Ridiculous Character Concepts: 50mph Man

[CaptainSarathai]

So, after the very-not-fun dumpster-fire I apparently started with the "Balancing BladeLocks" thread, here's a lighter mood:
What's the most ludicrous concept you can come up with for a character? They don't have to be game breaking, just something silly. The only rule is that you must Point-Buy your stats.

This was inspired by Nerdarchy's video on attempting to make the fastest character possible.

I'll start:
50mph Man
Wood Elf
Fighter2, Rogue2, Monk2, Sorcerer5
10, 16, 14, 8, 13, 14
Feats: Mobile
Notable Spell: Haste

Base Speed: 35 +10(monk) +10(mobile) = 55'
Turn1 as follows,
Action: Cast Haste
Move: 110'
Bonus, Cunning Action: Dash, 110'
Extra Action, Haste: Dash, 110'
Fighter Action Surge: Dash, 110'

Total movement: 440'/round, aka 50mph

It gets really silly if you use an Arakocra for the 50' Fly Speed, for 560'/round.

So, what kind of insanity have you got up your sleeves? It's doesn't need to be a "speed build," it could take some other aspect to a ridiculous extreme.
Just remember: you must Point-Buy your stats. Nothing special about a guy with all 20s

[Douche]

I'm sure a rogue/bard with magic initiate could pull off some kooky skill checks with expertise, reliable talent, inspiration, and guidance... but I don't feel like figuring it out.

[odigity]

So, after the very-not-fun dumpster-fire I apparently started with the "Balancing BladeLocks" thread

It crashed with the dreaded "cannot divide by zero" error.

[odigity]

Total movement: 440'/round, aka 50mph

It's too bad there are no rules/abilities in 5e to convert movement or speed into damage (other than the obvious dropping someone from a height).

The 50mph Man really needs a feat or class feature that lets him do something like add +1 to dmg for every 5' he moves (after the first 10') towards a target on the first attack against the target. If you punch someone after running 80' towards them, the punch ought to be memorable. Maybe a free push-back effect at a 5-to-1 conversion? (80' run = 16' push-back) Or a thunder AoE within 5' from the sonic boom?

Edit: I don't know comic books. How does The Flash attack people?

[Foxhound438]

Jumpy the Jumpster Fire

totem barb (tiger) 4
theif rogue 4
monk 4
Land druid (grass) 8

get you some boots of sprinting and striding

stats 20/20/11/10/14/10, as a non-variant human, taking mobile

Movement is up to 50 feet base, 100 with haste, and with 4 action to use dash (1 normal, 1 bonus (monk), 1 action, 1 haste) you get up to 400' of movement. Jumps can't exceed this, so it's the absolute maximum.

long jump = (20 (str score) + 10 (tiger barb) + + 5 (theif))*3(boots)*2(step of wind)*3(jump spell) = 630 feet. Obviously, this is chunked down by our max speed, so 400'.

high jump = (3 + 5 (str mod) + 3 (tiger barb) + 5 (theif))*3 (boots)*2(step of wind)*3(jump spell) = 288 feet.

Obviously jumping is kind of moot for you, since you can turn into an eagle and fly to wherever, but JUMPING IS FUN DAMMIT

Edit: btw, the giant eagle could fly up to 640 feet in a round- 72.7 miles per hour... murricah.

[Foxhound438]

Edit: I don't know comic books. How does The Flash attack people?

he vibrates his molecules so fast that they can pass through other objects.

Somehow damaging his target, but not him...

[Tanarii]

Total movement: 440'/round, aka 50mphImportant to note when making speed builds that the DMG p252 Chase rules but a limit of 3+Con Mod free Dashes, after which you're making DC 10 Con checks each Dash or gaining a level of Exhaustion.

But you can certainly go at 50mph for a round or two! :smallbiggrin:

[Falcon X]

The only rule is that you must Point-Buy your stats.
I'm not sure why this is such a relevant statement to this post. You've already said that these don't have to be strong builds, so MADness isn't a factor. For all I care, we leave ability scores out of the equation unless something is unusually high or unusually low.

[odigity]

Important to note when making speed builds that the DMG p252 Chase rules but a limit of 3+Con Mod free Dashes, after which you're making DC 10 Con checks each Dash or gaining a level of Exhaustion.

I always forget about exhaustion rules.

That's pretty neat in that it allows for a speed vs stamina race, where the pursuer might have a slower speed, but much higher Con, and so might eventually catch up when their prey stops to rest.

[ClintACK]

I think I've already posted this one here, but I give you:

The Cantrip Master

GOO Tome Warlock 4, Wild Sorcerer 4, Lore Bard 4, Land Druid 4, Life Cleric 2, Conjurer Wizard 2.

This gives him a ridiculous 24 Cantrips. (14 of them Charisma-based, including Eldritch Blast with Agonizing Blast.)

