Fastest Character Build?

[Ivor_The_Mad]

Ok so I might have found the fastest character build.
First you use a monk for the increased base speed as the class. Then for the race you choose a tabaxi for the Feline agility feat which temporarily doubles your base speed. Then you have 18 levels of monk and 2 levels of fighter for the action surge and you don't compromise any speed so in theory you can make 3 dashes using action surge and feline agility. Tell me if i'm doing this wrong( this is my first time doing a post like this) So at 18th the monk has a base speed of 60 + the feline agility it is 120 then you dash for 240ft in 6 seconds. Did i do that right? and is there a way to make it faster like a magic item boots of speed maybe?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Mobile gives you another 10ft, as does a bit of Barbarian, and there are a couple spells-- Zephyr Strike (Ranger 1) may be the biggest with a +30ft boost for a turn; Longstrider probably stacks for +10ft.

[nickl_2000]

Yes there are ways to be faster. For one being a Monk/Moon Druid/Fighter with mobile and longstrider, all things available to this multiclass (and actually a legitimate multiclass stat wise)

The Giant Eagle has a base speed of 80ft, which you can get at level 6. Take 10 levels in Monk for +20 feet to get to 100ft base movement. Then 2 levels rogue for bonus action dash, then two levels fighters.

So potential movement in a turn
120 base + 120 dash action + 120 dash bonus action + 120 action surge = 480 ft in 6 seconds without any magical items

[Ivor_The_Mad]

Cool! If you got fast enough wouldn't it be basically teleporting.

[suplee215]

Using Barbarian instead of fighter gets you more. If you only go 15 in monk your tabaxi and 5 barbarian you got +35 movement so 65. 75 if you take mobile. 90 while raging if you go totem barbarian and take Elk from sword coast (not AL legal as more than 2 books). Not counting spells (which are hard to do as every spell could in theory be on you) this will be 180 per move for each time you can move. once for normal movement, once for dash, once for bonus action dash from a ki point will be 180 X3 or 540 ft in 6 seconds, compared to 120 X 4 (move, dash, action surge, step of the wind) which is 480. Unsure how haste interacts (not sure if it doubles the 180 to 360 or just makes it 270) but it also adds another dash in it. Longstrider adds 10 as and some new spells adds more. if you can get a transmutation wizard to give his stone you get another 10. so in theory I got 110 X2 X2 (330 or 440) x 4 (hast, move, dash, step of the wind) for 1320 or 1760 in 6 seconds.

[suplee215]

Yes there are ways to be faster. For one being a Monk/Moon Druid/Fighter with mobile and longstrider, all things available to this multiclass (and actually a legitimate multiclass stat wise)

The Giant Eagle has a base speed of 80ft, which you can get at level 6. Take 10 levels in Monk for +20 feet to get to 100ft base movement. Then 2 levels rogue for bonus action dash, then two levels fighters.

So potential movement in a turn
120 base + 120 dash action + 120 dash bonus action + 120 action surge = 480 ft in 6 seconds without any magical items
monk has Step in the Wind for a bonus action dash.

[tieren]

A vengeance paladin shape changed into a Marilith surrounded by an infinite number of pigeons who all ready an action to move away from the marilith/paladin when he enters melee range can achieve infinite speed in a single round.

[Ivor_The_Mad]

ok so if speed is = to distance over time than thats 1760 over 6 divide and you get 293.3 feet per second which is 200 mph even.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Cool! If you got fast enough wouldn't it be basically teleporting.
Not really. For a start, you're still affected by things like terrain and walls. For another thing... the fastest we've gotten is what, suplee215's 1760ft in 6 seconds? That's about 200 miles an hour-- impressively fast, but hardly "teleport" speed.

[Ivor_The_Mad]

Not really. For a start, you're still affected by things like terrain and walls. For another thing... the fastest we've gotten is what, suplee215's 1760ft in 6 seconds? That's about 200 miles an hour-- impressively fast, but hardly "teleport" speed.

firs of all if you were on a flat terrain moving a short distance from a standstill and with out skidding...

[the_brazenburn]

Can't we add in boots of speed for an additional bonus? Do boots of speed stack with all the other abilities?

