While you wear these boots, you can use a bonus action and click the boots' heels together. If you do, the boots double your walking speed, and any creature that makes an opportunity attack against you has disadvantage on the attack roll. If you click your heels together again, you end the effect.
When the boots' property has been used for a total of 10 minutes, the magic ceases to function until you finish a long rest.
How Boots of Speed play
As a bonus action, you click the heels together. Until you click them again, your walking speed is doubled, and any creature that makes an opportunity attack against you has disadvantage. You get 10 minutes of use in total, in as many pieces as you like, before the boots stop working until your next long rest.
Ten minutes is about a hundred rounds, so in practice you can switch them on for every fight of the day. A character with 30 feet of speed moves 60, or 120 with a Dash, and can run past enemies with little fear of the parting shots.
Who should wear them
Melee characters who need to reach the back line: fighters, paladins, barbarians and monks chasing down enemy archers and casters.
Skirmishers who hit and run. The disadvantage on opportunity attacks lets a rogue or ranger walk through a crowd.
Not the party’s fastest member. A monk already outruns everyone; the boots add most to a slow, heavily armored character.
Common questions
How long do Boots of Speed last?
10 minutes of total use per long rest. You can split it into as many short uses as you like by clicking the heels on and off.
Do Boots of Speed double flying or swimming speed?
No, only your walking speed.
Do Boots of Speed stack with Haste?
They’re different effects, so both apply. The 2014 rules don’t say whether doubling twice makes four times your speed or three, so tables differ; ask your DM.
Does activating them take an action?
A bonus action to click your heels, and another to turn them off.
Do Boots of Speed stop opportunity attacks?
No, but attackers making an opportunity attack against you have disadvantage while the boots are active.
Do Boots of Speed need attunement?
Yes. They’re a rare wondrous item that requires attunement.
The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide revised the magic items, and the SRD 5.2 carries the new text. What changed:
Same rarity and attunement; the text is reworded for the 2024 rules glossary.
Type
Wondrous Item
Rarity
Rare
Attunement
Required
While you wear these boots, you can take a Bonus Action to click the boots' heels together. If you do, the boots double your Speed, and any creature that makes an Opportunity Attack against you has Disadvantage on the attack roll. If you click your heels together again, you end the effect.
When you've used the boots' property for a total of 10 minutes, the magic ceases to function for you until you finish a Long Rest.
