I'm on Master and the traps are not even able to lightly scratch my scrotum. In my opinion it should scale with difficulty level as well as character level.

Adept: Traps deal 125% base damage.
Expert: Traps deal 175% base damage.
Master: Traps always kill you instantly.

As it is I don't even have to dodge them in order to progress.

The guy already said he's been playing on Master, so stop recommending that he plays on Master.

I'm on master difficulty.

I have 100 health still (leveling exclusively stamina), but I have dragonscale armor improved to legendary.

It did about 30% of my health.

I call that barely touching me when enemies can near 1 shot me.

Maybe I agree scaling would be bad.

Certain traps should just be instant death (the ones I mentioned)

I don't care how healthy you are or how good your armor is, if you're in a cave collapse and are actually hit with large boulders directly (people that survive get trapped in spaces) you die. That kind of blunt trauma isn't going to get shrugged off or absorbed by armor.

I just feel that traps need to be more dangerous if you're hit by them than combat with enemies, as they're avoidable.

True, it depends on what the bandit was wearing. If it is a suit of fur armor then, yeah, the trap should kill him. A full suit of ebony plate on the other hand...

If the traps don't scale, then what's the point of then even being there? You can choose to avoid them or ignore them, with essentially equal consequence. If that is the case, they serve no purpose whatsoever.

Traps should definitely kill you, or at least hurt you a LOT. Problem is, level scaling svcks, so the traps need to be really high to begin with, which makes them deadly for most of the game. As they should be IMO.

Some traps will kill you in one or two hits, just last night my character fell through the ceiling and into a bed of spikes, died in less than 2 seconds.

I play on master though, your mileage may vary.

Traps should take down a percentage of total health. I'd be happy with that.

Not all traps are made equal. Some just hurt a little bit. However I have been instakilled by traps. I've been instakilled twice by the trap that triggers the battering ram thing to fall from the ceiling, and once I was instakilled by a trap that shot swords out of the walls and floors.

There's a trap in Dwemer ruins that one-hit-killed me.

What really annoyed me is how stupid the trap is, it's totally silly design. It's not even a normal trap, just stuff right in front of the door, and when you open a door mechanical things jump out and start slashing you. It's silly because until you trigger this trap you have no idea what's going to happen, unlike the wire trap on the floor which makes sense, and the rocks. These traps I like. But some mechanical traps are out of place. I don't like them, I don't think they fit in at all. When I will want high-tech stuff I'll play Counterstrike or Starcraft, not sword-n-sorcery game.

The artifacts. They scratch at the very foundations of my soul, the structure of my being, the substructure of my apocryphal existance.

http://sadpanda.us/images/770379-93NQ4FO.gif, http://sadpanda.us/images/770384-PI5USHH.gif and http://sadpanda.us/images/770385-KGN2P6N.gif.
A Flounder. Please.

Edit: I hastily turned it into an avatar. Now, please. They even have transparency, some more so than others.

Great, so i'll buy an Iron Armor (in real life) and i'm to jump a hole with alot of spikes on the bottom of it.. I'll not die, because i have a good armor and the spikes don't get sharper as i get better armor.. Dude, that doesn't makes sense.

Save vrs Reflex or instant death... err nvm.

Did you really think that through? Better armour = better protection against the same objects. Makes sense.

Which would you rather: jump in with armour, or without armour?

That'd be terrible. Unless that percent was 100%.

Traps that should instakill:

Swinging blade corridors
Swinging spiked walls
Battering Rams
Falmer claws
Cave ins
Land slides
Falling into a pit of spikes
Any kind of trap that crushes you either by blunt force or by spikes
Dwemer spinning blades
Ballistas

Traps that should do pretty high damage but maybe mitigated by armor and high health:
swinging spiked ball
exploding lanterns
falling logs (a little less impact than falling boulders anyway)
Exploding gas

Traps that deal damage over time (I suppose these are more forgiving)
Fire from statues
Oil pools on fire
poison gas
Needle traps

Traps that should still be fairly weak
bear traps (though they should immobilize you until you activate it to release yourself)

No thanks. That only means less reason to have a follower. Traps can't touch me because of the perk.

Either Oblivion or Skyrim was your first Elder Scrolls game obviously.. you're unfamiliar with the Dwemer.

The Dwemer (Dwarves) were a lot more advanced than the other races, they didn't worship gods unless you can call logic and reason gods. They built machines, and had advanced magical theories. They're basically a steam punk society based Elf while the rest of the world is swords and sorcery high fantasy.

However a long time ago, they disappeared almost entirely (1 was left on Tamriel) and nobody really knew why. They just suddenly as an entire race vanished before Indoril Nerevar's eyes. They had been working on magical theories that attempted to tap into the divine and make the Dwemer into living Gods. They built a Robot God that would house all their souls and they would be the God Anumidium (spelling?).

However something was miscalculated and the entire race vanished instead. Whether they were teleported to a different dimension, completely annihilated, or they themselves became spiritual Gods by achieving CHIM, nobody really knows. The Anumidium didn't work however, and Dagoth Ur and the Almsivi used their tools to make themselves into Demigods.

Anyway the Dwemer have been around since at least Daggerfall in the series (were they in Arena?) and they've always been something of a mysterious advanced race that disappeared and left behind a bunch of odd things like robots and mechanical cities.

Some are easy to spot, but I've run into quite a few by accident too.

Some of the traps (the swinging log) do a lot of damage...

I think the Poison needle traps are too weak. Often I just stand there and take it...

Yeah, that first dungeon had a deadly trap but all other traps only make a tiny scratch.

In dungeons with higher level mobs they should have better traps. It hardly makes sense that a level 50 mob would put a trap in his front hallway that he knows will not do anything.

If you fell into a pit with sharpened wooden spikes I doubt it would matter what you were wearing.

All I can tell you is that those Runes are nasty. I play on Master and at the time by Health was still 100 and I was wearing leather because I only wear what I find. I also have no perks in light armor so my defence was very low... Anyway I was walking up some stairs and I thought to myself, should I Save? And I said "It'll be alright" and so I walked to the top of the stairs and Boom! I got this huge fright and died instantly. I had to re-do this part of the dungeon and I could not get past it. I tried sneaking around the side and I managed to just get past without it blowing up. I have no idea if you can get rid of them. Anyway after clearing the rest of the upper floor I never saved and went running back to the stairs and Boom! I died again getting another fright because I had forgotten about it. So I had to repeat the floor again haha. Good times. Always save and when you think you should save, but can't decide if you should, save anway because you will never know what's around the corner or up the stairs in my case

yeah losing any followers I have whenever I go into a dungeon sounds like a great idea XD

I get what you're saying though
I usually just walk right trough them with little damage
only times it really hurts me is when it happens during a tough battle

lol ppl, they dont need to scale if they do 150000000 damage to begin with.

i actually agree with the OP on this. i completely enjoyed accidentally triggering a trap and getting completely butt[censored]ed. enemies aren't a threat on master after you've played for a little while, so the game shifts 100% to exploration and looting. while that's actually my favorite thing to do in TES games, i would welcome the odd death, here and there, for going on autopilot too often.

this game is fantastic as it is though.