In which D&D edition were player characters (PCs) individually most powerful?

[icefractal]

Nobody was ever more powerful than a 17th (or more) level Magic-User in original D&D who had a DM who was overly indulgent on adjudicating Wishes, because there were no limits given.

Is that any different in other editions though? 3E and 5E still have the "anything" category, it's just noted as "unsafe" - which all Wishes in OD&D were.

Some of the responses bring up a point I hadn't thought about - powerful compared to what? For example, an OD&D character is probably less powerful compared to, say, Orc Soldiers than a 3E character. But (for a typical character), they're more powerful compared to powerful creatures like dragons and demons; I think even some gods were beatable in the teens.

Also, there's the factor of the DM - are we assuming an actively assisting DM, or a neutral one? The reason I've been saying that 3.5 is the most powerful at the high end of optimization is that you can have an arbitrarily large army of arbitrarily powerful minions purely by the rules - all the DM has to do is not ban it. But if we're assuming an actively permissive DM, you might be able to do that in other editions as well.