[tieren]

Originaily posted by AvatarVecna:

As the spoiler title hints at, this set-up is, to the best of my ability to determine, completely rules-legal, but would never happen in a real game; this is both because a DM would never allow you pull off something this ridiculous to this degree, and also because pulling something off to this degree requires precisely-positioned pigeon squads that can understand and execute some fairly simple tactics that are nonetheless relatively difficult on account of the pigeons being literal bird-brains. The set-up this requires is stupid and nonsensical, and only matters as a matter of determining the pure RAW-compliant speed record for 5e.

Our subject is Bob, a Vengeance Paladin 19/Druid 1 (the dip is important, but it could be wizard if your Vengeance Paladin is more bookish). Bob, like all Vengeance Paladins of 7th level or higher, has an ability called "Relentless Vengeance", which reads "When you hit a creature with an Opportunity Attack, you can move up to half your speed immediately after the attack and as part of the same reaction. This movement doesn't provoke opportunity attacks." It is important to note that this ability does not trigger on a miss. It is also important to note that this ability does not seem to use up any of your per-turn movement (since, if it was intended to not be useable when you've used all of your movement for the round, it would say something to that effect). The movement provided by this ability is thusly free from per round limits on how you can move...but it only triggers on an opportunity attack, and you only get one of those a round.

Well, sort of. The actual limited resource is Reactions, which can be used for making Opportunity Attacks, triggering Ready'd actions, and some abilities not possessed by all characters/monsters. If Bob somehow had NI opportunity attacks per round, and had NI enemies running away from him, Bob could theoretically use Relentless Vengeance to move NI feet. Of course, while NI opponents isn't as difficult an idea as it sounds in a universe with canonically infinitely-large and infinitely-populated outer planes, getting NI Opportunity Attacks per round is basically impossible in 5e. You have to be a Marilith to get that.

Again...sort of. Mariliths have a special trait called "Reactive", which reads "The marilith can take one reaction on every turn in combat". The intention of this ability is to both make running past a Marilith hell for an army of weaklings (since they can get tons of Opportunity Attacks), and also allows it to withstand swarm summoning tactics by combining with their ability "Parry"...but that ability is not relevant to what we're talking about here, except to help establish that the intention of the "Reactive" ability is to let the Marilith react to everybody participating in the combat. Thus, we have a theoretical path to NI feet per round travel: if we give the Relentless Vengeance ability to a Marilith, or the Reactive ability to a Vengeance Paladin of 7th lvl or higher, we can at least try to get infinite speed.

The 'solution' that immediately comes to mind is "cast Polymorph on the Paladin", but that doesn't work for multiple reasons. Firstly, Polymorph has a type limit (it can only turn people into creatures of the Beast type), and secondly, you lose your class features while Polymorph'd (compare to similar effect, such as Wild Shape and the Shapechange spell, which explicitly allow you to retain class features). From those two alternatives, Wild Shape still has a type limit, even if it's wider at this level, so it won't do. Thankfully, Shapechange can have the effect we're looking for: Shapechange has no type limit and lets you keep your class features in addition to gaining your new forms abilities. This brings us to the two problems with Shapechange: firstly, it's a 9th lvl spell, which a Paladin is completely incapable of casting from their spell slots; secondly, Shapechange is a Personal range spell, meaning you can't just have your buddy cast it on you...and due to how multiclassing spellcasting works, there isn't a way to get both Vengeance Paladin 7 and 9th lvl spells on the same character.

The plan isn't ruined though; this setback just means we need to get a bit creative! Bob has dipped into the Druid class, meaning he can at least attempt to activate a spell scroll containing a Druid spell, even if it's a higher level Druid spell than he's capable of casting...like Shapechange. Activating a scroll of Shapechange requires a DC 19 ability check of whatever the spellcasting ability is that lets you access this list; in the case of the Druid, that's a DC 19 Wisdom check. Obviously, you can't exactly be proficient in Wisdom checks, and you're probably rocking a 14 Wisdom at best, but all you need to do is successfully activate a scroll once, so if you buy a bunch of scrolls, RNGsus will eventually smile upon you and let you use the scroll to turn yourself into a snake demon. Of course, scroll mishaps on 9th lvl spell scrolls are pretty bad, so maybe try and optimize that roll? Here's a few ways to nail that Wisdom ability check:
Have a diviner wizard friend use portent; if they didn't get a portent roll today that guarantees success, try again tomorrow.
Alternatively, have any of a number of possible full casters give you advantage to the check; while Enhance Ability would suffice for this part, I prefer using Foresight since we'll be needing that later anyway.
Stone Of Good Luck gives a +1 to all ability checks
Have a bard friend use Bardic Inspiration on you, giving you a +d6/d8/d10/d12 to the ability check depending on their level.
*]
Dip Bard for two levels to get half your proficiency bonus to all nonproficient ability checks; another +3 can't hurt.