And an insane 36 spells prepared (23 always known and 13 chosen daily) including Life Domain and Land Circle spells. With nearly full caster slots, meta-magic, and sorcery points.

He recovers 2 2nd level slots on a short rest, and 4 more levels worth of slots on short rests each day.

And has *tons* of other utility powers -- like inspiration, cutting words, telepathy, wild shape, and minor conjuration.

Oh, and potentially every 1st- or 2nd- level Ritual Spell in the game in his Book of Shadows.


Going Half-Elf with the Standard Array, he gets a 17 Charisma (for all the spells that require an attack or save), 14 Wisdom, 13 Intelligence, and 14 Dex. With a painful 10 Con and dumping 8 Str.

Stats, and thus number of prepared spells, do *not* include any ASI.


He's the ultimate generalist. He'll never be able to teleport or raise the dead, but no matter what the situation, he's got the odd spell you need prepped and ready to go.

Need Radiant damage to finish off an undead critter -- he's got Sacred Flame. Is the Big Bad immune to everything but psychic damage, Vicious Mockery to the rescue. Did someone just fall into a pit -- he's got Feather Fall prepared today, just like every day. This is the spell caster who actually has Comprehend Languages and Purify Food and Drink and Detect Poison and Disease all prepared and ready to cast. And Identify and Tenser's Floating Disc and Augury ready to go as rituals.

He'll never cast Heal or Greater Restoration, but he's got an 8th level slot to up-cast Cure Wounds -- and he can quicken it to cast as a bonus action.

Simply put, you'll never see a more versatile spell caster than the Cantrip Master.

[GlenSmash!]

So, after the very-not-fun dumpster-fire I apparently started with the "Balancing BladeLocks" thread, here's a lighter mood:
What's the most ludicrous concept you can come up with for a character? They don't have to be game breaking, just something silly. The only rule is that you must Point-Buy your stats.

This was inspired by Nerdarchy's video on attempting to make the fastest character possible.

I'll start:
50mph Man
Wood Elf
Fighter2, Rogue2, Monk2, Sorcerer5
10, 16, 14, 8, 13, 14
Feats: Mobile
Notable Spell: Haste

Base Speed: 35 +10(monk) +10(mobile) = 55'
Turn1 as follows,
Action: Cast Haste
Move: 110'
Bonus, Cunning Action: Dash, 110'
Extra Action, Haste: Dash, 110'
Fighter Action Surge: Dash, 110'

Total movement: 440'/round, aka 50mph

It gets really silly if you use an Arakocra for the 50' Fly Speed, for 560'/round.

So, what kind of insanity have you got up your sleeves? It's doesn't need to be a "speed build," it could take some other aspect to a ridiculous extreme.
Just remember: you must Point-Buy your stats. Nothing special about a guy with all 20s

Can't you add in Barbarian fast movement and the Longstrider spell into this mix?

[AvatarVecna]

The speed record for 5e already belongs to a Vengeance Paladin Shapechange'd into a Marilith (with the aid of a Foresight spell and NI clusters of 25 pigeons positions just so throughout the universe. :smallbiggrin:

See quote in sig for details.

EDIT: Actually doing the plan of "surround the Marilith's arrival point with pigeons" turned out to 'require' 52 pigeons instead of 25, but I'm sure you could break light speed with less than 52 pigeons.

[CaptainSarathai]

Important to note when making speed builds that the DMG p252 Chase rules but a limit of 3+Con Mod free Dashes, after which you're making DC 10 Con checks each Dash or gaining a level of Exhaustion.

But you can certainly go at 50mph for a round or two! :smallbiggrin:
Heh, i missed that. That's kinda tricky. Is that per round, per day, or what?


Can't you add in Barbarian fast movement and the Longstrider spell into this mix?
I could. I'll have to look into those.


The speed record for 5e already belongs to a Vengeance Paladin Shapechange'd into a Marilith (with the aid of a Foresight spell and NI clusters of 25 pigeons positions just so throughout the universe. :smallbiggrin:

See quote in sig for details.
Whaaaa....
How does you even...
Huh??
You have got to explain that me.


I'm not sure why this is such a relevant statement to this post. You've already said that these don't have to be strong builds, so MADness isn't a factor. For all I care, we leave ability scores out of the equation unless something is unusually high or unusually low.
Well, you need them for Multiclassing Pre-reqs. So I don't want saying they can get the Cleric's bonus attack 5 times with a 20Wis while also MCing into 4 other classes that all require different 13s or something.

[AvatarVecna]

Whaaaa....
How does you even...
Huh??
You have got to explain that me.

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.

[NecroDancer]

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.

