I'm suffering from a major case of being unable to stick with any character for a game. I usually start a character, play it for a few days, and then my head gets crammed with loads of other possibilities which I start considering, making very hard to continue. So I feel driven to ask the community for advice.

My previous character form over a year ago was a Dunmer warrior style, focusing on long blades, medium armour, and marksmanship, so I want to avoid replaying something like that. To be frank, this character was made enjoyable mostly by LGNPC Pax Redoran. Combat didn't particularly bore me, but without the variety from marksman, I feel it would have worn out fast. I do not feel however, that I would enjoy taking this type of character a step further with a heavy armoured pure fighter. Firstly, I hate dealing with encumbrance; and secondly, I struggle to come up with good role plays beyond the cliche.

My other major character before that was an Altmer pure mage. Overall I did enjoy using magic, and role-play ideas always come to my head faster with mages than they do fighters, but was a bit guilty that by the end of her time she was fighting a bit much with a short sword. At the end of the day, I just don't think I've got the patience to deal with the whole "everything in Bloodmoon having reflect" thing. The other thing I did not enjoy was the Atronach magic regen; sure there were tricks, but I always felt of a cheat using them, not to mention it was a bit tedious.

The only type of character I've not ever tried is fighting/magic, in particular, a spellblade style of character. In concept they look pretty fun, getting the best of both worlds, and fit right into the world of Morrowind and the main quest (which I always do). However, I'd read things on the forums that had made them seem less appealing, two things in particular that almost contradict each other.

The first was that, in vanilla at least, spellblades were easy characters to play with. I'll admit that this is a bit of vanity more than anything else. A part of me would feel lame for playing an easy character. The second thing, and perhaps more important thing, is that apparently GCD does not favour fighter/magic classes well. Having played several characters with this mod I can see why, considering the lower health factor. A fighter character is a bit pointless if they died in two hits after all. In terms of difficulty, I want something that's middle of the road; not so easy that I'll bore of it fast, but not so hard that I have to resort to exploiting things that might not be role-play intended (I consider alchemy abuse or stealing the soul gems in the Balmora mages guild to sell to be examples).

These two points put a puzzling mist in the mind over whether a spellsword class would be fun to play. So I'm going to make a public sceptical of myself by asking you guys for tips or experiences on these kind of characters.

I am having this issue when starting the game again. I like thieving, so always come back to that sort of character.

I might go Kahjit or Argonian for something new.

Typically I usually efficiently level most of my chars so they can pretty much do (or be) anything I want them to be. I've only recently begun to actually roleplay them and I had the some problems, I'd lose interest in them rather quickly actually.

I'd look at the things you don't like.

You don't like encumberance so to me that says a light armor specialst or unarmored
Pure mages and using magic can be fun, but if you play on max difficulty you know that you can take next to no hits from any weapon before you take a dirt nap

Personally, I like to use magic, so my main roleplay character now is a light armored specialist but focuses on using conjuration to summon gear and equipment. I actually like marksman, it's not like Oblivion where skill give perks, but it seems more to be the type of arrow you use. I used to use iron arrows almost exclusively because they're fairly cheap and everyone and their mom seems to have them. Steel arrows seem to provide me with a lot more knockdowns of opponents. I just love shooting them with a sneak shot and then watch them fall to their knees only to have another arrow hit them before they can get up for some extra damage.

I think you'd like an offshoot of a spellsword, only drop the armor.. go light.. or none at all. Use bound weapons for when the baddies get up close and personal and offensive spells and scrolls to deal most of your damage. Maybe add some summon spells as distractions so you can get some distance to cast some more face melting spells.

I imagine a typical combat scenario to go something like.

Nuke a distant enemy with fire/frost/poison, whatever wrinkles your underwear.
Keep nuking until the target is about halfway to you. Hotkey a summon (something) spell, throw out a creature to distract
Create some distance between yourself and target.. nuke some more.. summon dies.
Summon bound shortsword or mace (whichever you want) maybe even armor
Switch to hotkeyed "on touch" spells like absorb health or something like that
Hit the target with a couple of those and then toe to toe.

I imagine you're like me and get bored when you don't have to think about what you're doing... then it just becomes click click click (hack hack hack). The more I have to think about what I want my character to do and planning out a combat in advance, the less bored I get and find combat pretty exciting. Especially when you have multiple opponents. It's worked so far.

Good luck

When I was playing regularly (compulsively) 5 or 6 years ago, I always had one character that I went to for a change, probably the most fun character I've had. The main points are to leave Seyda Neen and just go off and explore with the ultimate goal of visiting every cell on the map. It's a bit slow to start because you won't have the easy building phase in Balmora so you need to plan your character with skills that are useful at the start and level up reasonably fast without training.

A Dunmer with marksman and short blade as majors would be one or a Redguard with long blade and marksman would be another (the way I built mine)

Well, I decided to go back on what I said earlier and give heavy armour another try. So my current character is a Dunmer Battlemage, planning on doing Mages Guild and Imperial Legion. Yes, she's an imperial loyalist.

Two character directions I enjoyed were:

an Enchanter/fencer who cast no magicka from his own pool, and was decent (not "great') with a sword. Enchanting is lame as a secondary skill, but potentially very powerful as a focus. The variety of mostly self-enchanted jewelry and clothing, need for inventory control, and the totally different focus of combat on delivering spell effects via weapons and trinkets, while acquiring souls for enchantments, made it interesting.

a "Hunter" character who fought mainly with bow, falling back on Spear, or a dagger if all else failed, and could throw a few "basic" spells to assist. Sneak was essential for hunting, ambush fire is devastating, and he could reliably pick off opponents out to LOS range by the later stages of the game. In melee, kind of weak. Morrowind Crafting was the ideal addon.

Perhaps you'd find a fun challenge in http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1159150-random-character-challenge/?