If you get the Diviner Wizard to help, they'll cast Foresight on you for the next step of this whole thing, and then uses a Portent die to ensure you make the ability check to activate the scroll. Alternatively, you could be a Pally 17/Druid 1/Bard 2 carrying a Luckstone with a Bard 20 friend casting Foresight on you, giving you a d12 Bardic Inspiration die, and casting Guidance on you for good measure (picked up from Magic Initiate or Magical Secrets). If you went with the Diviner friend, your chances of success are ~100%, whereas the more convoluted plan that involves actually rolling dice (specifically rolling 2d20b1+1d12+1d4+6) gives you a ~95% chance of success. Even just advantage, Wisdom 14, and the Bardic Inspiration d12 gives you a ~75% chance. So, now that you've successfully activated your scroll, and turned Bob into a Marilith with Vengeance Paladin abilities, it's time to talk about the ridiculous bull**** you had to set up prior to all of this in order to actually achieve warp speeds.

So, in order to get your free movement, you need to have enemies adjacent to you at the end of your previous movement, they need to move away from you immediately, and you need to both take an OA against them and hit. Accuracy shouldn't be too much of an issue; Mariliths have Str 18 and Bob has a +6 proficiency bonus, so that's a +10 to hit; against a creature with AC 12 or less, Bob will only miss on a natural 1 (which, since we have Foresight up regardless of which caster we ended up getting to help us, means we only miss 1 in 400 attacks). At this point, your caster friend casts Fly on you, giving Bob the Marilith Paladin a 60ft fly speed. Bob the Marilith Paladin then flies towards a precisely positioned flock of pigeons awaiting his arrival...which probably requires further explanation.

You see, this set up also requires flying creatures that can fit in a medium space, have AC of 12 or lower, and will follow directions; I chose pigeons in the original thread because I think it's a funny word. So! 52 pigeons are arranged in such a way that each pigeon occupies a 5 ft square, and the 52 pigeons as a whole make up a box with one open face (with 4 pigeons to an edge). a 4x4x4 cube of pigeons would require 64 pigeons, but the 8 squares in the center (and 4 on the outside granting access to the center to any Large creatures flying around) are not filled, leaving 52 squares occupied by pigeons. This squad of pigeons is positioned in a way that allows Bob to fly into the center of their formation without fuss. Identical squads of pigeons are positioned, hovering, every 30 ft away, in a three-dimensional grid that fills the entire universe. Where did all these pigeons come from? Who knows. My current headcanon is that Bob is CE and bargained with a deity whose portfolio consists of "summons pigeons", "mind controls pigeons", and "wants to see pigeon genocide"; Bob requested Genocidal Pigeonhater's assistance in setting this up, probably with the argument of "let's see how many pigeons I can kill per second", and GP was like "hell yeah, let's do this", and so here we are, with a universe full of perfectly positioned, perfectly obedient pigeons. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that all of the Pigeons are taking the Ready action to Dash away after a Marilith flies adjacent to them, which they repeat every round until the action is triggered.

And thus, we arrive at the actual start of combat: initiative is rolled, Bob's turn comes around, and he flies into the nearest pigeon cluster; all 52 pigeons have their Readied actions trigger and Dash away, granting Marilith!Bob an OA against every single one of them; if he hits even a single one of those 52 pigeons, he gets to fly another 30 ft...directly into another cluster of pigeons, who Dash away due to their triggered actions, giving Bob 52 OAs...this continues on until either Bob misses every single pigeon in a cluster, or Bob murders all the pigeons. Let's just say that for all intents and purposes, it's impossible for Bob to miss all 52 pigeons (it's only extremely improbable, but rolling the dice enough times for it to theoretically happen would involve Bob doing more tours of the entire observable universe than there are atoms in the entire observable universe. We're working with some pretty ridiculous numbers here, is what I'm saying.

