Always pick up a weapon skill as your primary skill and the game will be easy. I advise you to do that even if you are a mage because mage spells svck as offensive weapons at lower levels and it probably svcks at higher levels too when compared to daedric weapons.
Not at all. If you use items to buff your skills over 100, destruction is really over-powered, since there's a "glitch" (not sure if it's actually a glitch) that at 101 skill and above,
any spells of that school cost only 5 magicka to cast. But even at 100, you can cast some pretty devastating spells. Combine with 100 intelligence/willpower plus spell absorbtion, and you can just use explosive spells and always recover your magicka, provided you were in the blast radius.
But yeah, at FIRST, magic is hard to rely on. It can be done, though; it's quite rewarding to play a "pure mage," that doesn't touch any weapons. Though for the most part, I play an almost-pure mage that can't use shields or armor, and is only allowed to use short blade/blunt.
your char in Daggerfall atleast have a 50% chance to survive most encounters compared to a new party in Bards Tale or Dragon Wars, where you will be easy meat up until level 4-5.
You must've stayed in the weenie dungeons, then.