This just made my day

[Axorfett12]

There was an optimization challenge a while back. I crafted this build for the speed contest. The parameters were that you had one minute to move as far as possible. you have 1 minute of preparation time, and could have 2 allies assist you. Speedy has a transmutation wizard and a druid assisting him. Bob has me beat by about the speed of light, but Speedy here is still very fast.

Wood Elf Monk 15 / Barbarian 5

Assisted by: Druid 1/Wizard (Transmutation) 6

Magic Items:
Boots of Speed
Transmuter's Stone
Manual of Bodily Health

Base speed: 35
Unarmored Movement: +25 speed
Fast Movement: +10
Elk Totem: +15
Mobile Feat: +10
Transmuter's Stone: +10
Longstrider: +10
Epic Boon of Speed: +30
Boots of Speed: x2
Haste: x2

580 Base Speed

Dash as a Bonus Action for 1 Ki (Has 15 Ki)
Additional Action from Haste can be used to Dash

Prep Time: 2 Rounds

1 Minute = 10 rounds

Round 1: Assistant casts Longstrider
Round 2: Assistant casts Haste. RUN!!!

Running: 10 Rounds

Constitution = 30 (+10)(Manual): Can Dash 13 times, must make DC 10 Con check or gain 1 level exhaustion.

Round 1: 540 Base Speed: Dash as Action, Dash as Bonus (-1 Ki), Dash a Haste Action: 4640 feet
Round 2: 540 Base Speed: Dash as Action, Dash as Bonus (-1 Ki), Dash a Haste Action: 4640 feet
Round 3: 540 Base Speed: Dash as Action, Dash as Bonus (-1 Ki), Dash a Haste Action: 4640 feet
Round 4: 540 Base Speed: Dash as Action, Dash as Bonus (-1 Ki), Dash a Haste Action: 4640 feet
Round 5: 540 Base Speed: Dash as Action, Dash as Bonus (-1 Ki), Dash a Haste Action: 4640 feet
Round 6: 540 Base Speed: Dash as Action, Dash as Bonus (-1 Ki), Dash a Haste Action: 4640 feet
Round 7: 540 Base Speed: Dash as Action, Dash as Bonus (-1 Ki), Dash a Haste Action: 4640 feet
Round 8: 540 Base Speed: Dash as Action, Dash as Bonus (-1 Ki), Dash a Haste Action: 4640 feet
Round 9: 540 Base Speed: Dash as Action, Dash as Bonus (-1 Ki), Dash a Haste Action: 4640 feet
Round 10: 540 Base Speed: Dash as Action, Dash as Bonus (-1 Ki), Dash a Haste Action: 4640 feet

Total feet in one minute: 46,400, and it only cost 10 Ki Points

That's ~527.27 MPH
Or 848.55 KPH

[Oramac]

My favorite "ridiculous character" is one I've posted a few times before, but it still makes me chuckle.

The Naked Barbarian

Female Human Variant Barbarian.

15, 15+1, 15+1, 8, 8, 8.

Feats: Tavern Brawler and Grappler, in whichever order you like.

With Unarmored Defense you get an AC of 16 at first level, without needing ANY CLOTHES AT ALL.

So wear your birthday suit and grapple those dragons to the ground!

[Help there's a]

Slightly different idea: Warlord/Wizard mix.
Might sound stupid, but watch.
The Wizard half teleports enemies, while the Warlord half shifts friends.
Works even better as an Eladrin, Fey Step and whatnot.
Anyway, imagine a ravenous troll attacks your party-and suddenly, instead of soft cleric (teleported away), there's a bloodthirsty Vampire Halfling Barbarian Rouge Self-Styled Evoker (shifted in) blasting it with one hand and Rage Bloodfrenzy Greataxe hitting it with the other (thanks, Monkey Grip.)
You'll master the battlefeild! Ha! Ha! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[CaptainSarathai]

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.
That - was amazing.


Slightly different idea: Warlord/Wizard mix.
Might sound stupid, but watch.
The Wizard half teleports enemies, while the Warlord half shifts friends.
Works even better as an Eladrin, Fey Step and whatnot.
Anyway, imagine a ravenous troll attacks your party-and suddenly, instead of soft cleric (teleported away), there's a bloodthirsty Vampire Halfling Barbarian Rouge Self-Styled Evoker (shifted in) blasting it with one hand and Rage Bloodfrenzy Greataxe hitting it with the other (thanks, Monkey Grip.)
You'll master the battlefeild! Ha! Ha! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Nice. I had a really evil "red wake" build in 4e.

Good builds all around, but it's not just about making fast movement characters. What other silliness can we get up to?
What's the lowest level you could, say, get all of the skills? Or most skills you could have at 20th?
Obviously a Half Elf Bardic Warlock probably factors in.

[AvatarVecna]

That - was amazing.

I aim to please. :smallbiggrin:


What's the lowest level you could, say, get all of the skills? Or most skills you could have at 20th?
Obviously a Half Elf Bardic Warlock probably factors in.

