Shepard the Leper wrote...
Enchanting and Smithing are optional, Alchemy is the most powerful skill in Skyrim. It, in fact, renders all other skills obselete. Someone who's a skilled alchemist will be harder to kill than any tank, inflicts more damage than any berserker, will be better at stealth than the best of thiefs and so on.
If frost is your only weakness you might wanna consider becoming a vampire yourself
Or better, invest in magic resistance. Completing the (easy) Mara Temple quest will grant a permanent 15% and the Lord Stone adds another 25%. Potions are great (as usual) and you can wear magic resist gear or create (enchant) items yourself. Magic should only be slightly problematic at very low levels when encountering high level mages. Mid-late game magic becomes very weak and I never encountered mages who use illusion or paralyzing spells against me, only elemental damage which is easily countered and shouldn't be an issue.
That would explain quite a bit then. I'm playing as a Redguard and my only innate resistance is to poison which won't help me much there. I've also only have dabbled in alchemy but I plan on saving that for my next character so I shall see it's true power then. However I'm not going crazy with it. I did that once already in Morrowind.
As for my magic resistance, it just plain sucks at the moment. All I have is the small, albeit useful resistance from the Mara quest and I just happened to finally find my first magic resistance item the other day. The Lord Stone really does look like the best stone in the game so I defintely should switch.
As for the mages giving me trouble I've noticed they really only get me when I play sloppy in combination with my play style. It's not really a good idea to run into a court yard, waste your shout on a skeleton and then run in swinging to be surronded by several arch mages. (In my defense I thought I was fighting nothing but skeletons. Fortunately I made it out of there and got my revenge!) Besides no true Redguard would fight dishonourably in the shadows!
As for the vampires though it would be nice not to see a master volkihar vampire everytime I leave Riften or Whiterun. Dang radiant story likes spawning them now after dark. It's also not the damage of the spells as I can easily heal that, it's the fact that it kills my stamina combined with the slow effect. Moreso the slow effect than stamina.
I do expect that to change real soon though.