So I am currently trying to RP as a peaceful wood elf who does not carry around armor or weapons. As you can imagine, this is fairly difficult as a major portion of the game is combat. Well my character just lets summons do all of his work and absorbs the health of his enemies. This is not enough though, I find myself switching over to H2H because he runs out of magicka and he's not fast enough to run away (even though 85 speed at level 4 is pretty fast) Does anybody have any tips on actually surviving with one of these characters?

Do you want it the easy way or the hard way?

Easy way - Bound Weapons and Armor alongside some major increases to Magicka.

Hard Way - Illusion School of magic and learn the pros of Command Creature and Command Humanoid spells along with Invisability. Don't forget to back this up with a summon or two. Its a harder way to learn but in the end can be the most effective.

Never forget about the power of Alteration either. Magic Shells and Shields for you and your Allies. Alchemy is going to be useful aswell for Restore Health and Restore Magicka potions.

If you want to define a Peaceful Character as someone that never lays hands on their foes then the Illusion way is the way to go for sure. However some people may choose to look peaceful yet be able to pack a punch with hidden skills, hence the Conjuration route.

I would also suggest raising Mercentile and Speachcraft aswell if you want to be a Peaceful Character. To me it sounds like they would be someone that could sweet talk an angry ogre.

It's tough at lower levels until you really get your magic going for such a character. Ultimately, you want some of these capabilities:

Cast a summon while you go invisible.
Control the minds of your foes.
Paralyze your foes while you safely absorb their life.
Disappear and walk away if things get too tough.

These things take a while to get built up, so in the mean time, pick and choose your combat and adventuring carefully. Most of your magic skills can be built up while practicing at the University.

Have you modified the difficulty? I was able to pull this off pretty successfully for a while with a Bosmer under the sign of the Atronach. I'd say invest in Sneak. Sneak around and summon things in line-of-sight of the enemies, they'll attack your conjured creature and, hopefully, not see you in the process. Also, raid an Ayleid Ruin or two and take every Welkynd Stone in sight. Use a Telekinesis spell for those hard-to-reach stones, or a fireball to knock them down. You can easily get 30+ in some ruins, and that's a full magicka recharge per stone.

The Staff of the Everscamp is also something worth considering carrying around. It doesn't do anything as a weapon, but you'll have a bunch of meat-shields following you around.

Great advice above. I myself roleplay a Healer named Helena Aurelie. She inflicts no direct damage to her opponents, and gets by fine.

This is down to illusion, conjuration and restoration all used in sync. Illusion for command and invisibility (of course there are far more, and we use them), conjuration for summons and restoration for buffing the summons. If you add Alteration into that with shields, you're unstoppable.

You just have to think outside the box a little, and you'll be fine.

Don't forget if he wants it really really easy to get 5 pieces of clothing/jewelry and enchant chameleon 20% with grand/black soul gems and he could walk strait up to an enemy and punch it, it'd still not see him ... I really suggest not doing this though as it takes out all the fun out of the game. The max I ever use while sneaking is 80%, still get a chance to get caught but still able to sneak at times while your summon fights for you.

Another tip is to cast frenzy but only works on humanoids.

Last two strategies I can think of is depending on how easy/hard you want the game to be is don't kill anythying (unless the quest demands it or your hunting animals as hunting animals to me is just a way of getting food for my character to live.)

Stradegy 1: try to sneak arround to get to your quest target and only attack while getting caught with frenzy, summon, or command spells.

Stradegy 2: Don't attack anything. Just cast invis and go strait to your quest target and well only attack if it's needed by the quest.

Hmmm I hadn't thought of the Staff of Everscamp. Can I pick it up after I turn it in to the Shrine? Or will I just have to leave that quest incomplete?

One of my favorite characters is a completely non-violent Breton mage. She has managed to complete the Mages Guild Recommendations, is the Hero of Kvatch, and has closed several Oblivion gates, without a single kill of creature or humanoid to her record. This means that no summon of hers, or commanded enemy, has ever killed either, because those kills would be on her record.

This has been accomplished using a combination of Invisibility, Sneak, and running to Guards for assistance when attacked.

When she is attacked by creatures on the road, she casts Calm and runs away; she's usually out of range and invisible before the spell wears off. She also uses Turn Undead and Demoralize when appropriate, and she carries her mages staff of Paralyze, in case she's cornered.

She does not use Chameleon, even though it would be obvious for this type of challenging character, simply because at a level where Chameleon is really effective, it becomes game-breaking.

What I find is a very useful way indeed to travel around, (always usually on foot), is to have an invisibilty spell at the ready all the time and if I forget about it, which happens now and then, is that I then go into the chameleon state. I imagine the higher the percentage of the chameleon the better. I did make a ring or two myself but the weren't as powerful as the ring I got from completing the task for Meridia I think, called The ring of Khajiiti at 35%, but to get that, there is a fair amount of violence involved. I think the one I made myself went to a maximum of 20% with a grand soul gem and although I have found a few black soul gems, which seem to be pretty few and far between, for some reason they were filled with grand souls, even though I had quite a number of empty grand gems?

I recently did a couple of side quests without firing a single arrow, punch or destructive blast. One was returning the staff of the everscamp to that cave, the name of which esacpes me at the moment, was quite full of Spider Daedra's, Xivilai's, Minotaurs maybe and all sorts. when you are invisible, sometimes you can't pass big foes like Daedroth in a narrow passageway and after trying to leap over them a few times you might have to do a quick reveal and then when they come for you, you can then go invis again and give them the slip. Other times some of them seem to pass right through you, as well as the blades of swords etc without any damage.

I wasn't that comfortable with invisibilty at first when I only got the occasional scroll before I could make or buy any spells, but it is really effective, so long as you don't do anything to reveal yourself or maybe become encumbered just as you are right next to somebody.

But then again, if that happens, you can take a couple of feather potions and if you are quick, they often stop in their tracks.

I deliberately reveal myself now and again to make whatever run towards me and then go invisible and go to the chest that they were standing right next to.

Recently, I have just been opening chests even if they are looking in the direction of it and close to it as well, because when the chest is opened, or you are picking the lock, time is frozen and when you come out of that you just go invisible again and move on.

To get a lot of money quickly and without any need for fighting at all, I would suggest going along to the Imperial City and just get all of the Sacred Lotus and Fly Amanita that you can find there and that can add up to about maybe 8000 gold or so if your alchemy skills are highish.

I'm not sure if you can mix those two together though? Also, I believe you need to be master alchemist to be able to make the resist frost from
the Sacred Lotus and restore agility potions from the Fly Amanita.

Bearing in mind that some Sacred Lotus might need to be kept for making feather potions with as well if you are often encumbered.

Safe and peaceful travels.

Alchemy

Not only that, but using a Command spell, you can make the scamps to attack your enemies, as it says in http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Staff_of_the_Everscamp. I recommend to the OP to read the article, it's a very interesting gameplay....

Sure, but if you do that, you're kind of slipping away from the idea of a "peaceful character." If commanded creatures kill for you, it counts as your kill in your stats.

As Zak said, alchemy. Flax seed + Steel Blue Entomola = a Restore Magicka potion. Load up on them, and save all the Sorcery potions you find, and you will not have to worry about your magicka tank running low. Just drink a Restore Magicka potion at the beginning of every fight, and more during if needed.