Actually, Variant Human gets it quicker.

Variant Human Rogue 1/Bard (Lore) 3/Warlock 2/Cleric (Knowledge) 1, with the Urchin Background.

Variant Human 1: Athletics
Variant Human Feat (Skilled) 1: Intimidation
Variant Human Feat (Skilled) 1: Insight
Variant Human Feat (Skilled) 1: Survival
Rogue 1: Acrobatics
Rogue 1: Perception
Rogue 1: Sleight Of Hand
Rogue 1: Stealth
Urchin Background 1: Performance
Urchin Background 1: Animal Handling
Multiclass Bard 1: Medicine
Lore Bard Bonus Proficiencies 3: History
Lore Bard Bonus Proficiencies 3: Investigation
Lore Bard Bonus Proficiencies 3: Nature
Warlock Invocation (Beguiling Presence) 2: Deception
Warlock Invocation (Beguiling Presence) 2: Persuasion
Knowledge Cleric 1: Arcana
Knowledge Cleric 1: Religion

Urchin Background is granting different skills than normal because it takes place after class skill selection, and according to the rules on pg 125 under Proficiencies, "if a character would gain the same proficiency from two different sources, he or she can choose a different proficiency of the same kind (skill or tool) instead".

By 7th lvl, this character has proficiency in every skill, Expertise in Arcana/Religion/4 other skills, proficiency with Disguise Kits, Thieves Tools, one musical instrument of your choice, and one other tool proficiency of your choice; you also have 4th lvl multiclass spellcasting with 1st lvl Cleric spells, 2nd lvl Bard spells, and some extra Warlock slots (I recommend picking up Enhance Ability from the Bard to give yourself advantage to ability checks for an ability chosen when the spell is cast). You also have half proficiency in every ability check you're not proficient in. If you take one more level of Knowledge Cleric, you can once per rest use the "Channel Divinity: Knowledge Of The Ages" class feature to grant yourself proficiency in a tool proficiency for 10 minutes. Creating this character requires Dex 13, Wis 13, and Cha 13.

This character will probably only be decent in combat, but that's okay because combat isn't their focus.

[JellyPooga]

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.

As awesomely convoluted as this is (and it is awesome, don't get me wrong)...it's flawed.
The whole thing is predicated on turning into a Marilith for Reactive, right? Which means you get one Reaction per turn. As I understand it, this jump to light speed is powered by pigeons taking the Ready Action on their turn, to move on yours as their Reaction. So while you can take one Reaction (in this case an OA) when each of them takes the Ready action on their turn, you still only get one Reaction on your turn.

So the plan goes;
1) Pigeons take the Ready Action.
2) Bobs turn rolls around, he flies into Pigeon Group 1.
3) Pigeons all fly away as their Reaction.
4) Bob takes an OA and moves half his speed into PG2.
5) Pigeon Group 2 flies away as their Reaction.
6) Bob's out of Reactions because it's still his turn.
7) Bob uses the rest of his movement.

Total distance moved; 90ft
(if only using the Fly spell for movement speed)

Now, I hate to rain on the parade, but I'm fair sure 15ft/second is a far cry from light speed.

It all falls down because the Ready Action doesn't interrupt another turn with a turn of your own; it allows you to either take an action or move as a Reaction on the turn of someone else.

[AvatarVecna]

As awesomely convoluted as this is (and it is awesome, don't get me wrong)...it's flawed.
The whole thing is predicated on turning into a Marilith for Reactive, right? Which means you get one Reaction per turn. As I understand it, this jump to light speed is powered by pigeons taking the Ready Action on their turn, to move on yours as their Reaction. So while you can take one Reaction (in this case an OA) when each of them takes the Ready action on their turn, you still only get one Reaction on your turn.

So the plan goes;
1) Pigeons take the Ready Action.
2) Bobs turn rolls around, he flies into Pigeon Group 1.
3) Pigeons all fly away as their Reaction.
4) Bob takes an OA and moves half his speed into PG2.
5) Pigeon Group 2 flies away as their Reaction.
6) Bob's out of Reactions because it's still his turn.
7) Bob uses the rest of his movement.

Total distance moved; 90ft
(if only using the Fly spell for movement speed)

Now, I hate to rain on the parade, but I'm fair sure 15ft/second is a far cry from light speed.

It all falls down because the Ready Action doesn't interrupt another turn with a turn of your own; it allows you to either take an action or move as a Reaction on the turn of someone else.

This is a fair point, but it can definitely be argued. A quick review of the "Reaction" rules seems to indicate that reactions due to a Ready'd action are not part of the turn of the person taking them, but are a part of the turn in which they are triggered. Hrm...

