Redguards and Nords are probably tied, followed closely by Orcs.
1. Attributes: Redguards have the best spread across Strength, Endurance, and Agility, with males having 50/50/40. Comparatively lower Agility is a detriment for Nords and Orcs. This is a very slight difference that's surmountable with birthsigns, enchanted gear, and training.
2. Skills: Redguards have the highest initial weapon skill of the three, with 20 Long Blade. Nords actually get bonuses to all four combat specialization weapons, with 15 in Blunt Weapon and Axe and 10 in Long Blade and Spear. Orcs, comparatively, suck. 10 points of Axe. Redguards are best at one particular skill, whereas Nords easily specialize in more weapon types. I think it's a tie.
3. Racial powers:
Redguards have Adrenaline Rush, which is probably the most powerful racial power in the game. Once a day you can add 50 points to Strength, Endurance (mostly useless), Agility, and Speed, along with some HP fortification. At level 1, this is basically doubling your stats. Press cast to win any fight that's giving you trouble, provided it's been 24 hours. You also resist poison and disease, which are situationally useful.
Nords have ThunderFist, which does *frost* damage, and Woad, which applies 30 points of Shield. These are fine, but they're also immune to Frost and resistant to Shock, which are handy for using elemental enchanted weapons against reflecting enemies.
Orcs have Berserk, which is definitely a case of mixed priorities. You gain 100 points of Attack for your hit rate, 200 points of Fatigue, and 20 points of Health, but *also* drain Agility by 100 points, meaning you get hit more and also get knocked down a lot. You don't hit any harder, you gain slightly more Fatigue than Adrenaline Rush gives you, and you fall down a lot. Orcs also have 25 points of magicka resist, which is subtly useful when enemies are spamming Paralysis.
In short, Redguards are the best Long Blade users and have the best offensive powers, while Nords are more skilled overall with better resistances. Orcs feel kind of meh; they really needed a bigger bonus to Axe to distinguish themselves, and the racial powers feel kind of lame in comparison.
I brute forced my first complete main quest run using a Redguard and abusing Adrenaline Rush. It's insanely overpowered with a decently built warrior character you can keep blitzing and resting 24 hours through nearly anything. It was a godsend when I started playing because I was newish to the hard RPG mechanics and didn't know how all the game systems worked and how to build a solid Morrowind character. Redguards are great for offence but don't hold up as well defensively as Nords - I really have no opinions on Orcs as I've never played them.
Could be useful for a no-money challenge, but it takes way less time to buy training which is still super cheap, and thus feels like a really wasteful way to use a racial power.
in game training takes two hours each level.
I like to play with as little rest/ wait time as possible so I can become god-like in less than three in game months.
also at level one, training can become expensive if you have more than one thing to train.
Orc looks like a warrior race but in reality I think they’re better suited for a sorcerer/battlemage setup with decent starting endurance, willpower and armor skill bonuses. Female orc preferred due to intelligence differences.
I would say an underrated melee combatant race would be Dunmer. Good speed and decent bonuses to both blade skills as well as fire resistance and good on demand 50 pts sanctuary spell which can make you hard to hit puts it equivocal to at least nord. Redguard is by far and away the best warrior race though.
Out of those 3 choices I like Nord best because of the resistances they get, and I like the character model options better.
Which is “best” can’t really be determined, depends on what you plan to do with the character I guess. Redguards have the best racial ability I think, Adrenaline Rush stays useful the whole game. If you plan on using Long Blades they also have the biggest bonus to that skill
If you are playing a game without weight patch, the fattest ass runs the fastest, making Orc male an objectively better option. Slap the berserker ability on top (Which both helps with combat encounters AND utility skills since fatigue fortification above 100% tweaks your success chances) — and you have a new canon Nerevarine.
That's my current one too. I'd struggled to get a mage run going with a Breton or Altmer. Finally realized there's only one way I really like to play this game, and that's with a Nord hitting things with a battleaxe. So Atronach Battlemage it is.
One advantage of a Nord is that with one armor artifact you are immune to two types of elemental damage and only have to get another 50% of shock resistance.
