I'm running the vanilla Skyrim (except for OneTweak to run with a borderless window for graphics reasons). I've got up to level 33 and my follower, Lydia, is now useless. Just now we got ambushed by two ice wolves and she was down wounded before I even realised they were there. I then took them out in 5 seconds because they were not strong opponents. She healed again after but I don't know why she went down so easily.

I checked to see if this was the 'followers not levelling up' bug, but using the console Lydia is the same level as me, and most importantly has 473 health - she should be able to take wolf bites for ages before going down. I've equipped her with ebony armour, enchanted with a heavy armour bonus, given her other enchanted gear to boost her health... why is she so weak? She was bossing everyone at the start of the game, and has, apparently, been levelling up since then.

I now have to be very careful in battle as I am a mage - it is very easy to accidently kill her off permanently when she is down wounded from the start, and I'm getting careful to check on her before hitting save.

When she bothers to use her shield and is one on one she does still seem capable of beating an opponent (she's a pretty good blocker).