Unlike the other thread I just read about someone wanting to level the fastest way possible, but I want my character to advance as slow as possible, he is an assassin type char so first of all since I am going to be doing a lot of sneaking and tumbling Athletics & Stealth are out, but I might keep Security and Marksman, since those are not used that often (I prefer my killing up close) plus I might add Armorer and Illusion...plus Alchemy is so slow anyway that having it as a primary skill might make it usefull...suggestions on how to proceed are welcome

My character took 400 hours to achieve her top level of 20. She did it by having 4 major skills that she will never touch. Her main major skill is marksman, with two others that she could control and/or level very slowly. Her other 4 are ones she never uses.

Some major skills that most consider to level pretty slowly are marksman, restoration, destruction. Your mileage may vary of course depending on how you use them, but most consider sneak and alchemy to level quite quickly under fairly normal use.

Your basic thinking is to pick major skills that level very slowly (eg: marksman), or that you don't have to use (eg: speechcraft as a major and use charm spells; or take security but open locks by spell), or are very controllable (like block - it only works if you act to use it).

Restoration is a fabulous skill for slow leveling. It levels slowly to begin with and, by using healing potions/wait, you can slow it down even further if desired.

Another advantage of very slow leveling I found is that the world changes very gradually around you. You barely notice that very slowly and gradually, new foes are being introduced and bandits/marauders are gradually upgrading their gear. By capping at level 20, I also find most bandits/maruaders are still not wearing glass/daedric - only occasionally. In fact daedric and glass gear is fairly rare at 20.

Are you on PC? If so, tejon's http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14304 is the way to go. Progress allows the player to alter the speed of skill leveling (in increments as small as a tenth of a percent) to precisely tailor the speed of skill leveling to each player's taste. As a bonus for magic users it adds magic skill advancement through misses as well as hits (also configurable).

Thanks for your responses guys, I already use a slower leveling mod which requires 15 points to level rather than10, but I might take a look at it Pseron
What you describe as your playing experience is exactly what I want Arcandian, to be able to play and not have to worry about leveling too fast, just enjoying the ride
I think I will go like this
Birthsign Astronach (so I wont abuse magic skills)
Stealth skills (I still want them to rise easier faster but not affect my leveling process)
Skills
Marksman (slow enough but still good to have as primary)
Restoration
Illusion
Alchemy (I wont eat everything in sight but enough skill to make some interesting potions; poison)
Security
Block
and the last 2 one I am guessing something like heavy armor (since I wont be using it much) and perhaps Armorer (since I loath having to leave in the middle of an adventure to go fix my magic sword because I dont have the skill)
What do you think?

Alchemy tends to level very fast. In fact, at least for me, alchemy tends to level the fastest. I've found that I can control it, by making what I NEED, rather than what I WANT.

Just so there's no confusion, what you're using is most likely a mod that slows character leveling but does not slow skill leveling (which was what I was talking about). I use both. I use mods like nGCD or Realistic Leveling to change how many skill gains it takes to raise an Attribute and to distribute those skill gains across many Attributes - and I use Progress, which slows down the speed at which skills advance.

Yup you are right, it only focuses character leveling but with the mod you suggested I will also adjust the skill progress too

I level as slowly as possible too. The only leveling mod I use is Kobu's level slowing - I either use 1.5X or 2X. They do the same thing Progress does, except across the board - all skills require 1.5 or 2 times the experience to increase. I've played around a bit with Progress, but I've adapted to the way the skills increase by default and have figured out which ones to use to slow my leveling, and I'd have to relearn the system if I started rearranging the rate of increase of individual skills, so I haven't used it much.

My basic strategy is to combine slow-increasing skills and little-used to unused skills. And I can't say enough about specialization - it's often overlooked by people, but is, I think, arguably the single most important part of the build. The rate of increase of a specialization major is more than twice as fast as that of a non-specialization minor. Unless it's a terribly slow skill (like Mercantile), I never have specialization majors in my build. Instead, I combine non-spec majors and spec minors.

Virtually all of my characters get Restoration, Mercantile and Marksman as majors, just because they increase very slowly. I generally pick either Acrobatics or Athletics - whichever one is NOT the one governed by the specialization I pick. I pick Armorer with a stealth spec, but leave it as a minor and train it with a combat spec. I often pick Destruction and Mysticism with non-mage characters, since they have useful apprentice level effects and they're easy skills to not use. I never pick Alchemy, but that's because I spam potions for cash, so it increases plenty fast enough anyway (I can get it past Journeyman level just from potion making in the IC, Chorrol and Skingrad, and generally have it at Expert level by the time I've done one lap of the map and done the MG recommendations, and that's as a non-spec minor). Sneak's a pretty good one, and I'll often use it with a combat spec. Occasionally even with a stealth spec, if the character has enough other slow majors to get away with it. Armor and weapon skills depend on the character. Heavy armor tanks are easy - make both heavy armor and the weapon skill minors and use a combat spec, and you'll get nice skill increases without adding to leveling progress at all. Light armor fighters are a bit tougher, since light armor is a stealth spec and melee weapons are combat spec. I generally split them up so that one's a spec minor and the other's a non-spec major, but if I really want to slow leveling, I leave them both as minors. That's a bit risky, since light armor doesn't provide a whole lot of protection anyway, but I find that with a character who fights melee a lot, it still increases fast enough as a non-spec minor to get by.

My most common fighter/thief/assassin/whatever build is probably something like: Mercantile, Restoration, Destruction, Mysticism, Marksman, Acrobatics and either Sneak or Light Armor, with a combat spec.

I think Acadian said it very well, so I'll just chime in to signify my agreement and offer another example.

My ninja (custom class) is a stealth-focused archer that also is handy with a blade and plans to, one day, add the manipulative magics to his repertoire.

Majors: blade, marksmanship, restoration, illusion, mysticism, alteration, heavy armor.

I use the first three -- blade, marksmanship, restoration -- all the time. They level relatively slowly and they compliment both my character's class and my desire to level slowly. The next three -- illusion, mysticism, alteration -- I will not be using until much later in my character's career. I consider them the more mystic side of the art of being a ninja, so their time will come. Finally, the last major -- heavy armor -- is virtually never used. It's really there to make it easier to not hit a ridiculously high level, since I've little interest in rising higher than level 30, at most.

So, by focusing on just three majors per level, and slow leveling ones at that, I get to spend a lot of time "in the moment" just playing. I spend about 30 minutes doing my "efficient leveling" thing immediately after a level up, and then hours and hours just playing as I see fit. I'm still only level 4 on Olaf, and he's already got close to 20 hours on him. The rate of leveling will actually slow down further, the higher and higher blade, marksmanship and restoration get, which I'm quite happy with.

Good luck!

Thanks for all your ideas guys, I got some really good info I will let you know how things go

I think it's cool to return to topics to find out how the T.C. is doing. Looking forward to hearing how your slow-levelin' works out.

So far so good, I am 10 hours in and in level 2, just cleared out Vilverin and its a blast!
I picked
Sign Astronach
Specialty Stealth
Attributes Personality and Luck
Majors: Marksmanship, Restoration, Illusion, Armorer, Security, Destrucion & Block
I dont have to worry at all about doing something too much, and my Light armor, Sneaking & Alchemy are already over 25 too, plus my merchantile and speech skills are over 30 since I picked clean and sold everything in Vilverin
I thought really hard about not picking Blade (I choose Block instead) but other than running into a skeleton champion early on I have been able to handdle pretty much everything