Are your legs covered with armor? They may be shooting at your knees!

I knew it!

looks like your career as an adventurer is over, you now have to join up the guards and patrol for criminals!

Gah dog, life svcks now.

Find cover. Shoot back.

My new character is a imperial, that only wears Light Imperial braces, theives guild boots, and regular clothes. No armor enchantments, only 46 armor rating. I play archer, and I do perfectly fine againts others. Because as the guy said before you....dodge. I dodge their arrows all the time then retaliate with my own shots. Not that hard, you can see the arrows coming before they get to you, and if you're thinking I can because I use the slow time perk. I refuse to put that on this character. I hated it on my other one.

Enemy NPC damage all over is boosted, they have learned from previous games where enemies did low damage but had loads of health making fights long and drawn out at high level. Fights in Skyrim actually become more lethal at higher levels.

Now I was surprised of Aela's health, I shot her with my 400 damage bow and she just lost 10% of her health, yes she is wearing legendary elven/ glass armor and with some light armor skill she might be armor caped however compared with other enemies I rate her as tough as an ancient dragon.

If you need to close the gap you could get the blocking perk that makes your shield deflect arrows and get the perk where you move faster with your shield raised.

Actually, just now I've been oneshot by a vampire archer
Khajiit level 30. I did have an Armor Rating of only 100 (leather armor) but about 200+ HP. And still he got me with one shot!!! WTF? With some stinking huntin bow or somesuch. Gah! There's an end to my DiD...

you are using ligth armour so you probly best beat is to sneak and snipe does nasty archers either that or use a shield

That makes sense. I didn't see a decapitation until I took the perk for it, and it was my character that got decapitated.

I have had similar experiences, and I think there is a bug (or Perk/Feature like some have suggested) where arrows ignore all armor in certain situations.

The first time I experienced this was with a Drougr Deathlord, in that one room with all the traps on the floor where a spike pops up if you stand on it too long. Can’t remember the name of that specific dungeon off the top of my head…

Anyway, while I was busy taking care of his minion, this guy would shoot arrows at me, and between dodging the spikes and fighting the other Drougr, one hit me. My armor is over 400 at this point, and I had the perk that causes arrows which hit my shield to do no damage.

Seeing he was lining up a shot I raised my shield, and the arrow hit said shield, and therefore should have done no damage. However, it instead took me down to almost zero health.

I thought it was a gimmick thing with that boss having some special bow/arrow (which couldn’t be looted), until I fought through Forelhost Stronghold (awesome dungeon BTW), now with over 600 armor at level 42. There were a couple Drougr’s with Ebony bows taking shots at me and again, one shot even with my shield up would reliably take me down to under 100 health.

I’m actually not complaining though. It forces mele to think more about their surroundings, kite around corners (and into traps; I wasted two Drougr Deathlords at once on a swinging gate!), and actually makes potions like Fortify Block/Magic resist and Heavy Armor as well as Regenerate Health/Stamina a lot more useful than in previous games (I hardly EVER used potions in Oblivion.)

Plus it forces you to work shouts into the rotation more regularly, and Shield Bash to interrupt/Disarm. Having a lot of fun with it!

EDIT: I do play on Master mode... Might have something to do with it.

You only have 160 armor rating.

This is what happens when everyone complains that Oblivion's archers were under powered

Maybe you leveled some non-combat skills that also leveled your character up. If so, your combat capabilities don't level up.

However, the enemies level up, too, including their combat capability. So, now they're a bit more powerful than you are.

Good luck.

I was being serious when I said learn to dodge, I barely ever get hit by arrows no matter how many archers...its really easy to avoid thier arrows just run sideways right when thier about to shoot, hell just running randomly side to side will make them miss most of the time.

J'derras uses shouts to help with pesky archers. J'derras recommends Become Ethereal to close the distance, then destory them with melee weapons. Another option is Whirlwind Sprint if you don't have Become Ethereal, and the Disarm and Ice Form shouts work wonders.