Hey guys! I'm trying to calculate the highest amount of walking movement a character could get. I think I got it, but I might need some help.

First of all, some restrictions.

First, this is completely Rules As Written. None of the "Well, if your DM allows it" stuff.

Second, no homebrew. I only want official content that has been published by WOTC.

Third, only walking. I'm not counting flying speeds or jump distances or anything like that.

Lastly, the Time Stop spell is illegal. Same with wish. No 9th-level spells.

Just to clarify, I'm looking for the highest amount of distance a character could cover on foot in one combat round. Here's what I've got so far:

First, a level 20 tabaxi monk. I don't think the subclass matters. We'll have them wear some boots of speed, and before we start calculating, we'll have them do a little heel click to activate them. We'll also have a wizard cast haste on them. We'll have them take the mobile feat, and they need the epic boon of speed.

Since monk's speed get broken, the movement speed becomes 60 feet. Mobile makes this 70 feet. The boon of speed adds 30 feet to that, getting us to a good, easy to multiply base speed of 100 feet.

Now, Tabaxis get their feline agility trait. This lets them double their movement speed on a turn, but they can't use it until they stop moving for one turn. Since this is just one round, we'll just take that double here, and we get 200 feet.

We activated the boots of speed prior to this, so that becomes 400 feet.

HASTE! 800 feet.

Now we start moving. The tabaxi moves 800 feet, dashes, so 1600 feet. Haste lets the target take another action. Let's dash again, so that's 2400. You thought this was the end, but no. Both the monk's step of the wind feature and the boon of speed let you dash as a bonus action. We use either one of those, and we get to 3200 feet in one round.

A combat round represents 6 seconds of real time. Divide 3200 by 6 and we get 533.3 feet per second, 363.6 miles per hour, and mach 0.47.

Has anyone found anything I could do to move even farther?

You will want to drop 5 levels of Monk and take 5 levels of Elk Totem Barbarian. At level 5 Barbarians gain 10 ft movement speed (over the Monks gradations of 5) and Elk adds another 15 while raging.

Longstrider is something else you will want to get a hold of somehow. Probably Magic Initiate Feat. You can cast it on yourself and then rage since it's not concentration.

Edit: Technically you can drop 6 levels of Monk because the movement speed of Monks becomes 25 at 14. So 14 Monk 5 Barbarian + 1 of another class could help.

Crunching numbers...

*beep boop beep*

Ok, with the barbarian multiclass, rage, and longstrider that becomes a base speed of 130.

After all of the multipliers, that becomes 1040

Move, then dash 3 times = * 4 = 4160

693.3 fps, 472.7 mph, .61 mach. We're past half the speed of sound!

You could drop Monk again to 10. Keep the 5 levels of Elk Totem Barbarian and take 2 levels of Moon Druid. This will lose you 5 ft of movement but you'll gain CR 1 beast shaping. You'd also have 3 more levels for pretty much anything.

As far as I'm aware - beast shaping benefits from unarmoured movement (from both Monk and Barbarian) so if you can find a beast of CR 1 or less with a base movement speed faster than the Tabaxi - that will inevitably make you faster - and is probably the best you'll get.

I kind of want to avoid beast shaping. Also, show me a cr.1 beast with speed better than 60.

Curious why faster than 60? Feline Agility should work in Wild Shape so as long as a beast is faster than the Tabaxi's 30 it's still faster.

But if Wild Shape is out - I'm not sure there are any ways of improving on a 14 Monk + 5 Elk Totem Barbarian.

I don't think RAW says whether or not racial traits still apply in wild shape. Most DMs probably wouldn't let you use feline agility in wild shape.

Edit: Never mind, you do gain those traits. Hang on, I'm looking for a good creature.

Well Wild Shape says:

You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so.

I would absolutely rule any four legged animal (especially cats) is capable of using Feline Agility.

Onyx from aq. inc. ಠ_ಠ

400 feet movement.

challenge 0.

