I'm playing as a pure Mage but curious how your Assassin/Theives build is in Skyrim . The Backstab and Assassin's blade skills sound very cool. I refuse to call skills perks ever again. Haven't heard alot from you Assassin/Thiefs on this forum. How's the stealth skills can you sneak up to a giant and dual backstab.

What race is better for a assassin/stealth build? Argonian, Wood Elf or Khajiit? I know, later on, it doesn't matter but starting off wise (including racial perks); which is best?

The assassin is awesome. It is a very interesting build that has its pros and cons.

The pro would obviously be the ability to 1 or 2-shot enemies if they do not detect you. The con is that you will be sitting ducks if you are in a situation where you cannot sneak attack, such as dragon fights.

Imagine you are at an enemy fort at night, which is housed by necromancers. It is possible for you to move silently through the night and slit their throats one by one, undetected. It makes it feel like you are playing Tenchu in this game. It's just unfortunate that the stealth finishing moves do not always trigger, and they only trigger for humanoid npcs.

The giant stands no chance. But I cannot reliably sneak attack a dragon. I may try shadow warrior on one.

I dont like them. One of them stole my sweetroll, and the guards didnt care

Among those, technically a Khajit since they get a 10 sneak bonus, but that'll be completely irrelevant about 20 minutes into the game. Hell, you'd be fine as an Orc or a Nord in the long run. Races are more a personal preference thing.

Assassins are overpowered but awesome RP characters.

Sneak is terribly easy to level so the bonus khajit gets is pointless. From my RP point of view I like dark elves.

I love my thief / assassin build. I spent points in archery, sneak, one-handed, alchemy, light armor and I have a lot of fun on the expert difficulty. Yes I do die a lot, but I also get insane sneak bonus damage. A cave boss can kill me in 2 shots, but if I get to backstab him (and I do have a lot of patience, being a Thief/Deus Ex player at core) he's also down in no time.

Orcs are my favorite assassins. Once a day, someone dies really, really! hard!

Dark elf thief here. Only got about 12 hours in but so far I love it. Perks are: 1H, Archery, Sneak, Alchemy. Can't wait to get better gear and really push my build over the edge.

i can instagib giants and mammoths, but dragons kick my ass all the time

They are great and can get pretty challenging in Skyrim. Dragons can be mighty awkward to handle sometimes, but any sneaky character in their right mind would specialize in archery too and poison them. You also find you have to use your environment to your advantage a little more then warrior or mage usually. I found near impossible to kill Dragon Priests, so it made me up my alchemy. My grips is the quirky stealth AI of NPCs and inability to douse torches/braziers.

Argonian Meat-Shield here, but sneak still does its job with 2x sneak atk at range w SnB n Hvy Armor, cant go wrong.

Agree with what everyone above has said. And a bit of advice regarding stealth builds: Alchemy is your best friend. It is an ultimate debilitator, and assassins love debilitated enemies ^_^

My wood-elf (no use of +damage enchants/potions or smithing) does 1320 damage on a normal sneak attack.

i was playing a heavy armor (twinked to hell and back with enchants/smithing.. no pots tho) mage and he was fun for a little while but i got bored with the game pretty quick due to the way he played.. (walk in kill everyone walk out)
i decided to roll a thief/assasin and ive been having the best time ive had in a long time.. just today i spent 24 hrs straight playing skyrim lol... wahts nice about stealth is (unless u take invisibility) you gotta sneak up on the enemies.. you cant walk in front of them and expect them not to see you.. sneak just makes it so they cant hear/smell you... the damage is great also.. as long as you get that sneak attack in.. if ya dont well it doesnt go so well at times.. im using duel daggers and conjuring for my archery.. i figure that way I dont need to carry a bow or arrows.. though to be honest im thinking it may be better if i were to... casting the bound bow gets me caught way too often.... either way stealth was done very well in skyrim imo so id highly recommend it...