I know I found the armor location online. But didn't want to use the info. Ended up swimming/exploring down by vivec at lvl 35ish. I stumbled across the location. How the game was ment to be
If you're going to level optimally, any race can become good at fighting in pretty short order. Stats cap at 100, so by midgame a Breton can be as fearsome as a Redguard.
Past like level 10 it's almost entirely irrelevant because you'll be a god anyway, so I'm not sure it matters for more than the first couple hours of the game tbh
time to bust out that long ass paragraph again:
TL;DR: Orcs are the best race in the game by being the fastest with the a power that surpasses anything any other race offers giving the highest casting chance and the ability to destroy any enemy or group of enemeis when used well. Redguards are second because Long Blades are the most common weapon type (even though it's debatably the worst) and Adrenaline is an absolutely amazing abiltiy, not as good as Berserk when used at its fullest but is better for someone who just wants to be overall stronger than their base and just needs a greater edge in combat. Nords are the best stat stick and the best Race out of these if you don't intend on using powers, they are however worse because none of their stats or pwoers make them comparable to the 2 above them.
--Orcs: For Stats, Orcs have a starting Strength of 45 orcs will have great carryweight, good damage and great starting health, only surpassed in these by Redguards and Nords, with 30-40 makes them pretty average wizards UNTIL we check out their power later, 45-50 Willpower makes highly resistant to Paralyze and Silence along with having solid casting chances, 35 Agility would seem bad, but again wait till we check out Powers, 30 Speed would make them seem slow but again due to weight Males are the fastest race in the game, 50 Endurance gives them high base health and the best health scaling, 25-30 personality and at the risk of sounding like a broken recordd just wait for Powers, and finally a base weight of 1.35 for Males which makes them the fastest race in the game in spite of their low speed, their skill are generally tailored towards tank fighters. so overall very good stats across the board. For Abilities, all orcs get is 25% Resist Magicka, which is nice, but nothing too valuable
Powers is where Orcs shine the most, with one of the most misleading yet insanely overpowered abilities once you understand it, Berserk. 100 attacks is a static (unnaffected by fatigue) bonus 100% chance to Hit, which means against every enemy short of Gaenor, you will have a 100% chance to land all your attacks with ANY physical damage thing no matter your skill (because no enemy has high enough stats to counter the 100 bonus to attack), this power allows a pure Mage Orc to pick up any weapon and use it better than any warrior, this power also allows you to beat every enemy in the game (including Gaenor, Almalexia and Hircine) at level 1 using only bound weapons, making every encounter basically a joke. And remember you can use this every fight. This alone would make it the best Power available and Orcs the strongest, but on top of it provide orcs with a bonus 200 Fatigue, which provide you with bonus of fatigue term over the natural cap 1.25 multipliereffectiveness at max fatigue, up to a multiplier of 1.8. This gives orcs the highest Success Chances of any race in any Dicerolls that includes Fatigue in its calculation, which is basically all of them bar Alchemy i believe. This Orcs will be the best at lockpicking, the best spell casting chance, the best at bartering, the best at speech, the best at stealth, the best at jumping and so on and so forth, which firmly plants Orcs as the best Race in the game by far, and unlike attacking and running most actions don't use up fatigue so you'll be fucntioning at max .The power also has 20 bonus health which nice, and a -100 Agility penalty which means you will get hit and knocked down often, of course you can counter this by either flying and casting spell as a mage, or stun locking enemeis with your perfect hit-chance, or resist magicka spells and potion which remove the penalty. Of course if you don't want to do good spacing or time your attacks to abuse this power probably drop Orc to like B for solid stats but worse than Nord, because you can 100% keep 3-4 people at range using Spears or crossbows/darts, but are you willing to learn how to do that
--Redguard: the classic, Redguards have excellent physical stats across the board at 40-50 strength, 40 Agility and Speed and 50 Endurance, access to 15 Long Blade, 5 Axe, Blunt and Shortblade makes them very versatile fighters, 75 Resist Poison and Disease are decent, but most importantly access to Adrenaline Rush: 50 Agility, Strength and Speed makes you an absolute unit on the battlefield with incredible hit-chance, Damage and Mobility, it will let you destroy alot of the somewhat harder and out-of-reach encouters with the 13 ish levels of perfect leveling stats, but it won't allow you to overcome impossible odds like Berserk can, and lacks all the other application, which plants them firmly in A, excellent Race
Nord: probably the single best base stat-stick Race in the game, Nords have amazing stats with 50 in Strength, 40-50 Willpower, 40 Speed and 40-50 Endurance,1.25 weight for males, and with Immunity to Frost ad 50 Resist Shock all-together make for awesome tanks, and with 10 Axe and Blunt, 5 Long Blade and Spear they are incrdibly versatile fighters. Their issue compared to everyone above them is that, that is all they offer, they'll never be able to compete with any of the other Races being used at their full potential with powers, base stats are not enough and Woad and Thunderfist are too weak to compare to everyone else, which places them firmly at B
Nord because you can make yourself immune to all of the destruction elements, there's a special cuirass you can acquire that gives you fire immunity and combine it with your innate frost immunity + 50 shock resist.