Wild shaping into Onyx (I had to sacrifice the boots), with all of the other class bonuses, racial bonuses, and spells makes it so I can move 7920 feet in one round. (I'm going 2 levels druid, subclass doesn't matter, 5 levels elk totem barbarian, and 13 monk)

That's 1320 feet per second, 900 miles per hour, and mach 1.17. The giant cat has now made a sonic boom.

I don't like elk barb because it requires another turn to rage before making the hemisonic mad dash. But then again longstrider and haste take settup too, so whatever.

I think tabaxi elk barb 5/any monk 14 with mobile feat,boots of speed, haste, and longstrider is about as fast as you can get before getting into grey areas the DM could reasonably disallow.

Note wildshaping, while still being able to use feline agility would lose boots of speed, not worth it.

I found this.

https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Pushing_the_Speed_Limit_(5e_Optimized_Character_Build)

Quote from EddyJ >>

I found this.

https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Pushing_the_Speed_Limit_(5e_Optimized_Character_Build)

Ah yea - two levels of Bladesinger for Bladesong +10 speed. That will slow the speed gain down like DxJxC pointed out. Rage + Bladesong both need a Bonus Action to set up and both only last 1 minute. So you'd only get 54 seconds of full speed out of that. Then again with 10 levels of Monk to allow for that - you'd only have 10 Ki points to spend on Bonus Action Dashes anyway.

Quote from EddyJ >>

I found this.

https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Pushing_the_Speed_Limit_(5e_Optimized_Character_Build)

 Some archived UA and rule bending shenanigans (and some just lies unless there was an errata I don't know about) are involved on this article, but a few good ideas we didn't consider. I'm going to edit it down to a strictly RAW number:

Wizard bladesinging 2/monk any 10/barbarian any 5/fighter 2 and 1 level for whatever.

• Shapechange into quickling: base speed 120
• Lv 10 monk: +20
• Lv 5 barbarian: +10
• Lv 2 bladesinger: +10 (While bladesinging)
• Mobile Feat: +10
• Longstrider: +10
• Lv 3 Artificer (Alchemist) Friend: +10
• Lv 6 Wizard (Transmuter) Friend: +10
• 2 artifacts with major beneficial property of speed: +20
• Boon of Speed: +30

This adds up to 250.

• Potion of speed: ×2 (grants additional action)
• Boots of speed: ×2
• Feline agility: ×2

That creates a staggering walking speed of 2000 (1000 base). What's left is to use your stupid number of actions to increase this.

• Normal movement: 2000
• Dash: +2000
• Action Surge dash: +2000
• Haste action dash: +2000
• Bonus action dash: +2000

This gives a current total of 12000. And reaction movement of 1000.

That's about 1.8x the speed of sound? How would anyone even use that in an average game?

With just shapechange into quickling we can easily beat our previous build:

That is one fast cat/fey wizard, but not as fast as previous nonsense:

But I think I can streamline this a little:

 My streamlined version is less MAD and requires fewer friends for boosts, but requires finding 4 artifact rarity magic items each with the same major beneficial property. The alchemist can make the potions of speed and the transmuter can scribe the scrolls of shapechange, so the 4 artifacts really are the limiting factor. And there isn't much point going 14 levels of artificer if you aren't using the extra attunement slots for speed boosts.

I think when you double things in dnd, they are additive not multiplicative.

Quote from Tiamat2k >>

I think when you double things in dnd, they are additive not multiplicative.

 The devs often mention 5e uses common language instead of strict rules jargon when people complain wording is unclear. Double means ×2.

Double base, not double the double.

So say if you have a base of 60, 
double that is 120
two instances of double would be 180 not 240.

Again - there doesn’t seem to be any basis for that in the rules language. If you can quote anywhere in the rules that says that I’d happily be corrected. Otherwise it’s clear that if you have an ability which says “your speed is doubled” (or words to that effect) it means your full speed not the base. It would say it if it meant doubling the base.

And if it doubled the base then it wouldn’t be able to include speed boosts like Longstrider because they’re not part of your base speed.