Now, the pigeons dying makes it difficult to pass through the same area more than once, unless the aforementioned deity PG has infinite readied actions to both dispose of dead pigeon bodies and summon more pigeons, thus ensuring that the cycle of death can continue forever...and yet, it doesn't take more than a single round. It's all happening in the span of 6 seconds, through the magic bull**** of infinite opportunity attacks and helpful murder-happy pigeon-summoning deities.

[suplee215]

Can't we add in boots of speed for an additional bonus? Do boots of speed stack with all the other abilities?

The only issue is the same issue with Haste spell. basically is it SPEEDx2x2x2 or SPEED+SPEED(taxabi)+SPEED(haste)+SPEED(boots). either way the boost helps, just depends on how much.

[thoroughlyS]

The class make-up should be:
Totem Barbarian 5 - Fast Movement (+10 ft.), Elk Totem (+15 ft. while raging)*
Druid 2 - Wild Shape (60 ft. base walking speed as a Riding Horse)
Fighter 2 - Action Surge
Monk 6 - Unarmored Movement (+15 ft.), Step of the Wind
Bladesinger Wizard 5 - Bladesong (+10 ft. while in bladesong)
*Not utilized for the calculations below because you can't concentrate on spells while raging.

This gives us a max base land speed of 95 ft. Mobile gives us 105 ft., add longstrider for 115 ft., and finally haste which doubles that to 230 ft. Tabaxi let's us double that again to 460 ft. Move + Dash + bonus action Dash + action surge Dash + haste Dash = 2300 ft. in one round (~261 mph). Naked.

After turn 1, you no longer have Action Surge, and if you want to keep moving you can't utilize Feline Agility again, which drops you down to 920 ft. per round (~104.5 mph). After turn 6, you run out of ki points which drops you down to 690 ft. (~78 mph). After turn 10, haste ends which makes you stop dead for 1 turn (which recharges Feline Agility).

[Nifft]

1120 ft. in one round. Naked.

The streaker they just can't catch.

[krugaan]

The streaker they just can't catch.

1120 ft? That's just reDONGculous.

/crickets

I'll see myself out now.

[ImproperJustice]

How bout an Alchemist with Swift Step Draught riding his Mechanical Dinosaur or Giant Eagle and both he and the servant are under the effects of Haste or expeditions retreat via magical infusion?

[LeonBH]

Originaily posted by AvatarVecna:

As the spoiler title hints at, this set-up is, to the best of my ability to determine, completely rules-legal, but would never happen in a real game; this is both because a DM would never allow you pull off something this ridiculous to this degree, and also because pulling something off to this degree requires precisely-positioned pigeon squads that can understand and execute some fairly simple tactics that are nonetheless relatively difficult on account of the pigeons being literal bird-brains. The set-up this requires is stupid and nonsensical, and only matters as a matter of determining the pure RAW-compliant speed record for 5e.

Our subject is Bob, a Vengeance Paladin 19/Druid 1 (the dip is important, but it could be wizard if your Vengeance Paladin is more bookish). Bob, like all Vengeance Paladins of 7th level or higher, has an ability called "Relentless Vengeance", which reads "When you hit a creature with an Opportunity Attack, you can move up to half your speed immediately after the attack and as part of the same reaction. This movement doesn't provoke opportunity attacks." It is important to note that this ability does not trigger on a miss. It is also important to note that this ability does not seem to use up any of your per-turn movement (since, if it was intended to not be useable when you've used all of your movement for the round, it would say something to that effect). The movement provided by this ability is thusly free from per round limits on how you can move...but it only triggers on an opportunity attack, and you only get one of those a round.

Well, sort of. The actual limited resource is Reactions, which can be used for making Opportunity Attacks, triggering Ready'd actions, and some abilities not possessed by all characters/monsters. If Bob somehow had NI opportunity attacks per round, and had NI enemies running away from him, Bob could theoretically use Relentless Vengeance to move NI feet. Of course, while NI opponents isn't as difficult an idea as it sounds in a universe with canonically infinitely-large and infinitely-populated outer planes, getting NI Opportunity Attacks per round is basically impossible in 5e. You have to be a Marilith to get that.

