ManofMetal wrote:I've always been interested in hybrid builds (by which i mean characters using both magic and weapons from early or mid game onwards)
Well, probably transmuters and enchanters come closest to a "hybrid" in Crawl, so maybe try that. If you are having a hard time figuring out how to integrate spells and melee, I'd probably ignore the other "Warrior-Mage" backgrounds for now, to be honest, as they are less straightforward. Though I wonder if maybe the real thing here is that you are still trying to master the tactical aspects of positioning and melee in Crawl.
At any rate, any background that starts with a book can pick up melee whenever, its just a question of exactly when, which will vary from game to game. Any of the nine backgrounds listed under "Mage" are strong in the early going just with magic, so focus on that first. Get your staple spells (not always the highest level spells) reliable. Then dodging. Then melee and pick up any other spells that could be useful and don't require much additional training. By end of Lair, unless you went with a mummy as species or something, you can be proficient at melee, have good defenses, and still cast everything from your starting book just fine. Draconians, gargoyles, merfolk, humans, demonspawn, etc. have good starts as various book backgrounds and can take a hit pretty well.
Skalds are okay but just starting with an elementalist picking up a decent weapon is probably a stronger and more straightforward way to make a "hybrid" character, actually, unless you are really focused on hitting stuff and casting right from D1. The problem there is that dividing yourself between both of those tends to mean you are worse at either. Enchanters and Transmuters have ways of dealing with this problem, as their spells integrate nicely with melee or stabbing, but Skalds feel more like gladiators with a book and a more well rounded stat distribution at start.
So if you start as an elementalist or conjurer, don't spread your experience thin, focus on getting good at one thing then introduce the other (however don't feel you have to get everything in your starting book memorized before you start hitting stuff). In terms of priorities, it is important first to get a decent means to kill stuff online first, then get not crappy defense, then branch out into whatever else you want.
Final two cents would be that conjurers are really good at crossing into melee early on. Just magic dart + searing ray + dazzling spray, which you can have online pre-Temple, can take you a long way, and if you want to use those three spells and get good at melee before picking up iskerendun's mystic blast and battlesphere, that's a perfectly viable (and pretty fun) way to play conjurers. Obviously though if you try to get all the magic spells and also get better at melee and also not neglect your defenses, something is going to give, and you'll end up not being good enough at any one thing to survive. So prioritize and delay gratification a little bit, at some point in Lair you can get everything caught up and then really you can continue training up your character in any number of ways and still win.