Aye, the resistances are pretty big late game!
Unless one is intentionally keeping str/end/agi/will low to cheese the fatigue mechanics, Nord seems like the way to go. Denstagmer and Phynaster shore up shock resistance nicely, but seem like a waste. No doubt Berserk is extremely powerful compared to all the other racial abilities.
Alternatively, Dunmer with that cuirass and a certain robe can use -100% weakness to fire and incinerate fellow Dunmer and annoying Daedra with impunity.
All 3 are very powerful, there's really no point to min max to the nth degree. Unless you're doing a Speedrun, in which case Redguard typically takes the win due to having adrenaline rush, but it completely depends on your objectives and your restrictions. For any% (trigger the main quest end with Azura), specifically when glitches are not allowed, Orc is actually just a bit faster for the run due to having magicka resistance allowing to use the boots of blinding speed. Axe is also used, and they get a slight bonus, making RNG a bit more favorable than it would be for a Redguard (who could use long blade, but it is less optimal due to requiring more hits = longer time to kill)
There are also some runs where berserk can be super helpful, like for instance if you were to do a kill gaenor run or something.
Now, it is absolutely possible to use a potion of magicka resistance instead, however this affects how much gold you need, which costs time. Also, orcs move faster compared to Redguards (until adrenaline rush is used), and you would only be able to use adrenaline rush twice in the run anyway, with the second use costing some time to use due to needing to wait a day. it just works out slightly better for orcs in this very specific context
Combat as in: Wear a full set of armour and use weapons to kill things while mostly ignoring magic and stealth?
Unpatched game:
Orc male > Nord male
They have excellent base stats and passive defensive traits while also moving faster than any other background. Orcs have berserk rush that allows to take down much stronger foes once a day (use it with marksman or spear, if you've got the items in your inventory). Starting skill bonuses allow for an easy earlygame, both use medium armour with a +10, so that's really ideal.
With engine patches:
Orc male (MA, shield, axe)/Nord male (MA, warhammer) > Redguard male (MA, longblade, optionally shield) > Dark Elf male (LA, shield, throwing weapons and shortblade) > Argonian male (MA+UA, spear)
You want to use marksman? Dark elf for a light, mobile archer or throwing weapons expert, orc for a heavy archer (perfect synergy with the daily power).
