I dont know if it will top the nerevarine.

Dovahkiin:
Born with the soul of a dragon, kills the world-eater. Can use dragon shouts.

Nerevarine:
Immune to diceases, ends up kicking some gods around, fights Hircine (or one of his apects to be more precise).


My opinion: it's close, but I don't know I'll have to play the game first.

Bonus:
Champion of Cyrodiil.
Friend of the guy that saves the world. meh...
Later, becomes the madgod, kind of cool. This does make him a viable option, but his role in the vanilla storyline is still meh.

Maybe but we never know until we beat the game and maybe the expansions.
But for now I believe the Nerevarine is the most powerful.

The Nerevarine doesn't need fast travel when he has The Scrolls of Icarian Flight and slowfall.

I say the most powerful sounding one is Nerevarine is the most powerful, but that is because he killed Demi-gods, and was basically a god killer. But that is my opinion.

No. Nerevarine is the height of power. He can levitate, teleport, and drink potions until he is WAY beyond little dovy or coc.

More seriously, sotha sil and almalexia can beat mehrunes. Two ash vamps beat them. My nerervarine can kill one ash vamp without getting hurt (nothing like spell absorbion), so, he could probably beat mehrunes (ignoring the whole god thing.)

Then, neravarine faced off against liches, daedric princes, gods, ash creatures, and overpowered wood elves... and won!

The real reward for the main quest in Oblivion is the Mundane Ring that Mankar Camarons son drops in the sewere if you're high level. Admittedly that only gets you halfway through the main quest, but it's probably the most powerful non-random item in the game. Though the shield of bruma and a few others come close.


edit: However, if the world-eater qualifies as a Dragon, and we absorb its soul after killing it, then Dovakiin might qualify.

Ya the Nerevar has access to what the everyday people do, but the power he can put behind all of it is immense. I mean your talking about one of the guys that kind of stole the power of the gods, and is pretty much the only one to still keep his power in the end after all is said and done through Morrowind and its expansions. Handed Almexia and Hircine there rear ends so hes up there.

So we don't know whos the most powerful, but the Dovahkiin is up there too.

I suppose I should have realised that it's difficult to compare the Dovahkiin with the Nerevarine or Champion of Cyrodiil because we don't really know how powerful they became. Take the Champion of Cyrodiil....when you talk to Sheogorath after he reveals you will become him, and you ask him how you can become a Daedric lord, he says you can't. Yet it is mentioned that the staff contains the power of Sheogorath...which leaves us bemused.

The Nerevarine is also difficult to compare. He isn't as powerful as the Tribunal, as they were Demi-gods...Demi-gods who's power was failing. Yet he still defeated two (potentially three) of them, implying he has much power. But UESP.net says of the Nerevarine: "Favored by Azura, Nerevar reborn is immune to disease and protected by the prophecy". If this is true, then maybe that is why he is able to defeat the Tribunal; because he is protected by prophecy (in other words, maybe not much good at defeating Alduin)

Apologies if I've got this all wrong

Edit: edmunt, do you mean Nerevar or Nerevarine in your post? Although I'm pretty sure neither stole the power of the gods (I thought that was why Nerevar was killed by Vivec and that, because they wanted to use the tools to become gods, and he didn't?)

That sounds kinda nice...

the champion : while its true there is some confusion about becomming the demon prince, it is clearly possible to become "like" a deadra, the main villian from knights of the nine is a prima example. so if a mortal is able to bind himself to the other realms and carries the power of a deadric lord, thats pretty much just as good as being one.

Nerevarine : agreed, but he has met some of the most iconic villains in all the games, and that makes his story the most impressive.

Dovahkiin : ofcourse we wont know his powers until we can see the extent of his deeds and the station of his foes. and until we can get a clear vieuw on the power invested in him by the god(s)

There are a few things to consider. The killing of Almalexia (remember, while you may have killed Vivec during your playthrough, he is mentioned in Oblivion) is a great feat. However, it is mentioned many times that the tribunal is losing power while Dagoth Ur is gaining power, to the point that the three of them couldn't get to him in Red Mountain. On top of that, the heart of Lorkhan was destroyed and she had lost her divinity, so she was considerably weakened when she was killed. The same holds true for Dagoth Ur. You can only fight him after you destroyed his divinity.

As for the Avatar of Hircine, it's a test of skill. There's no indication that you're fighting Hircine at full strength and you can even choose how you want Hircine to fight beforehand.

While the Champion of Cyrodiil had no great singular feat during the main quest, he did enter Dagon's plane up to 60 or more times and killed thousands of Daedra and Dremora. His greatest achievements though, seems tied to his adventures outside the main quest. Umaril the Unfeathered and Mannimarco are fairly powerful wizards in Elder Scroll lore.

Of course, the greatest feat is defeating Jyggalag in Shivering Isles, and becoming Sheogorath. Unlike Hircine in Bloodmoon, you're probably fighting the deity itself, in his realm (which the Shivering Isles is, though it's been twisted by Sheogorath). There's also indications that Jyggalag may be particularly powerful, even for a Daedric Prince, as the other princes feared him.

On top of this, the Champion of Cyrodiil becomes the Madgod, a daedric prince. You may scoff at the weather changing power, but it's just a gameplay solution to show that you have power in the Shivering Isles beyond what you had before.