Again...sort of. Mariliths have a special trait called "Reactive", which reads "The marilith can take one reaction on every turn in combat". The intention of this ability is to both make running past a Marilith hell for an army of weaklings (since they can get tons of Opportunity Attacks), and also allows it to withstand swarm summoning tactics by combining with their ability "Parry"...but that ability is not relevant to what we're talking about here, except to help establish that the intention of the "Reactive" ability is to let the Marilith react to everybody participating in the combat. Thus, we have a theoretical path to NI feet per round travel: if we give the Relentless Vengeance ability to a Marilith, or the Reactive ability to a Vengeance Paladin of 7th lvl or higher, we can at least try to get infinite speed.

The 'solution' that immediately comes to mind is "cast Polymorph on the Paladin", but that doesn't work for multiple reasons. Firstly, Polymorph has a type limit (it can only turn people into creatures of the Beast type), and secondly, you lose your class features while Polymorph'd (compare to similar effect, such as Wild Shape and the Shapechange spell, which explicitly allow you to retain class features). From those two alternatives, Wild Shape still has a type limit, even if it's wider at this level, so it won't do. Thankfully, Shapechange can have the effect we're looking for: Shapechange has no type limit and lets you keep your class features in addition to gaining your new forms abilities. This brings us to the two problems with Shapechange: firstly, it's a 9th lvl spell, which a Paladin is completely incapable of casting from their spell slots; secondly, Shapechange is a Personal range spell, meaning you can't just have your buddy cast it on you...and due to how multiclassing spellcasting works, there isn't a way to get both Vengeance Paladin 7 and 9th lvl spells on the same character.

The plan isn't ruined though; this setback just means we need to get a bit creative! Bob has dipped into the Druid class, meaning he can at least attempt to activate a spell scroll containing a Druid spell, even if it's a higher level Druid spell than he's capable of casting...like Shapechange. Activating a scroll of Shapechange requires a DC 19 ability check of whatever the spellcasting ability is that lets you access this list; in the case of the Druid, that's a DC 19 Wisdom check. Obviously, you can't exactly be proficient in Wisdom checks, and you're probably rocking a 14 Wisdom at best, but all you need to do is successfully activate a scroll once, so if you buy a bunch of scrolls, RNGsus will eventually smile upon you and let you use the scroll to turn yourself into a snake demon. Of course, scroll mishaps on 9th lvl spell scrolls are pretty bad, so maybe try and optimize that roll? Here's a few ways to nail that Wisdom ability check:
Have a diviner wizard friend use portent; if they didn't get a portent roll today that guarantees success, try again tomorrow.
Alternatively, have any of a number of possible full casters give you advantage to the check; while Enhance Ability would suffice for this part, I prefer using Foresight since we'll be needing that later anyway.
Stone Of Good Luck gives a +1 to all ability checks
Have a bard friend use Bardic Inspiration on you, giving you a +d6/d8/d10/d12 to the ability check depending on their level.
*]
Dip Bard for two levels to get half your proficiency bonus to all nonproficient ability checks; another +3 can't hurt.

If you get the Diviner Wizard to help, they'll cast Foresight on you for the next step of this whole thing, and then uses a Portent die to ensure you make the ability check to activate the scroll. Alternatively, you could be a Pally 17/Druid 1/Bard 2 carrying a Luckstone with a Bard 20 friend casting Foresight on you, giving you a d12 Bardic Inspiration die, and casting Guidance on you for good measure (picked up from Magic Initiate or Magical Secrets). If you went with the Diviner friend, your chances of success are ~100%, whereas the more convoluted plan that involves actually rolling dice (specifically rolling 2d20b1+1d12+1d4+6) gives you a ~95% chance of success. Even just advantage, Wisdom 14, and the Bardic Inspiration d12 gives you a ~75% chance. So, now that you've successfully activated your scroll, and turned Bob into a Marilith with Vengeance Paladin abilities, it's time to talk about the ridiculous bull**** you had to set up prior to all of this in order to actually achieve warp speeds.

