First, I want to make sure my terminoligy is correct -

"powerleveling" is exploiting the game's design by quickly leveling a particular ability (e.g Speech, Restoration, Smithing). I did this the other day with Speech, and I probably gained about 6-7 levels in the process.

I also swapped out my old armor for some dwarven armor in the process. I notice two things when venturing back into a dungeon for the first time

a) Perhaps a coincidence, but the difficulty was substatially higher.
B) my Magika and Stamina drain much quicker. Very slow regen.

So my question is this: Does power leveling create some type of temporary imbalance in the game, as the result of combat abilies and other areas not leveling up naturally?

Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks!

It is possible, if you power level non combat skill, to be underpowered in combat for a bit.

Yes, powerlevelling without training your combat skills will lead you to be rather week when you enter combat again....so much the fact many powerlevellers were complaining how broken certain skills were whne they became too weak to play the game anymore after powerlevelling a skill.

Its not as bad as Oblivion, if you powerlevel a character, you shouldnt be completely locked out of the game, but it might take a bit of work getting your combat skills to catch up....but eventually you will catch up.