[Belthan]

I've played it both ways (pure roleplaying with no decisions whatsoever based on stats or numbers, vs. brutal min-maxing where my sole objective was to get all my attributes to 100 or above). So yes, you can play successfully without paying attention to stats. If you take alchemy as a major and use it a lot, you'll level up fast and mostly get bonuses to INT, but if you're a roleplaying purist that shouldn't matter much. You're also right that conjuration and illusion tend to increase faster than destruction/restoration. You just need to adjust your tactics to rely more on your strong skills and minimize your vulnerability to your weak skills (e.g. if your conjurer has low proficiency with armor, you should always have bound armor and bound weapon spells ready in case you get cornered). If you still get your head handed to you in a basket, you can try lowering the difficulty setting in the options menu a bit.