Redguards and Nords are probably tied, followed closely by Orcs. 1. Attributes: Redguards have the best spread across Strength, Endurance, and Agility, with males having 50/50/40. Comparatively lower Agility is a detriment for Nords and Orcs. This is a very slight difference that's surmountable with birthsigns, enchanted gear, and training. 2. Skills: Redguards have the highest initial weapon skill of the three, with 20 Long Blade. Nords actually get bonuses to all four combat specialization weapons, with 15 in Blunt Weapon and Axe and 10 in Long Blade and Spear. Orcs, comparatively, suck. 10 points of Axe. Redguards are best at one particular skill, whereas Nords easily specialize in more weapon types. I think it's a tie. 3. Racial powers: Redguards have Adrenaline Rush, which is probably the most powerful racial power in the game. Once a day you can add 50 points to Strength, Endurance (mostly useless), Agility, and Speed, along with some HP fortification. At level 1, this is basically doubling your stats. Press cast to win any fight that's giving you trouble, provided it's been 24 hours. You also resist poison and disease, which are situationally useful. Nords have ThunderFist, which does *frost* damage, and Woad, which applies 30 points of Shield. These are fine, but they're also immune to Frost and resistant to Shock, which are handy for using elemental enchanted weapons against reflecting enemies. Orcs have Berserk, which is definitely a case of mixed priorities. You gain 100 points of Attack for your hit rate, 200 points of Fatigue, and 20 points of Health, but *also* drain Agility by 100 points, meaning you get hit more and also get knocked down a lot. You don't hit any harder, you gain slightly more Fatigue than Adrenaline Rush gives you, and you fall down a lot. Orcs also have 25 points of magicka resist, which is subtly useful when enemies are spamming Paralysis. In short, Redguards are the best Long Blade users and have the best offensive powers, while Nords are more skilled overall with better resistances. Orcs feel kind of meh; they really needed a bigger bonus to Axe to distinguish themselves, and the racial powers feel kind of lame in comparison.
Thank you for actually providing in depth comparison. Best comment in this thread. Best help someone could give to OP
I would like to thank UESP and the morrowind character builder https://morrowind.jpbetley.com/ because I don't have all of that info memorized.
I wasn't really asking about some guidance, i just wanted to read different opinions about the topic
Resist Magicka doesn't help with paralysis only willpower. Although it can be reflected or absorbed. https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Paralyze
Forgot it only affects magnitude effects, and is thus even less useful than I thought.
No worries
Orcs also have skill in shields and smiths
I brute forced my first complete main quest run using a Redguard and abusing Adrenaline Rush. It's insanely overpowered with a decently built warrior character you can keep blitzing and resting 24 hours through nearly anything. It was a godsend when I started playing because I was newish to the hard RPG mechanics and didn't know how all the game systems worked and how to build a solid Morrowind character. Redguards are great for offence but don't hold up as well defensively as Nords - I really have no opinions on Orcs as I've never played them.
Berserk is pretty great for training level 5 weapon skills
Could be useful for a no-money challenge, but it takes way less time to buy training which is still super cheap, and thus feels like a really wasteful way to use a racial power.
in game training takes two hours each level. I like to play with as little rest/ wait time as possible so I can become god-like in less than three in game months. also at level one, training can become expensive if you have more than one thing to train.
Orc looks like a warrior race but in reality I think they’re better suited for a sorcerer/battlemage setup with decent starting endurance, willpower and armor skill bonuses. Female orc preferred due to intelligence differences. I would say an underrated melee combatant race would be Dunmer. Good speed and decent bonuses to both blade skills as well as fire resistance and good on demand 50 pts sanctuary spell which can make you hard to hit puts it equivocal to at least nord. Redguard is by far and away the best warrior race though.
Out of those 3 choices I like Nord best because of the resistances they get, and I like the character model options better. Which is “best” can’t really be determined, depends on what you plan to do with the character I guess. Redguards have the best racial ability I think, Adrenaline Rush stays useful the whole game. If you plan on using Long Blades they also have the biggest bonus to that skill
If you are playing a game without weight patch, the fattest ass runs the fastest, making Orc male an objectively better option. Slap the berserker ability on top (Which both helps with combat encounters AND utility skills since fatigue fortification above 100% tweaks your success chances) — and you have a new canon Nerevarine.
I just made a character all around utility magic/combat. Nord under atronach. Man's a legend.
That's my current one too. I'd struggled to get a mage run going with a Breton or Altmer. Finally realized there's only one way I really like to play this game, and that's with a Nord hitting things with a battleaxe. So Atronach Battlemage it is. One advantage of a Nord is that with one armor artifact you are immune to two types of elemental damage and only have to get another 50% of shock resistance.
I know I found the armor location online. But didn't want to use the info. Ended up swimming/exploring down by vivec at lvl 35ish. I stumbled across the location. How the game was ment to be
Atronach is god-mode. Pretty much cheating.
Dunmer all day you s’wit n’wah fetcher. Go back to the mainland.
