And they seem to get massive HP, better than giants. When it's several of them, like the revived crew outside Kolskeggr Mine, I can't afford enough health potions to beat even one down before another kills me. I had easily killed them before, but at Level 40 I find them attacking me with arrows that destroy me with four hits. Meanwhile, I'm rated at 60 Fireball but even with dual-cast perk just one character took 5 hits and kept coming.
"Go buy more armor. Go buy more potions. Turn down the difficulty." is not an answer. I shouldn't need to do more than cast an Invisibility spell and sneak up behind them and use my dagger once or twice. It takes two similar hits to kill giants now, and I expect that human characters just hanging around a mine to be less of an adventure.
So what's the deal? Punishment for leveling up? Or a flaw in the character generation routines that's being addressed in a patch?
I play on the 360 in case that matters...