The first argument is sort-of arguing the RAI of "Reactive"; it's obviously, transparently intended to allow the Marilith to react once to every combatant, and slight changes in tactics shouldn't make a difference to that, even if a strict reading of RAW would indicate that a bunch of Ready'd actions going off outside their own turn doesn't trigger Reactive more than once. Now, while that argument is usually quite a reasonable RAI-based argument, it's a little harder to swallow in relation to this TO bull****, but it remains clear that the way Reactive was meant to function (one reaction per creature) would work with this plan, even if it's not written in precisely that way.

The second argument is more silly RAW interpretation: Reactive says the Marilith gets one Reaction per turn. One incredibly stupid way of reading this is that a Marilith gets as many Reactions per round as their are participating combatants (for instance, if there's 8 combatants, a Marilith gets one reaction per turn, for a total of 8 reactions per round). I fully agree that this is an incredibly stupid way to read it, but it's not the worst "sketchy interpretation" I've ever seen.

The third argument isn't exactly an argument against your point; it acknowledges your point as valid, but finds a new way to make the TO bull**** work. Namely, instead of the pigeons Ready'ing a Dash action to go off when you approach, all of the pigeon clusters are arranged very carefully by initiative count, such that the group you are moving towards goes immediately after you, and the next group you move towards goes immediately after them, and so on ad infinitum. According the rules on initiative, initiative ties are basically determined by DM Fiat, with an optional rule to instead roll off until there's no more ties. Either way, we end up with an infinite number of pigeons in initiative order, flying towards their designated position such that the next closest cluster of pigeons acts immediately after you or the pigeon cluster you just moved into.

I fully invite anybody and everybody to poke holes in the Paladin Pigeon Engine; one of the things I like about 5e is that it's remarkably well-balanced on the whole, without being anywhere nearly as cookie-cutter as 4e was. I claim to have found a method of achieving light speed in 5e, but I'm more than willing to admit to my faults if it turns out I missed some rules that make it not work.

[MasterMercury]

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 would just like to say thank you. I have read your signature many many times, and I'm glad I finally understand what the heck is happening.

[Foxhound438]

This is a fair point, but it can definitely be argued. A quick review of the "Reaction" rules seems to indicate that reactions due to a Ready'd action are not part of the turn of the person taking them, but are a part of the turn in which they are triggered. Hrm...

The first argument is sort-of arguing the RAI of "Reactive"; it's obviously, transparently intended to allow the Marilith to react once to every combatant, and slight changes in tactics shouldn't make a difference to that, even if a strict reading of RAW would indicate that a bunch of Ready'd actions going off outside their own turn doesn't trigger Reactive more than once. Now, while that argument is usually quite a reasonable RAI-based argument, it's a little harder to swallow in relation to this TO bull****, but it remains clear that the way Reactive was meant to function (one reaction per creature) would work with this plan, even if it's not written in precisely that way.

The second argument is more silly RAW interpretation: Reactive says the Marilith gets one Reaction per turn. One incredibly stupid way of reading this is that a Marilith gets as many Reactions per round as their are participating combatants (for instance, if there's 8 combatants, a Marilith gets one reaction per turn, for a total of 8 reactions per round). I fully agree that this is an incredibly stupid way to read it, but it's not the worst "sketchy interpretation" I've ever seen.

The third argument isn't exactly an argument against your point; it acknowledges your point as valid, but finds a new way to make the TO bull**** work. Namely, instead of the pigeons Ready'ing a Dash action to go off when you approach, all of the pigeon clusters are arranged very carefully by initiative count, such that the group you are moving towards goes immediately after you, and the next group you move towards goes immediately after them, and so on ad infinitum. According the rules on initiative, initiative ties are basically determined by DM Fiat, with an optional rule to instead roll off until there's no more ties. Either way, we end up with an infinite number of pigeons in initiative order, flying towards their designated position such that the next closest cluster of pigeons acts immediately after you or the pigeon cluster you just moved into.

I fully invite anybody and everybody to poke holes in the Paladin Pigeon Engine; one of the things I like about 5e is that it's remarkably well-balanced on the whole, without being anywhere nearly as cookie-cutter as 4e was. I claim to have found a method of achieving light speed in 5e, but I'm more than willing to admit to my faults if it turns out I missed some rules that make it not work.

It can still work fine, you just have to drop the "ready action" part and instead just make a train of them, sequenced by initiative order, and have a pile of however many you think you'll need, and space the piles exactly as far as you can move; you sit in one pile, swing until you hit one, fly to the next, wait until the initiative moves to that pile, repeat.

[AvatarVecna]

I would just like to say thank you. I have read your signature many many times, and I'm glad I finally understand what the heck is happening.

Not a problem. My recollection is that the original thread where the idea was birthed was kinda cluttered; I'm glad I took the opportunity to explain it a bit more concisely, and I'll probably put a link to that post somewhere in my sig to better explain this in the future.