So, in order to get your free movement, you need to have enemies adjacent to you at the end of your previous movement, they need to move away from you immediately, and you need to both take an OA against them and hit. Accuracy shouldn't be too much of an issue; Mariliths have Str 18 and Bob has a +6 proficiency bonus, so that's a +10 to hit; against a creature with AC 12 or less, Bob will only miss on a natural 1 (which, since we have Foresight up regardless of which caster we ended up getting to help us, means we only miss 1 in 400 attacks). At this point, your caster friend casts Fly on you, giving Bob the Marilith Paladin a 60ft fly speed. Bob the Marilith Paladin then flies towards a precisely positioned flock of pigeons awaiting his arrival...which probably requires further explanation.

You see, this set up also requires flying creatures that can fit in a medium space, have AC of 12 or lower, and will follow directions; I chose pigeons in the original thread because I think it's a funny word. So! 52 pigeons are arranged in such a way that each pigeon occupies a 5 ft square, and the 52 pigeons as a whole make up a box with one open face (with 4 pigeons to an edge). a 4x4x4 cube of pigeons would require 64 pigeons, but the 8 squares in the center (and 4 on the outside granting access to the center to any Large creatures flying around) are not filled, leaving 52 squares occupied by pigeons. This squad of pigeons is positioned in a way that allows Bob to fly into the center of their formation without fuss. Identical squads of pigeons are positioned, hovering, every 30 ft away, in a three-dimensional grid that fills the entire universe. Where did all these pigeons come from? Who knows. My current headcanon is that Bob is CE and bargained with a deity whose portfolio consists of "summons pigeons", "mind controls pigeons", and "wants to see pigeon genocide"; Bob requested Genocidal Pigeonhater's assistance in setting this up, probably with the argument of "let's see how many pigeons I can kill per second", and GP was like "hell yeah, let's do this", and so here we are, with a universe full of perfectly positioned, perfectly obedient pigeons. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that all of the Pigeons are taking the Ready action to Dash away after a Marilith flies adjacent to them, which they repeat every round until the action is triggered.

And thus, we arrive at the actual start of combat: initiative is rolled, Bob's turn comes around, and he flies into the nearest pigeon cluster; all 52 pigeons have their Readied actions trigger and Dash away, granting Marilith!Bob an OA against every single one of them; if he hits even a single one of those 52 pigeons, he gets to fly another 30 ft...directly into another cluster of pigeons, who Dash away due to their triggered actions, giving Bob 52 OAs...this continues on until either Bob misses every single pigeon in a cluster, or Bob murders all the pigeons. Let's just say that for all intents and purposes, it's impossible for Bob to miss all 52 pigeons (it's only extremely improbable, but rolling the dice enough times for it to theoretically happen would involve Bob doing more tours of the entire observable universe than there are atoms in the entire observable universe. We're working with some pretty ridiculous numbers here, is what I'm saying.

Now, the pigeons dying makes it difficult to pass through the same area more than once, unless the aforementioned deity PG has infinite readied actions to both dispose of dead pigeon bodies and summon more pigeons, thus ensuring that the cycle of death can continue forever...and yet, it doesn't take more than a single round. It's all happening in the span of 6 seconds, through the magic bull**** of infinite opportunity attacks and helpful murder-happy pigeon-summoning deities.

I've never read this before and I'm incredibly amused by it.

[Ivor_The_Mad]

How bout an Alchemist with Swift Step Draught riding his Mechanical Dinosaur or Giant Eagle and both he and the servant are under the effects of Haste or expeditions retreat via magical infusion?

That works but I was trying to avoid mounts but it still works.

[numerek]

There have been many such threads
The fastest man alive (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?384999-The-fastest-man-alive)
Footrace Who can run the fastest mile (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?487886-D-amp-D-Footrace-Who-can-run-the-fastest-mile)
What's the fastest a character can move in 5e (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?515726-What-s-the-fastest-a-character-can-move-in-5e)
The Weaponised 303 Monk Fastest Movement Speed in 5e (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?515071-The-Weaponised-303-Monk-Fastest-Movement-Speed-in-5e)
Fastest Movement Speed in 5e (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?480917-Fastest-Movement-Speed-in-5e)