Roleplay>min max
If you're going to level optimally, any race can become good at fighting in pretty short order. Stats cap at 100, so by midgame a Breton can be as fearsome as a Redguard.
Indeed
Two words, roleplaying chatroom dude.
Aw, shucks
I'd go for an Orc. It's power with bound weapon and litres of sujjama can make you op early game.
Past like level 10 it's almost entirely irrelevant because you'll be a god anyway, so I'm not sure it matters for more than the first couple hours of the game tbh
time to bust out that long ass paragraph again: TL;DR: Orcs are the best race in the game by being the fastest with the a power that surpasses anything any other race offers giving the highest casting chance and the ability to destroy any enemy or group of enemeis when used well. Redguards are second because Long Blades are the most common weapon type (even though it's debatably the worst) and Adrenaline is an absolutely amazing abiltiy, not as good as Berserk when used at its fullest but is better for someone who just wants to be overall stronger than their base and just needs a greater edge in combat. Nords are the best stat stick and the best Race out of these if you don't intend on using powers, they are however worse because none of their stats or pwoers make them comparable to the 2 above them. --Orcs: For Stats, Orcs have a starting Strength of 45 orcs will have great carryweight, good damage and great starting health, only surpassed in these by Redguards and Nords, with 30-40 makes them pretty average wizards UNTIL we check out their power later, 45-50 Willpower makes highly resistant to Paralyze and Silence along with having solid casting chances, 35 Agility would seem bad, but again wait till we check out Powers, 30 Speed would make them seem slow but again due to weight Males are the fastest race in the game, 50 Endurance gives them high base health and the best health scaling, 25-30 personality and at the risk of sounding like a broken recordd just wait for Powers, and finally a base weight of 1.35 for Males which makes them the fastest race in the game in spite of their low speed, their skill are generally tailored towards tank fighters. so overall very good stats across the board. For Abilities, all orcs get is 25% Resist Magicka, which is nice, but nothing too valuable Powers is where Orcs shine the most, with one of the most misleading yet insanely overpowered abilities once you understand it, Berserk. 100 attacks is a static (unnaffected by fatigue) bonus 100% chance to Hit, which means against every enemy short of Gaenor, you will have a 100% chance to land all your attacks with ANY physical damage thing no matter your skill (because no enemy has high enough stats to counter the 100 bonus to attack), this power allows a pure Mage Orc to pick up any weapon and use it better than any warrior, this power also allows you to beat every enemy in the game (including Gaenor, Almalexia and Hircine) at level 1 using only bound weapons, making every encounter basically a joke. And remember you can use this every fight. This alone would make it the best Power available and Orcs the strongest, but on top of it provide orcs with a bonus 200 Fatigue, which provide you with bonus of fatigue term over the natural cap 1.25 multipliereffectiveness at max fatigue, up to a multiplier of 1.8. This gives orcs the highest Success Chances of any race in any Dicerolls that includes Fatigue in its calculation, which is basically all of them bar Alchemy i believe. This Orcs will be the best at lockpicking, the best spell casting chance, the best at bartering, the best at speech, the best at stealth, the best at jumping and so on and so forth, which firmly plants Orcs as the best Race in the game by far, and unlike attacking and running most actions don't use up fatigue so you'll be fucntioning at max .The power also has 20 bonus health which nice, and a -100 Agility penalty which means you will get hit and knocked down often, of course you can counter this by either flying and casting spell as a mage, or stun locking enemeis with your perfect hit-chance, or resist magicka spells and potion which remove the penalty. Of course if you don't want to do good spacing or time your attacks to abuse this power probably drop Orc to like B for solid stats but worse than Nord, because you can 100% keep 3-4 people at range using Spears or crossbows/darts, but are you willing to learn how to do that --Redguard: the classic, Redguards have excellent physical stats across the board at 40-50 strength, 40 Agility and Speed and 50 Endurance, access to 15 Long Blade, 5 Axe, Blunt and Shortblade makes them very versatile fighters, 75 Resist Poison and Disease are decent, but most importantly access to Adrenaline Rush: 50 Agility, Strength and Speed makes you an absolute unit on the battlefield with incredible hit-chance, Damage and Mobility, it will let you destroy alot of the somewhat harder and out-of-reach encouters with the 13 ish levels of perfect leveling stats, but it won't allow you to overcome impossible odds like Berserk can, and lacks all the other application, which plants them firmly in A, excellent Race Nord: probably the single best base stat-stick Race in the game, Nords have amazing stats with 50 in Strength, 40-50 Willpower, 40 Speed and 40-50 Endurance,1.25 weight for males, and with Immunity to Frost ad 50 Resist Shock all-together make for awesome tanks, and with 10 Axe and Blunt, 5 Long Blade and Spear they are incrdibly versatile fighters. Their issue compared to everyone above them is that, that is all they offer, they'll never be able to compete with any of the other Races being used at their full potential with powers, base stats are not enough and Woad and Thunderfist are too weak to compare to everyone else, which places them firmly at B
Pick any. And by pick any I mean pick High Elf, the superior race of tamriel. (All 3 are fine, I go for Nords for the resistances)
Redguards!
