I was kind of surprised to discover this, but anyway...

One of my characters is a pure Mage, and started with the following skill levels (which were intentionally gimped thru the questions as to allow maximum level):

Destruction 32, Illusion 32, Mysticism 33
Restoration 23, Alteration 23, Thaumaturgy 23
Etiquette 15, Mercantile 15, Medical 14, Dragonish 16, Daedric 16, Nymph 19

Maximum level = 31.07

I just gave him a break and decided to build a pure Berserker type, also intentionally gimped thru the questions:

Blunt 26, Critical Strike 26, Dodging 32
Running 16, Jumping 18, Climbing 20
Swimming 11, Medical 11, Streetwise 11, Giantish 11, Orcish 17, Centaurian 11

Maximum level = 32.60

The only thing that comes to my mind is that the mage had both his Intelligence and WIllpower at very high starting points (90 and 75), while the Berserker had only Endurance maximised (94) with Strength, Agility and Speed at mid-60's (I doubt this is the reason, but...).

Otherwise, it would appear that a combat oriented build will have a little higher max level than a pure magic build.

As best I remember the lower the sum of the values of your Primary, Major, and highest Minor skill is, the higher max level you have, as you have more skill ups to count towards leveling.

I know, I was wondering why the starting skills for Mage builds seem higher than those for combat builds.

Just created a Mage with the exact same skills as above, but with Int and Wil at 10 (ten) and the skill levels were the same. So apparently combat builds have a slightly higher level reach than magic builds (this may be the sortt of info people aiming for highest possible character may look for).

I've never built/played a pure magic character, but over the years I've made plenty of (gimped, with all sorts of attribute points) combat and or combo builds. Never made one that could get past level 31. (And very, very few below 31). Specifically, I've never seen a primary score below 28, a major below 18, or a minor below 13. My first thought was that somehow your game glitched (is it repeatable?) but I suppose there are mods/patches that could be responsible.

Well - here's another weird thing: Just started a similar combat-class build with Argonian and Archery instead of Blunt.

Answered the questions to not reflect the chosen skills. And... On average, I got 13 pts more per 'skill group' (ie, Berserker's Primary summed 84, Argonian's summed 97, and so on).

So I went to the xl sheet that contained my record for my High Elf Arcanist: his Primaries summed 97, just like the Argonian Chutiya.

Man... maybe Nords start with (unintentional) skill disadvantages? (I am not in the mood to try this out, but this is interesting).

EDIT: Knowing that the entire TES community could not sleep with the awesome findings above mentioned, I restarted my Nord Berserker.

I tweaked the attributes better, but skillwise the same guy (again, answered the questions the exact sme way)... And now his Primaries start close to / above 30's and so on with the MMajors, etc... ?

I never found any mentioning about class creation miscalculating these skills, but apparently that was a one-time event.

Yans? knows why...