I love master difficulty! It feels just right...
It fits perfectly with most of my characters. I get that nice sense of vulnerability at lower levels when my skills are shit, begins to feel comfortable by around level 25 and then I'm usually dominating by around 30+...
You don't get that on Adept, the second you buy an enchanted item from a merchant you can beast most things...
When I decided to break one of my characters (Console user here, fortify restoration loop) I made myself a bow, a sword, more or less undetectable sneak (fortify sneak), always 90% chance to pickpocket, and insanely fast regen for magika. Then I set the difficulty to legendary. The point? I decided to have more or less no armor. This means, yes I could one-shot things but if I let my guard down I'm dead. If I don't notice that bandit chief 'round the corner I'm dead. I know not everybody will take this route but there IS a way to reasonably replicate the settings you named above.
i always play on adept but for the challenge i go to master i believe legendary was made to make the feeling you get in late game master ten times better you know the feeling when you have the best weapon best armour godly enchants on both free spells and now those bandit chiefs that basicaly one shot you when you started gowhen they see you coming. ya that felling i imagine that its ten times better
I use the Duel-Combat Realism mod (sorry console players) to make the fighting more challenging. This mod tweaks the way of fighting iso just alter the damage taken and/or done.
First of all, stamina plays an more important role. Power attacks and sprinting did already cost stamina, but blocking, though more efficient, will cost stamina. Beside that, getting staggered damage stamina also. Bottom line is that you'd to use your stamina wisely because when it runs out you've lost the advantage and can get in deep shit.
Secondly, NPC act more intelligent. They defend themself better, block more often, move more and even hide sometimes. Groups have better teamwork and try to flank or surround you.
Thirdly, this mod introduces something like initiative. When you've managed to drive an opponent in the defence, you can easily keep him/her in the block mode and you've a bigger change to stagger him/her. This way a fight can be over quickly. The good thing (or bad if you wish) is that this also works the other way arround. Loosing initiative is almost a certain loss against a equal or higher level opponent.
To the grief of my chars, I play on master with the hardcore version of Duel-Combat realism, which causes that they get beaten up regularly.
Below two little videos about Duel-Combat Realism (Older versions).
I'm sorry for my outburst. It's just that, whenever someone (i. e. me) says "I wish that Skyrim had (insert whatever here)," SOMEONE who plays on PC always comes along and simply states that "there's probably a mod for that." It just gets really annoying, and I had already been annoyed to the point of bursting...so, sorry about that.