I truly like the flavor of this build, and the versatility of character concepts that can adopt it as well. I have always enjoyed and secretly favored "Wildling" type builds, and this combines two of my favorite concepts under that umbrella.

This also earns a little love from me because, as I learn more and more about Skyrim's lore, I am beginning to adopt and enjoy the Forsworn more and more - as this build easily fits in with that sort of roleplay.

Doesn't mean you can't make your own. I'm sure you kids these days with your fancy glitches and way too much focus on contrived RP can come up with something 'new'.

That reply made my day. 

I think that just means "go for it!" ^_^

I seem to remember this being one of the first builds I played from the blog and it popped into my head earlier when I thought 'a stealth mage might be a fun change of pace'. Loads of fun skills and synergy here, pickpocket and alchemy, alchemy and destruction, illusion and stealth etc. With what we know now about various mechanics I'm thinking of making a couple of edits, I'm going to carry a bow (no archery perks though) to get poisons to those hard to reach places (like dragons) and use the combination of ravage magicka and shock magic to silence dragons and mages. Combined with the stealth/illusion combo that should open up the use of the apprentice stone in reasonable safety which will make up for the lack of magicka regen on robes and also allow overpowered blizzard use at later levels. There is something about the idea of creeping into the middle of a room and winding up blizzard under the noses of the enemy that pleases me greatly! I'm also going to swap out alteration for speech as I love the synergy between alchemy and the merchant perk. Anyway enough rambling. Great build, great aesthetics, well worthy of a little necroposting :).

You could add in Conjuration to this build. With Illusion already existing (meaning easy access to Quiet Casting), you could summon frost atronachs to terrorize enemies and use the bound bow as a weightless poison delivering mechanism.

3/10

Jk 10/10 Another great build Ponty!

The trouble with the bound bow is it's so strong right off the bat. The temptation to use sneak archery as an end in itself would be really difficult to resist. A bit of sneaky necromancy is tempting though ... My new redguard witch is just about to start the forsworn conspiracy. The female redguard face paint options are awesome :).