Hi.

I was wondering what advice you guys could give me in terms of tactics and perk selection for a thief/assassin character. I've been playing Skyrim for over 40 hours with my warrior/mage and I've gotten to level 36 and completed the main quest, companions quest line and a bunch of other stuff and I feel like I just need to start again with a new playstyle. So I'm about to start a thief/assassin who will join the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood but I'm not sure whether it would be better to get 100 smithing and a fairly high enchanting level to get some good armor first or just to level up sneaking, archery and all those others.

I personally started my assassin with sneaking skills and practicing moving around enemies unseen, one handed, archery, alchemy, light armor and sneak are what you need.

And i reccomend choosing the theif stone to help get those sneak levels up fast.

Do you need lots of potions created with a good alchemy skill when fighting bosses? How do you actually fight dragons and those dragon priests as a sneaky character?

I went with Sneak, Illusion, One-handed (dagger only), Destruction, Alchemy, Lockpicking. Nightblade-esque.

I started with the Thief stone, but I switched over to the Steed for the carrying capacity.

The only fights I have to pull out all the stops for are dragons, and if Mehrunes' Razor is nice to me, I can dodge the bullet of the long fight there.

I been playing a thief assassin type since TES:Arena. What you need to do for every opponent you face is do your best to take them out one by one. Sometimes it is tedious but very very gratifying. The most essential skills you will need are in my opinion:
1. Sneak: Of course for movement around
2. Light Armor: You need some protection
3. Alchemy: Best for poison enhancement (very essential) I always try and get a paralysis type poison (that way i can get free shots as much as I can)
4. Archery: This is where I choose to take out an opponent from afar very good.
-Now as far as other skills that is up to your choice, but these are the ones i focused in the beginning that helped me level very well. Smithing sure, but I stay with stock armor till i gather the resources ( i try not to buy) i usually just store them in my first place I can.
-Restoration ok for when you need to heal out of time
thats it for now