It can still work fine, you just have to drop the "ready action" part and instead just make a train of them, sequenced by initiative order, and have a pile of however many you think you'll need, and space the piles exactly as far as you can move; you sit in one pile, swing until you hit one, fly to the next, wait until the initiative moves to that pile, repeat.

Indeed. In fact, the last spoiler'd paragraph in the post you quoted addresses this specific thing.

[Draconi Redfir]

Edit: oh, wait, ship. this is the 5th ed subforum, and this is a pathfinder character... still counts right?

Hercermer (willdo) Battlejitney:
(a.k.a. The Tank)
12th level
Dwarf
Fighter (sheild fighter Archetype)
14, 15, 18, 10, 10, 10.

Base Armor Class: +10 AC
+2 mythril full plate armor: +11 AC
two +1 adamantine bashing heavy sheilds*: +3 AC (for one sheild)
+1 Ring of Protection: +1 AC
DEX bonus: +2 AC
Ironhide Feat: +1 Natural AC
Sheild focus Feat: +1 sheild AC
Greater sheild focus feat: +1 sheild AC (stacks with above)
Two weapon Defence: +1 Sheild AC (From dual weilding sheilds)
Defender of Scociety Trait: +1 AC
Active Defence ability: +3 dodge bonus to AC.

*Heavy sheilds were coustom made to combine into a single tower sheild when posed right for extra defence.
Total AC: 35
Total AC when sheilds were combined into single full tower sheild and going full-defence? 43 +full cover on one side of his square.

Needless to say, he was exelent at blocking doors. And while he could always take a hit, most monsters got wise to this pretty quickly and started targeting someone else after awhile.
Bonus: He had Spell resistance!
Magic resistant racial feature: 5+lvl spell resistance.

He was fairly decent in fighting with theise sheilds as well. Dealing 1d8+7 damage to them with a basic attack, and getting free bull rushes with every sheild bash.

His main job was to stand between the enemy and his allies, though the party Barbian often became a punching bag as a result. Ultimately, he met his end when we fought the D&D version of the dark souls ornstein and smaug boss fight. He was fighting a large powerful demon who was able to hit him, and he was killed when a nimple speir-weilding sorceress struck him with a lightning bolt. Keep in mind this was /After/ he had his +2 mythrul fullplate completely disintigrated by a broken and out of control magic-item-nullifying rod we encountered sevral rooms prior, so he only had an AC of 32 as he was wearing a +3 half plate. Still, there were many fights where he took no damage at all.

[CaptainSarathai]

The thread is intended for a 5r characters only.
That armor tank brings up a good point though - optimizing your self isn't always optimizing the party. I've seen lots of highAC fighters who have no reason to be attacked, and no way to be sticky. The enemy just runs around the side and turns the Wizards into punching bags.
Normal awesome HOld-DOoR-ing when the rest of the party gets murdered anyway

[F.H. Zebedee]

Personally, the weirdest build I ran in 5e was a Trickster Merfolk Fighter (using the Zendikar rules) who took True Strike as his racial cantrip. It sounded useless to all the optimizers in my party... Until I busted out that I had Great Weapon Fighting and Great Weapon Master when I went for a swing with my Anchor. He had exactly two tricks he did well (Either True Strike when trouble presented itself and go all in first turn, or Action Surge to True Strike and Great Weapon Master in a single turn), but man, I got some jaw-dropping damage rolls in. (16 weapon damage, +10 from GWM, +4 STR, at level 4)

[AvatarVecna]

Personally, the weirdest build I ran in 5e was a Trickster Merfolk Fighter (using the Zendikar rules) who took True Strike as his racial cantrip. It sounded useless to all the optimizers in my party... Until I busted out that I had Great Weapon Fighting and Great Weapon Master when I went for a swing with my Anchor. He had exactly two tricks he did well (Either True Strike when trouble presented itself and go all in first turn, or Action Surge to True Strike and Great Weapon Master in a single turn), but man, I got some jaw-dropping damage rolls in. (16 weapon damage, +10 from GWM, +4 STR, at level 4)

So you put together a build where you would spend two turns making two attacks rolls to deal damage once, instead of a build where you would spend two turns making two attack roll to deal damage twice? Sure, okay.

[Pichu]

I aim to please. :smallbiggrin:



Actually, Variant Human gets it quicker.

Variant Human Rogue 1/Bard (Lore) 3/Warlock 2/Cleric (Knowledge) 1, with the Urchin Background.

