I was playing recently and I was wondering what an assassin mage would be like. I think it should be something like:

Major:

Light Armor
Alteration
Illusion
Short blade
Security

Minor:

Sneak
Acrobatics
Speechcraft
Marksman
Athletics (nothing much else to put)

Birth sign of The Mage or The Lover (or something)


My reasoning is that Illusion would be for stuff like paralyze or chameleon or sound etc. Alteration could be for ambushing or retreating. Is having Illusion and Alteration as major to much? It would be a very difficult class early on, due to the fact that Illusion and Alteration would not be very effective when you start out. I think though, that once you hit level 20+ you should be owning. Any opinion or suggestions on how to change it?

My suggestions:

Make sneak a major. If it's too low, it's near useless. Plus it's hard to train when everyone can see you 2 miles away.
Imo, Alteration as a minor is quite enough. Apart from shield, most alteration spells don't need to be high magnitude to be effective anyway.
As a mage assassin, remember Willpower sets the casting chance for ALL magic schools.

The birthsign/race choices really depends on which side (mage or assassin) you want to focus on, so I'll leave that subject untouched.

All you said is true, but I think having a higher alteration would be more effective as it can easily replace sneak, when you get sneak up to a level where it's effective, alteration would be THAT much better. You could also train sneak later in the game too at Shenk's Shovel.

If you replace the word Alteration by Illusion in that sentence, I completely agree with you there.

Why dont you try the premade nightblade and go from there?

Swap an armor skill for a skill you like and there is your ultimate "assassin mage" or in TES: nightblade.