I agree with most of the advice given here but I'd like to share a few things that will hopefully save you some time.
1. If you plan on having a Ranger or Ranged type character make him/her your crafter, this will make crafting special arrows much less time consuming.
2. Give anyone who attacks with a weapon (non-mages) 1 point in blacksmithing and a repair hammer. Weapons go through durability pretty fast and letting everyone repair their own stuff saves the hassle and time of transferring items.
3. Most people will tell you that lockpicking is useless, but i disagree. Some chests can't be broken open, and some chests have a ridiculous amount of HP, lockpicking is just faster and can be done while stealthed if I remember correctly. Sure you can get by without it but after a couple full and several partial playthroughs I would strongly recommend it.
4. Telekinesis is another great time saving ability to have on characters who loot stuff (like your crafter and/or loremaster). I haven't found much use for it in combat, but there are thousands of things you want to loot in this game and 1 point in Telekinesis makes you walk less to pick them up. Huge time saver!
You'll find you get plenty of these stats on gear and from traits, but I feel the game doesn't require min/maxing from a combat perspective. Spending points in things that make the non-combat stuff more enjoyable . . or simply less agonizing, are very much worthwhile IMO.
