Higher difficulty, follower too strong?

[Squirting Elephant]

When I play on higher difficulties, Lydia (who has a +25 damage enchant that I found early game somehow) just kills everything in roughly 1 hit. But oddly enough her bow (she doesn't even have one in her inventory) shots need only 1-2 hits to kill regular enemies.

Is this normal? I need like 30 hits on an enemy for it to go down and she only 1-2 hits. She needs like 6 hits on bosses.

I assume that the damage penalty from the difficulty setting is not applied to followers? But why is her bow attack so strong?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

NPC's and followers are not affected by the difficulty settings. Those damage penalties only affect the player, so followers can be more effective at higher difficulties.

[Squirting Elephant]

It plays really weird when your follower kills everything while you just well... do nothing :P. Because it's no use attacking if she kills everything so quickly anyway.

['Tis but a scratch]

Your follower is treated like an NPC by the game, meaning that the 3x less damage taken by the enemy is negated by her 3x more damage dealt. So, while you're playing on Legendary difficulty, for your companion it's pike playing on Adept difficulty. Which is what makes companions pretty overpowered of you're playing on Expert/Master/Legendary.

['Tis but a scratch]

Originally posted by Squirting Elephant:

It plays really weird when your follower kills everything while you just well... do nothing :P. Because it's no use attacking if she kills everything so quickly anyway.

Go to Western Watchtower - hit the dragon two times - let the guards do all the work - go to the Jarl and say "I killed a dragon. I deserve a reward"

[Squirting Elephant]

Originally posted by Damian:

Originally posted by Squirting Elephant:

It plays really weird when your follower kills everything while you just well... do nothing :P. Because it's no use attacking if she kills everything so quickly anyway.

Go to Western Watchtower - hit the dragon two times - let the guards do all the work - go to the Jarl and say "I killed a dragon. I deserve a reward"

Haha yes that is basically what you do on higher difficulties :D. Don't forget to also ninja-loot the dragon soul :). Or in my case... Lydia should get all the rewards and credits and houses and what not because she is 99% of my damage.

[Bomb Bloke]

Originally posted by Damian:

Your follower is treated like an NPC by the game, meaning that the 3x less damage taken by the enemy is negated by her 3x more damage dealt.

Not exactly - rather, the multipliers just don't factor in at all unless the player is involved. This matters because the offensive and defensive multipliers aren't the same!

Originally posted by Squirting Elephant:

But why is her bow attack so strong?

Beats me, but you could always give her a bow, if it really bugs you. She only has infinite ammo when using her default hidden one, so you can stop her from firing entirely this way (by simply not giving her any arrows).

If she persists in using her own bow even with a semi-decent tempered one in her inventory, then that'd be a pretty strong indication that a mod has messed with her usual load out (making that base bow more powerful than it should be).

[Gamefever]

Followers are in fact NPC's just like the Bandits you fight around in the world.

So YES difficulty adjustments DO IN FACT adjust Followers amount of outgoing damage INCREASES with higher difficulty and thus yes you get weaker and your follower gets stronger. Anyway even if its just only when the follower hits you it doesnt matter as in that case the follower is still not subject to doing less damage so basically they are just stronger anyway in that case as well.

There are a few mods that will just make enemies more powerful without adjusting your followers. The easiest one to make a whole bunch of useful adjustments with very little fuss is called SkyTweak. Just put the games default difficulty on Adept and go from there.

Skytweak has a ton of simple slider functions that adds up to an extremely useful mod.
One such function allows you to simply increase the level of the creatures you fight and another slider increase the amount of HP they have.

You should check it out.

[Shrapnel]

I've noticed that in terms of hardiness they are pretty tough. They can tank 2-3 guys that would normally 1 shot me, to offset this I only give them lower tier weapons (Iron, maybe steel after leve 30). This allows me to skill up while they slowly whittle away at the mobs

[Squirting Elephant]

Originally posted by masterpainter78:

The easiest one to make a whole bunch of useful adjustments with very little fuss is called SkyTweak. Just put the games default difficulty on Adept and go from there.

Ah nice indeed. I found it here: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/33395/?

Kinda silly though how difficulty scales on followers. I assume their tripple damage includes enchants. So my follower was doing around 105 damage per hit on around lvl 10 while I did only 10-15 per hit. Maybe the new Skyrim edition will fix that imbalance. And hopefully skytweak can also get rid of enemies performing combat fininshers on me (full hp) because that is just lame.

[DrSuperEvil]

Summons also are not affected by difficulty so relatively they are stronger but in actual fact they stay the same power relative to their opponent.

[jtenorj3]

I've found followers to be weaker on higher difficulty, at least as far as damage output. Lydia could solo Legendary dragons quickly and easily on Apprentice, but it took her forever to take out Karstaag with better weapons on Expert(with a few dozen potions of ultimate healing in her inventory that got used up). On master, I had given Vilkas a well tempered Dragonbone battleaxe which is base 26 and about 102.67 with my tempering adding about 76.67. At level 50 with 100 2H skill he should be doing triple damage(like I would at 100 2H and 5/5 Barbarian). That's 308 damage with a standard attack(not a power attack). Found some companions east of Windhelm fighting a mammoth or something. After they were done, they started heading back to Whiterun. Vilkas got too close to the horkers and they started a fight. He hit a horker with a standard attack and only took of most of it's health and didn't kill it outright(maybe left about 20 health out of 175). The second hit finished it off. This leads me to believe his damage output was halved like mine on Master, even though he wasn't actively following me at the time. Edit: no mods installed.