question about differences between character files

[obax]

First a little background explanation, and for the record, I'm playing the remastered version of Skyrim on the xbox one. I created a character, an Argonian warrior type, heavy armor, two-handed, and played for a while. It was on the default difficulty of 'Adept', and I got my rear end handed to me on the regular, by enemies who should not have been able to do that, so I decreased the difficulty one step, and it was still pretty challenging when there were groups of enemies or particularly strong enemies, to the point where I'd have to decrease the difficulty even more on the fly to get through certain parts. I chalked this up to the fact that I usually play a stealthy character and snipe from afar with bows, and I just didn't have the skills as a warrior and it'd get better as I went. It did not.

After a while I decided I didn't like my character much, so I started a new one, a Nord this time, also heavy armor and two-handed. It went to the default difficulty of 'Adept' again, and this time it's a cake walk. To the point where I'm thinking of increasing the difficulty just so I have a bit of challenge. The other thing I've noticed is that, with this character, hardly anyone has any gold on them. In all my other characters I've ever played, in the original Skyrim on the 360 and my Argonian in the remastered one, most bandits and draugr are good for a least a few gold, but with my Nord character, almost no one had any gold on them. I have noticed the dragur are more likely to have other items, such as potions or pieces of armor, but the bandits just seem to be all flat broke.

So my questions are, why the difference, both in terms of the difficulty of play and the lack of gold? Is my Nord character bugged somehow, and at the moment it's manifesting in lack of gold/easy fights, but might manifest in some game-breaker later on, or is this just some quirk of whatever background system there is that determines loot on killed enemies/difficulty? Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

My current theory is that there's maybe a difference in starting stats between Nords and Argonians that would account for the difference in difficulty, but I haven't bothered to look up the starting stats to see if that pans out. I've got no working theory for the gold thing... I am running a few mods, but they haven't changed from the Argonian to the Nord, so I'm figuring that's not a factor. I'm mostly asking out of curiosity, it's not enough for me to make a new character just for more gold, but I am curious if anyone else has experienced something like this and if they have any answers to why.

[Lord Timster]

My current theory is that there's maybe a difference in starting stats between Nords and Argonians that would account for the difference in difficulty

Yeah, Nords get a +10 to 2-handed weapons, which means you can get the Barbarian 1 and 2 perks with your first level ups. I'd imagine that would make a noticeable difference in difficulty for starting characters. Also some Draugr use Frost magic which Nords have a 50% resistance to, again a very noticeable improvement over the Argonian.

Not sure about the gold thing though.