I've been thinking a lot about this question with my latest play through - a dedicated 2 handed Nord male, in the same vein as the wonderful build The Harbinger by Ambrorc.
What I mean is this: how do you navigate wanting to role play a character, maintaining the kind of 'rules' that character would follow while still enjoying the game and taking advantage of certain game mechanics/quest lines/etc?
For example, I doubt my Harbinger would/should spend much time over an enchanting table. But - disenchanting items, especially early on is a super helpful and quick way to level up. Is this 'ok'? Or is it bending the rules to make my play through a little easier/quicker?
Same goes for other magic - would the Harbinger be ok tooling around with some restoration magic? I don't know, but being able to heal myself on the fly without lugging a bunch of potions around yields a much more enjoyable play through IMO.
Same for sneaking...certain aspects of the play through would be 'easier' if my heavily armored lug were a little quieter. The question remains: would my huge, Wuuthrad wielding, heavy armor wearing warrior sneak just because the game rewards it (in terms of either leveling or quest objective). Probably not.
And should I use some of these game play mechanics to level quicker? Or just enjoy the role play and not worry about getting another perk point to spend a little "sooner"?
Is suppose in the end, it's in the eye of the beholder...or player. How much do you care about bending character rules to level up or gain advantage, versus how much do you enjoy sticking to the role play of your character?
Thoughts?
When I play Skyrim Builds I tend to stick to the skills I am going to use, as for lockpicking and speech I will sometimes goto a few people I know can level my speech up by persuading them to tell me or for example let me into whiterun/riften just for an extra level or 2 early on. I feel like if I boost all the skills I am using to the level I need them for the right perks, I end up doing all of them. Then I am stuck with a character that doesn't need to be leveled anymore and is kinda pointless to play. I see Skyrim as a game where you slowly progress through the game by doing all sorts of questlines and side quests to finally achieve the end result which I see as the "Perk Spread" completed and from there I rather finish the build or carry on playing for extra levels and fun.
I always play on master so, like you said, it would be a very bad idea indeed to level up using a skill that is not important to my build. That said, while I do take a lot of care in planning my characters' skills, I do emphasize roleplay more because that is most important to me. However, I have found that usually gameplay will, at least loosely, fit into my roleplaying.