Most damage abilities scale with either magicka or stamina, depending on the type of damage (magical or physical respectively), so generally you would want to distribute your 64 attribute points as follows, regardless of class:
- stam dps: all 64 in stamina
- mag dps: all 64 in magicka
- healer: all 64 in magicka
- tank: somewhat even distribution between health, magicka and stamina, depending on build (tanks leave you the most freedom when it comes to attribute points, but I wouldn't recommend making a tank as your first character as it makes doing quests a painful experience due to the lack of dps)
As most of your self heals also scale with either mag or stam (depending on the build), it is favorable to put all your attribute points into one attribute as dps, as this also increases your damage.
I encourage you to check out some builds online (alcasthq.com has endgame builds including starter gear, but they should give you a general idea in terms of attribute points, skills and gear etc)

lukoi wrote: »

Is there a generally held consensus on where to spend attribute points between the mana, stamina, health of most character classes?

i.e. 50% of my points in stamina, 50% in health in building a night blade over time? Some other ratio? Is there some underlying considerations I need to be aware of before leveling up characters?

I left the game in early 2015, certainly didn't master it, and while I'm looking forward to coming back, don't want to gimp a character after I spend a great deal of time leveling it up, if I can avoid it.

Thanks.

Awesome to have you back!

As another poster has suggested, I strongly suggest you check out someone like Alcast on Youtube or his own website. I rarely copy a build completely, but I use them to give me good ideas and understand how some things work.