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.
Extreme Life/Melee characters are usually started with 100 STRENGTH, 100 COORDINATION and 100 FOCUS. You could toy with the template by sacrificing FOCUS in order to increase your QUICKNESS to gain additional Melee Defense. If you really do not want to deal with an extreme template you can change the stats to 100/40/100/40/40/10 (not recommended!)
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.