I think tossing around things like 100% reflect damage is mostly meaningless. These are game mechanics, and largely balance issues at that. If we take this literally, then that would mean that for some time, Cyrodil was filled to the brim with Xivilai and Dremora Valknaz...(after the end of the Oblivion Crisis)

I doubt that.

What's relevant is whether the protagonists are superior to one another in terms of in-story status and what not. The Dragonborn of Skyrim is essentially an angelic spirit in human form, the protagonist of Oblivion was...well...I don't know. Haven't played Morrowind, so I can't comment on that.

Granted, it's hard to beat becoming the Prince(God? Been too long since I played TES4) of Madness, but keep in mind that was part of an expansion. If we compare the vanilla game, I'd say the Dragonborn has more potential.

I think technically the Nerevarine was the most powerful one, due to all the special abilities and gear he acquired throughout his journey, I mean he did completely destroy 3 "gods" and because he was cured of corprus he also acquired Immortality, at least as far as age goes, there really should be no reason for him to not be alive in Skyrim's time unless he was killed by another god or something.

The Oblivion hero only became Sheogorath, so I'm not sure he really counts since his own identity was completely lost to the Sheogorath persona.

I believe it goes like this.

1. Nerevarine
2. Dovahkiin
3. Hero of Oblivion

The Dragonborn is the only one that can defeat Alduin completely yes, but he is far, far from the only one who can defeat everyday dragons, Nerevar was a frighteningly powerful warrior, there's no reason he couldn't easily destroy dragons with what he had at his disposal, the Dragonborn is certainly unique but I don't think he is quite there yet, also Tiber only became a god after he died I believe, before that he was still mortal.

I do however think "Globally" the Dragonborn is the most important kind of Hero to Tamriel.

We will see what Dovahkiin does when they release expansion packs before we can decide. Defeating Alduin in battle in and of itself isn't that impressive, it's pretty well established in the TES universe you can simply bludgeon a god until it stops moving, the trick is making sure it stays dead. Dovahkiin's ability to absorb dragon souls is what allowed him to truly defeat Alduin.

The only thing special about Dovahkiin's Thu'um is that he doesn't need to practice it anybody can learn what he does with practice, he is perfect at it immediately. I suspect that in future Elder Scrolls game Thu'um will be a learnable skill with a 1-100 skill just like all of the rest of the skills, or we will just play a dragonborn in the future games because I'm sure I read in some book that seemed to imply that all of the great heroes we played in past games may have been dragonborn and just didn't have dragons to absorb souls from.

Personally, I'm going to say Nervarine because he has a solid track record of kicking the ass of anything that gets in his way including gods, and have you seen the stats on some of the gear he gets, even if yo traslate Dovahkiin's equipment into Morrowind terms they are children's toys compared to what Nerevarine finds over the course of the Main Quest and Expansion storylines.

Personally, for an expansion story, I want Dovahkiin to become Emperor of Tamriel and restore the Dragonblooded line of Emperors.

Nerevarine is the still the most powerful.

Shouts are mere destruction/alteration spells that require cooldown.There nothing so special about them,which is a disappointment if you ask me.
Midas magic could top them easily...;;

I think people are over estimating the power of the Dovahkiin, yes he has shouts but as we all should realize anyone can learn a shout(s) with proper patience and training.
The Dovahkiin has the soul of a dragon and the only thing this provides is the ability to learn the shouts with ease and Considerably less time.
With that and mind the ageless Nervaine (misspelled?) could learn all the shouts as well and still outlive the Dovahkiin to obtain even more power.
The hero of Cyrrodil could also learn shouts and has the bonus of demi-god powers (his powers seemed limited hence not god but demi-god)
And to anyone who looks at Tiber Septim/Talos yes he was a Dovahkiin but he is not OUR Dovahkiin he had more going for him because if the fanatic preacher in Whiterun were to be believed he was a cut above everyone from the get-go.

Gods no.
Both my Daggerfall and Morrowind characters were gods compared to Dovakhiin.

neravarine. smashed the heart of lorkhan, single handedly destroyed the tribunal, and killed a goddess. (and vivec also if you chose to.)

Ingame power and lore power are not the same and can't easily be compared.
You can encounter some, lorewise, tough dude at level 1 and beat him for example.

The Nerevarine would mop the floor with Dovahkiin

Alchemy in Morrowind, fortify intelligence to 10^7 then fortify strength, luck and willpower.
How to be more powerful?

The Nerevarine doesn't age and took down 3 demi-gods and a Daedric Aspect in the end, without starting a holy war.

Every TES character becomes "The most powerful we will ever play". It's just part of TES for the player to be the hero.

My Oblivion character had uber-high magicka and other stats because of the perma-enchant glitch. So I don't think any of my future characters will ever beat him. But, legitimately? My Skyrim guy will probably be the most powerful because of Shouting.

I don't know, the Grand champion was never anyone special, and I'm not really counting him because he ended up being stuck with Sheogorath's realm, while Nerevarine in all his glory kept exploring before disappearing in Skyrim.

Dovahkiin has ALOT of potential of though, if Tiber is anything to go by.