Has anyone else noticed that sometimes enemies not leveling with your character provides some very frustrating game play?

For example, I charged into a bandit fort wearing orcish armor, wielding destruction magic and an ebony blade, while my companion is decked out in exquisite dwarven armor (with shield and helm for maximum armor) I summon a frost atronach and sit back to what I assumed would be an easy fight.

My character was standing back throwing spells around, so I didn't see how many bandits there was, but when I died from being pummeled with arrows, I assumed it was 15 dudes with daedric bows.

After several reloads, tons of potions and running away, I defeated the............... three bandits who I discovered were wearing fur armor and using iron weapons.

How does this make sense?

They had very special fur armor, at least for them. And don't joke about those very special iron weapons, they are great.

If you had them, you would be GREAT at level 3!

It doesn't make sense and is stupid.

Also met some boss-bandit the other day, he just killed me in one swoop of a greatsword...made out of iron. And I'm in shiny stuff at level 25.

Usually with bandit forts I will always take out the archers along the walls first with firebolts before running into the courtyard. I'm a full mage wearing destruction robes, no actual armour at all and I haven't died since level 20.

Well to be fair, if the guys are any good then the material they are using is secondary... I'm sure the greatest archer ever could kill me relatively easily even I wore the best armor ever invented...