Method 2 is to fill out your entire 7 picks with garbage skills and rely on minor skills to fight with. Just make sure your garbage skills are ones that you will not use and that will not go up automatically. Any combination of weapon, armor and useful magic can work. The primary combat skills should be the skills you plan on using to fight with: as you gain skill in them you will level, but you will get stronger and should keep pace with the enemy. My preferred way is to select 2 or 3 “primary combat” skills as major skills, and then fill out your 7 major picks with 4 or 5 “garbage” skills which you dont plan to use. There are two basic ways to build a character. You can have a very viable character who relies mostly or entirely on minor skills rather than majors. Both have the same cap (100) and although majors raise a little faster, the difference is not that large. Also, there is very little difference in major vs minor skills. In creating a character, avoid selecting major skills which will go up automatically. Also some skills will go up unavoidably as you do the common activies in the game, so you can get uncontrolled skill gains which can level you too fast. Some skills are easy to raise (which makes their associated stats easy to raise) and some are hard to raise. Unless you can match that pace, you will fall behind the enemies and get your hat handed to you at higher levels. However, the enemies are designed to level at what I would consider a moderate to hardcore min/max pace: I estimate they gain almost all of their 10 skill points in combat skills and get roughly +3 to +4 in 3 stats, per level. Your level controls the levels of your opposition: every level you gain, they gain. Each level adds health equal to 10% of your Endurance stat, and gives you the chance to raise up to 3 stats to a max of +5 each (you get +1 to a stat for raising the skills associated with that stat by 2). Level goes up when you gain 10 points in any combination of major skills.

No mods needed and only a modicum of cheesy tactics suggested :). Another Oblivion thread - how to build a character in game to avoid “gimping” yourself as you level and how to make a strong min/max character, within the game engine.

Oblivion how to level up faster