Variant Human 1: Athletics
Variant Human Feat (Skilled) 1: Intimidation
Variant Human Feat (Skilled) 1: Insight
Variant Human Feat (Skilled) 1: Survival
Rogue 1: Acrobatics
Rogue 1: Perception
Rogue 1: Sleight Of Hand
Rogue 1: Stealth
Urchin Background 1: Performance
Urchin Background 1: Animal Handling
Multiclass Bard 1: Medicine
Lore Bard Bonus Proficiencies 3: History
Lore Bard Bonus Proficiencies 3: Investigation
Lore Bard Bonus Proficiencies 3: Nature
Warlock Invocation (Beguiling Presence) 2: Deception
Warlock Invocation (Beguiling Presence) 2: Persuasion
Knowledge Cleric 1: Arcana
Knowledge Cleric 1: Religion

Urchin Background is granting different skills than normal because it takes place after class skill selection, and according to the rules on pg 125 under Proficiencies, "if a character would gain the same proficiency from two different sources, he or she can choose a different proficiency of the same kind (skill or tool) instead".

By 7th lvl, this character has proficiency in every skill, Expertise in Arcana/Religion/4 other skills, proficiency with Disguise Kits, Thieves Tools, one musical instrument of your choice, and one other tool proficiency of your choice; you also have 4th lvl multiclass spellcasting with 1st lvl Cleric spells, 2nd lvl Bard spells, and some extra Warlock slots (I recommend picking up Enhance Ability from the Bard to give yourself advantage to ability checks for an ability chosen when the spell is cast). You also have half proficiency in every ability check you're not proficient in. If you take one more level of Knowledge Cleric, you can once per rest use the "Channel Divinity: Knowledge Of The Ages" class feature to grant yourself proficiency in a tool proficiency for 10 minutes. Creating this character requires Dex 13, Wis 13, and Cha 13.

This character will probably only be decent in combat, but that's okay because combat isn't their focus.

Instead of Warlock 2, go Cleric 2. Saves 1 level and allows you to, once per long rest, gain proficiency in the one skill you don't have it in or any other check (i.e. Thieves' Tools).

[AvatarVecna]

Instead of Warlock 2, go Cleric 2. Saves 1 level and allows you to, once per long rest, gain proficiency in the one skill you don't have it in or any other check (i.e. Thieves' Tools).

The point of the build you're quoting is having continuous proficiency in all skills. The build I posted accomplishes this, the alteration you're suggesting would not. Furthermore, I also suggested supplementing that build with Cleric 2 to pick up the ability you're using.

[F.H. Zebedee]

So you put together a build where you would spend two turns making two attacks rolls to deal damage once, instead of a build where you would spend two turns making two attack roll to deal damage twice? Sure, okay.
Well, yeah, if I did the action surge thing (which as I noted is a backup option that didn't really matter), but typically it's more likely I go crit fishing with an advantage attack in the first round of combat (since advantage and improved critical mean I have an almost 20% chance of critting somebody). So typically it goes more like "Spot an upcoming encounter, Truestrike myself before combat starts, swing for the bleachers, and then, if the occasion dictates it, action surge and smack 'em again without advantage"
Granted, it helped that we had two characters in that party built with great perception skills/abilities, so we pretty much always knew when encounters were inbound.
The character isn't all that optimized, but I think "doing your damndest to make True Strike, the most useless spell in the book, do something" counts as a ridiculous build. ;)

[Davemeddlehed]

The speed record for 5e already belongs to a Vengeance Paladin Shapechange'd into a Marilith (with the aid of a Foresight spell and NI clusters of 25 pigeons positions just so throughout the universe. :smallbiggrin:

See quote in sig for details.

EDIT: Actually doing the plan of "surround the Marilith's arrival point with pigeons" turned out to 'require' 52 pigeons instead of 25, but I'm sure you could break light speed with less than 52 pigeons.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/40bk3n/fun_build_the_fastest_man_alive/

This guy has you beat.

[CaptainSarathai]

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/40bk3n/fun_build_the_fastest_man_alive/

This guy has you beat.

Can't concentrate on Haste while Raging, and Rage ends if you don't hit something, so he can only Move+Dash+Dash once unless someone whacks him (which made me laugh, because now I imagine a Halfling in a jockey-suit riding on his shoulders and whapping him with a crop to keep him going)

Otherwise, basically the build that I started off with, with some extra levels in Monk.

[wilhelmdubdub]

Here's my ulitmate speed/AC build: (pt. buy) 73.8mph
Wood elf: 8 strength, 16 dex, 14 con, 14 intelligence, 14 wisdom, 9 charisma
2 levels of fighter: for Con saves, action surge, fighting style mariner for +1 AC and climb speed and swim speed = land speed
2 levels of monk: for unarmored speed and defense +2AC, can use Ki to dash with step of the wind (2 ki pts.)
16 levels of bladesinger: ASI's +4 dex, +4 int as well as up to 8th level spell slot
Bladesong: +4 Bonus to AC equal to Intelligence, +10 movement, advantage on concentration, and at level 14 add +4 int to damage on melee weapon attacks

relevent spells: haste for +2 AC and can double land speed, shield to pump AC as a reaction, longstrider is not concentration

