Life Dagger.
This template requires a bit of hard work in the beginning to get you going, but provides the benefits of having strong melee defense and life magic skills for a great combination of vulning and tanking. Dagger characters in general run faster and have higher melee defense skills - but their strength suffers because of the need for high Coordination and Quickness.
(BONUS: Hilt a dagger - and this template double strikes at 250 Dagger skill and tripple strikes at 350.)
(UPDATE: When looking for a hiltable dagger, you should start out with a Slashing/Piercing or Piercing only dagger with the following stats - 2-6 or 2-7 and +7 Melee Defense and +7 Attack Bonus minimums. This should almost always be the first hilt that a dagger character acquires.)
Extreme Life/Dagger characters are usually started with 100 COORDINATION and 100 QUICKNESS. The only time you may wish to deviate from this is to have additional magic casting abilities. You would change to 100 COORDINATION, 70 QUICKNESS, 100 FOCUS. This would also help your Healing and your Arcane Lore.
After level 32 you could go for whatever your tastes prefer. If you plan on having lots of vassals, go for leadership at level 50. Otherwise you might like to have lockpick at level 60.