A legendary fabled warrior who's slain Alduin, won the civil war almost on their own, is the bane of dragons, wears demonic magical armour and has the power to probably bring all of the inhabitants Nirn to their knees is attacked by a bandit wearing a skimpy leather vest. Surely some of them should think before attacking a lvl 120 Fobahkiin in full daedric shouldn't they?

tamriel has no9 google, no wikipedia, no 5'a clock news.

people know LDB exists, but most are not aware of his/her appearance

TES doesn't have twitter. That and you'd be surprised at the arrogance of mortals.

It's like the tales of the Gunslinger, everybody wants to beat the baddest boy on the block so they can increase their rep. Stupid is as stupid does.

Bandits been on too much skooma.

would you expect to lose if ten of your buddies and you jumped some guy in gaudy armor? (or some guy in a robe if the playerborn is a mage). Its not like they know who the player character is before they get thu'umed across the floor and soul trapped to make enchanted pants

Actually, if you really lived in Skyrim and you really could die (for real, permanently) and you decided to be a bandit, I think you'd become highly skilled with things like booby trapped trails in combination with ranged weapons. Just for safe measure, throw in overwhelming numbers for a simultaneous attack (none of this one at a time stuff).

The plan would be to hit your target with everything, really hard, all at once. If he doesn't go down, run like crazy because you just bit off more than you can chew.

All together, way too risky.

I remember back during an early stage of the MQ I had to follow that chick to the Blades Base. I remember running with her and we came across a place that I had to fight bandits before. I thought it would be interesting to watch her in the fight with these guys since they so kicked my butt when I first saw them. Any way, she as she ran by, she said something like "you don't want this" or something to that effect and the bandits did not attack. This was back during the first week of release. I really can't remember what she said, but I remember thinking that I would be able to intimidate or scare off low level bandits once I got stronger. Nope.

Just wait till TES VI. They are definitely going to improve the late game character-NPC interaction.

Exactly, the bandits don't know your the LDB, for all they know your an adventurer still wet behind the ears.

All it takes is one mistake and you end up with a sword in your chest.

Gameplay/story segregation.

Sure, in game your legendary Dragon bone sword of pwning and dragon bone armor of epicness along with your 100 levels of awesomsauce and countless perks make you a walking demi god while the bandits run around in hide armor swinging 9 damage iron swords. It's an RPG after all - and no RPG worth it's salt is complete without character progression.

But here is the thing, that iron sword may only do 9 damage in game, but it's still a deadly weapon. It's all about taking the 'game' out of it and looking at it as if it were a story. It's the same reason one of the essential NPCs in the game doesn't just decide to save the world themselves because they're effectively immortal. It's only like that because the game needs it to be.

They're bandits, they're not particularly smart people.

Maybe if the Dragonborn was wearing a name tag, bandits would think twice and just hand over their booty. If only I could send all of those dead assassins back where they came from, so the Dark Brotherhood would get the hint.

Considering how small the "family" is, I'm honestly rather puzzled they don't get the idea after a few of them don't come back after accepting one specific contract.

Indeed. The body count reminds me of the movie "300" where they had a wall of corpses. It would be nice to pile them in front of the entrance and trap everyone inside.

http://i.imgur.com/qnm4Gqm.png

/Bandit is at 1/10 heath

/Bandit is trapped between 2 rocks

/Bandit is facing level 100 dovakiin

/"hahahaha, think you can take me?"

Possible mod? Tweak AI so that when they see the ratio of their health to character's is low, they start to say depressed things?

Fobahkiin?