“Nirnroot” quest

Try the mods, Better Dialogue Controls and Better MessageBox Controls.

Better Dialogue Controls description:

In A Nutshell

Have you ever pressed the E (activate) key in a dialogue and it selected something else than you expected? Then you may find this mod useful. Think of it as a patch for the controls of the dialogue interface.

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This mod will be most useful for people who like to use both the keyboard and mouse, it fixes issues where the mouse just flat out prevents some keyboard controls from working as expected. If you exclusively use the mouse to scroll and click through dialogues you may not have run into some of these issues. Likewise if you do not move the mouse at all after entering a dialogue. If you move the mouse pointer after entering a dialogue, then you will run into the issues below:

• A fairly common occurrence is when you leave the mouse pointer somewhere over the menu and you want to use the keyboard controls. If you like to switch to the keyboard navigation now and then, you will run into issues where the mouse pointer just flat out prevents you from scrolling to the top or bottom of the list with the keyboard controls.
• Another common occurrence is that as you enter the dialogue, you think the first item, next to the pointy bit, is the selected item. However when you press E, you find that the 2nd or 3rd item has been selected. This happens because the mouse pointer takes the focus away from the default option. Often times, I had to move the mouse pointer out of the way when entering the dialogues because of this.

Solution:

• The mouse focus now highlights items, but does not make them active. Thus the active item is always at the center of the list (next to the arrow/pointy bit). When you enter a dialogue, the mouse pointer never takes the focus away from the default option.
• The keyboard controls lets you scroll all the way to the first or last item, no matter if the mouse pointer is hanging over the menu.
• Scrolling the list with the mousewheel, or up/down controls always maintains the center item as the active one.
• You can still click off center dialogue items with the mouse, the mouse just won’t affect the menu until you click.
• The mousewheel scrolling has a smoother transition. It happens because I changed the mousewheel scrolling to work exactly as if you pressed the up/down controls. I didn’t plan to change the mouse wheel scrolling appearance, but I thought it was nice so left it in.

^{From: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/27371/}

Better MessageBox Controls description:

In A Nutshell

This mod lets you navigate the message boxes with the keyboard. Use Left/Right controls, and Activate to select options (typically A,D and E but it should work if you remapped those controls to other keys). Fixes the clickable area of buttons so they are easier to click.

Detailed Changes

These are the changes made to the vanilla (original) Skyrim message boxes:

• Enabled the gamepad style controls, which lets you navigate between options with the Left/Right keys (usually WASD), and select an option with the Activate key (usually E) and Return/Enter keys. Now you can dismiss simple “Ok” message boxes by pressing a single key instead of being forced to click a tiny text label.
• The TAB key cycles through "Exit" type buttons, where the label matches exactly "Return", "Exit", "Done", "Cancel", "Back" or "No". This helps navigate custom menus from mods that have lots of options. While SkyUI3/MCM will alleviate this, there are still many instances where mods will continue to use message boxes (or mods that won’t update to use MCM).
• With SKSE enabled pressing ESCAPE picks the first “exit” button and selects it. Thus you can quickly exit out of most dialogs that provide an “exit” button. The recognized “exit” buttons are exactly as for the TAB key (see above). You can quickly exit out of Yes/No dialogs, and mod options. In multi level mod options usually the ESCAPE key will take you to the parent set of options, because it picks “Return”, “Back” or “Cancel”, etc. WITHOUT SKSE the ESCAPE key behaves exactly as the TAB key (I’m sorry but it was not possible otherwise to distinguish the keys as crazy as it sounds!).
• Fixed the width of the clickable area for the buttons to properly adapt to the entire length of the button label.
• Extended the clickable area also below the button labels, instead of only above. This makes them easier to pick with the mouse.
• Added a subtle highlight to the focused button.

^{From: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/28170/}

Absolutely.

Skills

Illusion synergises well with sneak as invisibility does not gaurantee not being detected. The CC spells are also very useful, allowing you to control situations that would otherwise overwhelm your squishiness. Silent casting will be vital, so get it asap.

Destruction will be tricky without deep magicka reserves until you start to enchant your own stuff to reduce cost. But Impact will work beautifully for single target assassinations. With silent casting, I believe you could also use runes for some fun, though on master they will quickly lose effectiveness. I would stick to one element to save perk points (perhaps shock as a useful rarely-resisted element), and don't bother with master level perk. This will be a useful tree against dragons.

Restoration is moderately useful with the respite perk, allowing you - in conjunction with light armour stamina regen bonus - to spam dual wield power attacks all day long. I would not worry about the perks above adapt. Get respite, the magicka regeneration perks, and possibly the "auto heal on zero death" perk that can help out if you are smacked around when dual-wielding.

Light armour is great, and will give you survivability that most mages don't have. It also takes up far fewer perks than Alteration.

I would skip conjuration perks completely, unless you wish to use bound weapons as a role play. You may ultimately wish to level it to 90 at some point in order to provide a non-smithing source of Daedric weapons (see smithing below), and if so don't rush on it until you need to level other skills up to level in general (high 30s onwards). Alteration has few uses in this build.

Enchanting will be useful, allowing you to supplement your lower magicka with regen and reduce costs. Don't bother with -100% cost on any given skill tree, as you will probably only use destruction as a filler against mobs and dragons but if you use it a lot against high level single targets then consider -100%, as the Expert level spells are expensive. I would aim for some +magicka regen (or +magicka - calculate which is more effective given your base magicka) as that can be used for all your magick trees, and you will be using them all not just 95% destruction like in pure mage. Possibly some reduce cost for illusion. All other slots for boosting your melee and resistances. Restoration is fine without reduced cost.

Smithing is great - but you may not feel like role playing it. Depends on your target equipment, but you could make do with steel smithing and the enchanted item smithing perks. You can get daedric weapons through the Mages guild, so don't feel obliged to perk up smithing.

Alchemy complements both skill sets well.

The Beginning

Don't spread yourself too thin to start off with. I would work on illusion, sneak and one-handed until you can comfortably stay hidden in shadows and get silent casting perk. From there you can start on destruction up to Impact, to have a useful fall-back of dual-casting firebolts (it can interrupt dragons and nasty bosses), and get restoration to apprentice level. I would then work on getting illusion to 75 and sneak till 60 for backstab bonuses. By this point you should be able to flit in and out backstabbing and skirmishing, using Invisibility as a means of getting back into cover.

Quests

You will not be locked out of any, and can complete Thieves guild, DB and Mages guild. They all work well together. Thieves guild and DB synergise well, and Mages guild unlocks some tasty equipment.

From here, you can choose. I would work on your sneaky sneaky and melee skills, as you will already have the main utility from your skill sets.

Use illusion to ensure you don't get hammered too much, and don't be afraid to go invis and hide. Your main advantages over a pure stealth character are your much better flexibility when detected - so use these advantages.

Hth =)

EDIT: stats: ymmv but I have had good sucess with balanced melee/mage with 2:1:1 health:stamina:magicka. I leave stamina at 150 (maybe 200 if going dual wield).

EDIT2: added link to find out if +magicka or +magicka regen, as per the paragraph on Enchanting. added link for Mage's guild and daedric weapons