Final build: 8 strength, 20 dex, 14 con, 18 intelligence, 14 wisdom, 9 charisma
first round: (Assuming longstrider is up)cast haste, then use bonus action to enter bladesong

AC: 10+ 5dex +2wisdom +1mariner =18base
+4bladesong +2haste +5shield =29max AC
proficient and advantage for concentration

land speed: (35 +10monk +10bladesong +10 longstrider)*2haste =130feet per action
movement+ standard action+ action surge+haste +step of the wind= 650feet in six seconds on land, in water or climbing.

full attack round: two attacks*(standard action+ action surge+haste) + flurry of blows x2 punches
6*(rapier D8 +5dex +4int) +2(D4 +5dex)= 110max damage

All you sacrifice compared to a full wizard is an 18 in intelligence and a 9th level spell slot.

Question: how prevalent is it for UA mariner to be allowed in home games?

[Xetheral]

I fully invite anybody and everybody to poke holes in the Paladin Pigeon Engine; one of the things I like about 5e is that it's remarkably well-balanced on the whole, without being anywhere nearly as cookie-cutter as 4e was. I claim to have found a method of achieving light speed in 5e, but I'm more than willing to admit to my faults if it turns out I missed some rules that make it not work.

Tunnel Fighter fighting style works too, and that doesn't have the strict-RAW problem Mariliths do. And also has the advantage of making pigeon-FTL open to a lot more builds. Downside of couse is that it's UA content.

[AvatarVecna]

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/40bk3n/fun_build_the_fastest_man_alive/

This guy has you beat.

This guy doesn't seem to be going NI times the speed of light, so no, he does not have me beat.


Tunnel Fighter fighting style works too, and that doesn't have the strict-RAW problem Mariliths do. And also has the advantage of making pigeon-FTL open to a lot more builds. Downside of couse is that it's UA content.

I started to reply that this has been brought up before, and that it doesn't work, but going back to look up the reason why it doesn't work, I figured out what I was remembering: namely, somebody brought up the possibility of two Vengeance Paladins with Tunnel Fighter just running past each other an infinite number of times, which doesn't work because the Vengeance ability granting free movement doesn't provoke an OA itself. But if you were just using it to replace the "needs to Shapechange into a Marilith" part, and you still had the "flying between an infinite number of pigeon clusters" part, I think it would work, and yeah that would open it up quite a bit. You'd still need 7 levels of Vengeance Pally and that particular fighting style, but that's much less restrictive than "15 total levels, at least 7/1 of which are Vengeance Pally/Wizard". Nice! :smallbiggrin:

[F.H. Zebedee]

Something that came up building a barbarian for a friend, if we're just going for maximum out of combat speed, wouldn't Elk Totem barbarian be helpful (doubles your travel speed out of combat, and IIRC boosts speed while raging), and Urchin Background doubles your speed in Urban areas. I feel like there's some way to tweak this to create a super fast Barbarian courier service. XD

[Citan]

It's too bad there are no rules/abilities in 5e to convert movement or speed into damage (other than the obvious dropping someone from a height).

The 50mph Man really needs a feat or class feature that lets him do something like add +1 to dmg for every 5' he moves (after the first 10') towards a target on the first attack against the target. If you punch someone after running 80' towards them, the punch ought to be memorable. Maybe a free push-back effect at a 5-to-1 conversion? (80' run = 16' push-back) Or a thunder AoE within 5' from the sonic boom?

Edit: I don't know comic books. How does The Flash attack people?
I guess you could compare this speed with the speed of a humanoid falling with gravity, and use comparative damage. Except that "the FLash" would obviously take less damage because he took a good position to ensure his target is taking most of the force.

Also, one of the skills I designed for my homebrew class worked like this. From memory, something like "on your turn, when you choose the target of your first melee weapon attack, you can use Dash as a bonus action beforehand to run towards it in a straight line. If you move at least 15 feet as such before entering melee reach, on a hit, you will deal extra damage equal to *enter value here*."

Well, mine was not exactly like this, but the idea of "rush towards a particular enemy before attacking" was sure here. ;)

[Waffle_Iron]

The Halfling Rock Skipping Champion:

Halfling (either type), Folk Hero

Ranger 4 highlights: archery style , hunter's mark, goodberry, hunter conclave) tavern brawler (even though you've been throwing rocks, this finally gives you proficiency)

Fighter 8 highlights: action surge, battlemaster, trip, push, grant ally advantage, extra attack

Rogue 8 highlights: expertise in cooking tools, sneak attack, thief subclass

At all levels, even and especially high levels, play as if you are not an adventurer, but rather just the party's cook, and I'm just going to follow you guys into the dungeon because I'm not staying out here alone thank you very much.