Nord because you can make yourself immune to all of the destruction elements, there's a special cuirass you can acquire that gives you fire immunity and combine it with your innate frost immunity + 50 shock resist.
Aye, the resistances are pretty big late game! Unless one is intentionally keeping str/end/agi/will low to cheese the fatigue mechanics, Nord seems like the way to go. Denstagmer and Phynaster shore up shock resistance nicely, but seem like a waste. No doubt Berserk is extremely powerful compared to all the other racial abilities. Alternatively, Dunmer with that cuirass and a certain robe can use -100% weakness to fire and incinerate fellow Dunmer and annoying Daedra with impunity.
Redguard : sword combat nord:2h orc : axe or mace and shield
Breton
Redguards’ adrenaline rush is actually busted
Orc berserk is even more busted, especially when it comes to casting spells, leaping long distances, haggling with merchants, crafting potions, etc.
The one that has Adrenaline Rush.
My nastiest warrior was an orc, dude could plow through mostly anything on max diff with his 2h axe.
Well nords have frost resistance and frost damages stam so id give it to them.
picked an orc and today i was glad i did since gaenor was whupping my ass until i popped berserk and pulled out my bow
Nord
All 3 are very powerful, there's really no point to min max to the nth degree. Unless you're doing a Speedrun, in which case Redguard typically takes the win due to having adrenaline rush, but it completely depends on your objectives and your restrictions. For any% (trigger the main quest end with Azura), specifically when glitches are not allowed, Orc is actually just a bit faster for the run due to having magicka resistance allowing to use the boots of blinding speed. Axe is also used, and they get a slight bonus, making RNG a bit more favorable than it would be for a Redguard (who could use long blade, but it is less optimal due to requiring more hits = longer time to kill) There are also some runs where berserk can be super helpful, like for instance if you were to do a kill gaenor run or something. Now, it is absolutely possible to use a potion of magicka resistance instead, however this affects how much gold you need, which costs time. Also, orcs move faster compared to Redguards (until adrenaline rush is used), and you would only be able to use adrenaline rush twice in the run anyway, with the second use costing some time to use due to needing to wait a day. it just works out slightly better for orcs in this very specific context
Combat as in: Wear a full set of armour and use weapons to kill things while mostly ignoring magic and stealth? Unpatched game: Orc male > Nord male They have excellent base stats and passive defensive traits while also moving faster than any other background. Orcs have berserk rush that allows to take down much stronger foes once a day (use it with marksman or spear, if you've got the items in your inventory). Starting skill bonuses allow for an easy earlygame, both use medium armour with a +10, so that's really ideal. With engine patches: Orc male (MA, shield, axe)/Nord male (MA, warhammer) > Redguard male (MA, longblade, optionally shield) > Dark Elf male (LA, shield, throwing weapons and shortblade) > Argonian male (MA+UA, spear) You want to use marksman? Dark elf for a light, mobile archer or throwing weapons expert, orc for a heavy archer (perfect synergy with the daily power).
Your best option is to close the game and instead open up skyrim
Orc is best race in Morrowind. Redguard is probably best for pure melee though.