Can characters reach Mach 1 and higher in D&D 3(.5)?

Question

A few years back our group tried to come up with the fastest possible D&D character. If I remember correctly we could build a character that could go faster than the speed of sound, but I can't find my notes of this character ("The Running Man") anywhere anymore.

My question: what's the fastest D&D 3(.5) character possible?

The constraints we used in our experiment:

• Has to be a "personal" speed: running, swimming, or flying (no mounts, vehicles, being shot from a cannon, etc).
• Max character level 20.
• No gold limit on items.
• Any Wizards of the Coast published rulebook allowed, including psionics.
• We did this experiment in D&D 3rd ed., but an answer in 3.5 is acceptable too (though I suspect that's tougher).

Basically, the question came down to creating a character that could make at least 6780 feet in a round (6 secs), which is 1130 feet per second, which is roughly 345 m/s: the speed of sound at about room temperature.

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Update

There were several good comments (some of which I should've anticipated :D) on what is and isn't allowed. My above question wasn't exactly clear on those points. Although I'm not sure what SE etiquette tells me to do here, so I'm adding the additional constraints I forgot to mention here in this update (as opposed to editing the question itself).

• No "cheating" or obvious "shortcuts". This includes miracle/wish. I realize this is vague and invite anyone to edit my Question and make this constraint more explicit.
• Handbooks/rules on epic and deities are excluded.

Technically any answer to the question is valid if it follows the constraints in my original question, but I'd prefer answers that follow the additional constraints in the update as well.

Answer 1

A properly optimized character can break the speed of light.

The build "Chuck E. Cheese" asserts that it can break C:u

Round 1: Activate Belt of Battle to cast Footsteps of the Divine(Fharlaghn) as a Swift Action, expending 7 Turn Undead attempts to Persist the spell via Divine Metamagic and then Extending it via Lesser Metamagic Rod of Extend. Between Extend Spell, Suel Arcanamach and Spellcarved Soldier, Footsteps of the Divine lasts for 4 days.

Chuck drops the rod as a free action, drawing a scroll of Favor of the Martyr as a move action and as a Standard Action he makes the DC 27 UMD check to cast the spell from the scroll. He succeeds on a 1.

Max Turnage casts Owl’s Wisdom on Chuck.

Round 2: Chuck chooses to “employ a burst of truly inhuman speed” to gain +10ft to his land speed(in addition to the +50 ft from selecting Farlanghn) for every round remaining in the spell’s duration. There are 4 days minus 1 round remaining in the duration, so Chuck gets +576,990 ft bonus to his land speed, for a total land speed of 576,070 ft. His Jump check is +230,416. That’s a 43 mile long jump.

As a move action, Chuck draws his Scroll of Greater Visage of the Deity from his pack. Thanks to the spell being on the Cleric list and having a Wisdom of 19, all he has to do is make a DC 18 Caster Level check to activate the scroll. His caster level for Cleric spells is 9. Too bad he can’t just take 10. Oh wait, yes he can thanks to Arcane Mastery! So by taking 10, he succeeds on the check and casts Greater Visage of the Deity as his Standard Action gaining +4 Charisma and a fly speed of twice his land speed, or 1,152,140 ft.

As a swift action he activates his belt of battle to get a move action, which is used to draw his Staff of Greater Celerity.

He then proceeds via Divine Impetus for 1,104 swift actions which translate to Full-Round actions from the Staff of Greater Celerity. Favor of the Martyr protects Chuck from the nasty side effect of daze. How he uses those actions depends on what he wants to do.

Judging from the literature on the topic, you can pretty trivially exceed four times earth's escape velocity, or 120,000 ft/sec

This thread suggests:

Footsteps of the divine says you can expend the spell to add "...an additional +10 feet to your speed per round remaining in the spell's duration." Therefore, you gain a bonus of 10 x 10 x 60 x 24, or 144,000 ft/round. Times FIVE for the Run feat gives 720,000 ft/round, or 120,000 ft/sec.

To put this in perspective, this hypothetical cleric is running at more than four times Earth's escape velocity. He's running so fast that an atomic clock could detect the relativistic time dilation he undergoes as he moves. He's running so fast that, if this weren't magic, his body would be torn apart as he instantly accelerated to 100 times the speed of sound.

By strict RAW, I think this is legal. Persistent Spell states, "Spells of instantaneous duration cannot be affected by this feat, nor can spells whose effects are discharged." Since footsteps of the divine (the spell in question) has Personal range, and its duration entry is "1 round/level" rather than something sensible like "1 round/level or until discharged", it would seem to be a legal target for Persistent Spell. (DMM: Persist is also not required; footsteps of the divine is only Cleric 3rd.)

Answer 2

Inspired by the many wonderful responses to this question, I tried to reconstruct my group's answer from a few years back. I know that (a) I'm missing a few tricks we used, and (b) I've probably mentally blocked all the cheats we rationalized back then.

Even though I was extremely intimidated by the far, far superior answer above, I still decided to share this for your amusement! In my defense, at the time none of us had anything besides 3rd ed PHB, DMG and Psionics rulebook.

The Running Man:

            SOURCE                             TYPE     SPEED
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Additions   Fly (spell)                        base        90 
Additions   Speed of Thought (psionic feat)    insight     10 
Additions   hmm what did I forget?                          0 
Additions   hmm what did I forget?                          0 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
SUBTOTAL                                                  100
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Multiplier  Boots of Striding and Springing    none(1)     x2 
Multiplier  Running
            - with run feat
            - and extra partial from haste spell"          x6 
Multiplier  Expeditious retreat                enhancement x2 
Additions   hmm what did I forget?                       
----------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL                                                   2.400 ft/round
TOTAL                                                     400 ft/s
TOTAL                                                     122 m/s

(1) Okay, okay, the DMG 3rd ed technically mentions no bonus type for the boots of striding, but if I'd be fair it's probably the same as expeditious retreat, given that's spell is used to create the item.

So there it is. The answer (with a few 'minor' gaps) that took our group hours of debating, thinking, puzzling, and cheating. The answer that is utterly destroyed by Chuck E. Cheese, and his four-times-Earth's-escape-velocity speed.

Answer 3

Why complicate things? (Okay, apart from complicating things' being funny. :)) Use a carefully worded Wish spell, which can

Transport travelers. A wish can lift one creature per caster level from anywhere on any plane and place those creatures anywhere else on any plane regardless of local conditions.

+

You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment.)

...and there you go, faster than anything, ever. ;]

In fact, if you're bringing physics into DnD, any variation of magical teleportation fulfills the requirements of the Q.

Answer 4

White Dragon Wyrm(250ft fly speed), Feat(Run for x5) + feat(Impv. Flight) "Races of the Wild" + monk 20 lvls for +60ft "PHB I" + Haste = 310x5 = 1,550ft flying.

Awakened Cheetah(Sprint 500ft), Feat(Run for x5) + monk 20 lvls for +60ft + Haste + freedom of movement = 2,950ft along the ground.

Xeph(+10) level 20 monk(+60), feats (run)+(speed of though) + Boots of Striding and Springing + Expeditious retreat(+30ft) =(base 30+10+60+10+30 = 140x2 = 280x5 = 1,400ft along the ground.

Off the top of my head but not sure if all these effects really can stack. (my answer is no it can't really be done without cheating it.) But the fastest I can make anyone is around 1,000 miles per hour in D&D 3.5 without out-sourcing my material or building my own race / class / template