How about frag grenades acting like frag grenades?
Actually, I think about 95% of games out there don't do frag grenades right.
As we all know, frag = fragmentation. In FO3 you'll have an enemy standing right next to a grenade and not take any damage, because he isn't in the blast...
This might be an issue with your draw distance settings?
This is as far as I can use VATS against an enemy: (protectron in crosshair)
Of course all percentages are like 3% and 4%, so I'd highly recommend downloading the mod.
Re: remove scaled NPCs
This was excellently addressed in Oblivion with some leveling mods, and made it much much more interesting, so don't worry, F3 will get it's own leveling mod that works just like you stated :)