...can you spread over your characters skills before your character becomes diluted to the point of uselessness? Just curious, since I've been messing around with a few different skills on alts just to see how they benefit how I play the game. For example, could I make a mage/thief with perks heavily invested in conjuration, alteration, destruction, sneak, plus one handed weapons and still find the character useful in combat or would this Jack-of-all-Trades style just make things increasingly difficulty?

Conjuration, Alteration, and Destruction with a minor in Sneak isn't an uncommon build among pure Mages, and it works because each perk tree fulfills a separate important function: Conjuration provides crowd control; Alteration provides defense; Destruction provides offense; and Sneak is great for all-around utility.

The danger of spreading yourself too thin comes most often from trying to heavily perk two different trees with the same basic function. For instance, why do you need One-Handed weapon perks for this build? Conjuration and Destruction provide a lot of fire power already. If you want a melee option, take the backstab perks in Sneak; you can effectively use daggers with a minimal perk investment that way.

jack of all trades can be Godlike if done properly. You don't even need smithing, but you do need enchanting so most people level both at the same time. You need it for enchanting magic reduction into your armor. Hit 100% reduction and cast spells for free. I have 100% reduction into conjuration and restoration enchanted into legendary daedric armor with a heavy armor character who both sneaks and tanks using arrows and one handed. Powerful and fun.. summoning 2 dremoras when needed, having grand healing for free at all times, having a permanent powerful restoration ward available to supplement the shield against mages. Adding to bow damage and one handed damage makes it so not many perks are actually needed in things like archery, one handed, block, or heavy armor. The enchantments and smithing take care of most of that.


Never needed to invest a point into magic, it all went into health and stamina. 2 perks into the restoration tree made it so healing spells heal stamina, so I can run pretty much all the time casting grand healing when needed to fill the stamina bar back up.

In Skyrim there are 80 perk points in total, this may sound like a lot but its not enough to complete a section of the stars (E.G. all the Mage related perks and cross-perks). I suggest that if you are taking on a jack of all trades style you should stick to general star signs in each section of the stars...