Like that some races are more keen on learning certain talents due to their upbringing and traditions? The person is placed in the world of Skyrim without any previous training in any skill. Imagine an extremely lazy son of a Jarl who had fun all the time and didn't learn anything. How fast will he be able to learn those skills? Can potentially be any race
The thing with pickpocketing is that it requires a certain mindset. You have to dare to steal someone's purse in the crowd. In real life pickpockets usually work in groups to provide these distractions you mentioned. Besides seeing as in Skyrim it's all trial and error you'd spend more time in prison than practicing
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That's the difference of concepts of light and heavy armor. In light armor your emphasis is on dodging the enemy strikes. In heavy armor is to put an armored side under the blows. Both require coordination and agility. By wearing those armors in the fight you learn how to use them according to their specifics. Read the Orsinium and the Orcs. It describes some specifics of heavy armor
I would say Alchemy is the easiest to learn. It doesn't require any sort of innate capabilities, and anyone can learn it, as opposed to trying to teach a giant Orc how to sneak. And although smithing could also be taught to anyone, it still requires some sort of skill and strength that can't necessarily be taught, alchemy seems to just be mixing ingredients.
You could, but if at the beginning you had little to no knowledge of tactics, movements, etc. Someone that has trained before will almost certainly slaughter you outright. If you have some knowledge/are just plain lucky it could happen but I wouldn't count on it, realistically that is.
Yes, the thing with Alchemy is that it requires little effort to craft a potion (compared to Smithing) and mistakes are not punished as much as with Enchanting where you can lose an entire object you try to enchant. Alchemy Labs take it even further, making your job even easier.
Let's see... from top hardest to easiest:
1. Pickpocket, I can't fanthom the years of training it must take to remove someone's armor without him noticing. Inhuman amounts of skill I'm telling you.
2. Heavy Armor... because learning how to take a blow from a polar bear without dying sounds quite difficult to me.
3. Light Armor, same reasoning
4. Smithing, takes years to learn
5. Speech, it's a talent thing
6. Illusion, it seems to me that there's a massive gap between just throwing charges of magicka (Destruction) and being able to channel magicka into something so complex it can change people's thoughts or make you invisible.
7. Alteration, same thing
8. Conjuration, again needs proper use of magicka, but I have the impression that once you know the summon it becomes easy peasy.
9. Block, it doesn't seem too easy to use a shield properly, that is, not just putting it in between you and the enemy but knowing how to actually use it as a war tool, it sounds a bit more complex than just attacking with a sword
10. Two Handed, it musn't be too easy to properly use such swords... at least not like they do in Skyrim where it's just big hill billy swings with no apparent brains behind the brawl
11. One Handed, sounds a bit easier
12. Enchanting, it's like watered down Conjuration
13. Lockpicking, sounds difficult to learn but not sure if it's a one trick poney thing.
14. Sneak, it's intuitive in my opinion, and very luck based.
15. Restoration, just go to the temple of Kynareth and spend a few years healing wounded soldiers
16. Alchemy, get a book by your side with the recipes and GG
17. Destruction, just throw magicka at people
18. Archery, all I have to say about it:
Armor skills are, in general for RP, is how to deal with the weight of the armor, and how to use it effectively to have blows not hurt you (ex. moving so a blow glances off, instead of impacting fully, knowing what blows should be dodged, which absorbed, which deflected)
Vazgen's link to Orsinium and the Orcs is a great example for heavy armor
I am not an archer in real life. However, I am a lover of history. And when I see that in England users of the longbow were FORCED to practice on Sundays, that points two things out to me. Either 1) they REALLY need archers and 2) it takes LOTS of practice to remain/become skilled with a longbow.
(postscript: I feel really shitty about not being able to provide a reference for the bit of information. However, it is just an example, and I am not teaching a class, so meh)
Hmm, for me the magic skills seem to be the hardest to learn, since they involve things not present in real life. For example, Destruction may seem simple, just channeling magicka through you, but I think it requires a few characteristics of the character, some inborn attunement to magicka. All races on Nirn have that, but some to a lesser extent. That said, you'll also need to learn how to change the form of that pure magickal energy to a Fire or Frost. I would have also put the Restoration as quite a hard school, since you need a very good knowledge of physiology (of all Nirn races), and using magicka to knit flesh together the way it was before seems very hard to me.
The book Breathing Water describes the training of a Waterbreathing spell and gives the duration of the course as several weeks. If one spell takes that long, maybe others could be much longer and to get somewhat average at the skill you'll need quite some time.