I would agree with thief being the easiest type to play. I found the gameplay to be pretty tedious though. I enjoyed it at first, but going so slowly through dungeons and such isn't very fun. On my mage, I'm barely ever sneaking and just running through blasting shit. I get into hairy situations easier, but I also have lots of tricks to fix them and I'm taking at least half as long to do dungeons as I did on my thief. At this point, the only time consuming part of dungeon crawls is gathering all of the gear to sell, and taking it to a vendor. On my first play through I had to pay a lot of attention to what I was picking up because my bags would fill so fast with garbage, but now I pick up pretty much anything that is worth more than 2 gold per 1 unit weight. It means that I occasionally have to stop in the middle of a dungeon to fast travel and sell stuff, but it also means I'm making lots of money, and it's legit money instead of having to steal stuff and use a fence.

Overall I'm enjoying the new character, though it isn't the typical style of character I would play. I think once I get a decent follower I'll be good to go. I'm headed to see the Graybeards right now, and then I'll probably head to the mage college in Winterhold. If anyone knows of any half decent followers along the way, let me know. I know a few really good followers, but I want to wait to get them until I'm higher level so they aren't garbage. A mediocre follower would be fine at this point I think.