak at all. Sneak would only have the additional advantage to pickpocket hostiles without them attacking you, but you don't seem to want that sneaky playstyle whatsoever. I didn't take pickpocketing on my thief but I had 100 stealth and the rare occassion that I did try to pickpocket were not very succesful.

So I'd say you should be able to pickpocked fine without having to level sneak.

I've noticed that if detected by the person you're stealing from, the attempt to pick their pocket will fail. Also, if someone else sees you, they will report you to the guard. In that sense, you do need to have some sneak skill to be a successful thief.

There are alchemy options to work around any difficulties you have in pickpocketing. I honestly never really used it and never perked a single point in the tree. Lockpicking perks I find a bit of a waste IMO.

Any replies from someone who has actually tried this?

Even if you are a master in sneak, if a pickpocket attempt fails you are automatically seen. So sneak won't help you with that, at all.

You have to sneak to pickpocket. I believe you have to be successfully sneaking to pickpocket (otherwise you would be detected while pickpocketing and your attempt to pickpocket would fail). I think you may be able to keep your sneaking relatively weak by never taking perks in it.

You can still pickpocket the person without being spotted even if the person who you are pickpocketing is seeing you, believe me I've done it tons of times.

You have to be undetected to do it successfully, so as long as you stay silent, stay in the shadows, and stay still, you'll be fine.