The topic title might be a bit provocative, but I'm either doing something horribly wrong or all the followers I tried are borked.

I'm especially confused about magic weilding folks like Marcurio. He, for example, has hundreds of hitpoints and survives the weirdest stuff. I checked http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Marcurio and this explains a lot. When I level up, I get 10 points to spend on either health, magicka or stamina. Yet, some NPCs get to spend 10 to 20 points!

Apart from that, the difficulty setting only affects the damage dealt and taken by the player, right? It does not affect combat between two NPCs (my follower and an enemy). I know I might be a horrible gamer, but with followers, I'm quickly becoming THEIR clumsy sidekick.

Is there anything I can do about this?