i tried doing a spellsword, but i had problems in the first oblivion world. i kept getting killed by that demon guy in the second floor of the tower. i had the same problem the very first charcter i tried (though my first character was a battlemage, not a spellsword) and i just kept trying over and over until i got lucky and managed to do it without dying. at the time btw, i was playing a good guy and trying to complete the main quest, i dont think i'll bother with it for now since i have huge problems surviving.
i tried doing a sorcerer, but that didnt work out very well bc i chose astronach constellation so i normally dont have mana. i was doing that quest where you kill zombies in one of the recommendation quests, and i ran out of mana, and that goblin staff ran out of charges surprisingly fast. i ended up hacking the last zombie down with a dagger, i had to slash it four or five times to even see his bar go down! mysteriously enough everytime i take the astronach constellation i have an absurdly hard time making mana potions to restore my mana. with my next character i'm probably going to do a spell sword (i invision my 'evil mage' as being this demonic knight with a giant sword, thick armor, and immense magical powers) with either the mage or the lady constellation. i also considered the tower constellation so i could break open average locks earlier, but i dont think i'd like to take a constellation that will be useless rather quickly, and will cause me to take damage every single day. doesnt it deal 120 damage or something like that? my mages tend to have alot less hp than that.....though it may not be that big of a problem since i seem to have health potions galore. btw, i found the heal spell you start off with to be completely useless it drains an absurd amount of your mana and still doesnt heal you that much. my mage has over 250 mana and like 90 hp and he cant heal himself to full with that spell before he runs out of mana!
so now i'm considering doing this 'effecient leveling', since if i want to have some unstoppable arcane juggernaut i guess i have no choice in the matter. the only issue is i'm not sure how to step up my character to do it, the wiki doesnt help much. if tells you to avoid skills that level automatically, which makes sense, but skills like that are the only ways you can increase your strength, endurance, and agility! i havent the faintest idea how to build my character so i can do this.
btw, i also enjoy playing rogue-like characters, even though the lock-picking mini-game is a pain for me. and i do know about the skeleton key, but i cant figure out where on earth it is nor do i want to learn, i want to discover it myself. i'm sick of spoilers ruining the game for me. i want to role-play but all this stuff i'm getting off the wiki is making me powergame.
of course, i was also just thinking about reducing the difficulty, but what exactly does that do anyway? it's not going to help me much unless it makes me more durable. and solves my mana problem with astronach or w/e it's called.