Dash Action

When you take the Dash action, you gain extra movement for the current turn. The increase equals your speed, after applying any modifiers. With a speed of 30 feet, for example, you can move up to 60 feet on your turn if you dash. Any increase or decrease to your speed changes this additional movement by the same amount. If your speed of 30 feet is reduced to 15 feet, for instance, you can move up to 30 feet this turn if you dash.

 

Dash action in DnD 5E explained

By Paul Hughes
  Taking the Dash action gives you additional movement, equal to your speed, for the current turn. For a character with a walking speed of 30ft, this means their movement for that turn would increase to 60ft. This bonus includes any modifiers to your speed, meaning a 4th level Human Monk would be able to move 80ft in a single turn if they used the Dash action. Another example of a modifier working like this would be a Dwarf Wizard using Longstrider on themselves, this would give them a speed of 35ft, so dashing would increase their movement to 70ft for that turn.
This also applies to negative modifiers, for example, if you got hit by Ray of Frost your speed would decrease for one turn by 10ft. For a character with a 30ft speed, this would reduce their speed to 20ft, and taking the Dash action would increase this to 40ft.
A situation that often causes confusion is when you Dash after standing up from being prone, which costs half of your movement. For a 30ft character standing up from prone would leave them with 15ft remaining, and dashing would increase that to 45ft.

 

Ways to Dash more

Improving the value of your Dash is as simple as finding whatever speed boost best applies to you, but what about if you want to Dash more than once in a turn? Or you’d rather Dash as a bonus action to do other cool things at the same time? We’ve got you covered, here are the ways you can Dash more per turn:
 

• Cunning Action, the Rogue’s 2nd level ability, allows you to Dash as a bonus action.
• Step of the Wind, the Monk’s 2nd level ability, allows you to Dash as a bonus action by spending 1 Ki point.
• Expeditious Retreat, a 1st level spell available to Artificers, Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards, allows you to Dash as a bonus action, including the bonus action you use to cast the spell.
• Action Surge, the Fighter’s 2nd level ability, gives you an entire second action that you can use for the Dash action.
• Haste, a 3rd level spell, provides a limited second action that can be used for the Dash action. This spell is available to Artificers, Sorcerers, Wizards, Glory Paladins, Vengeance Paladins, Horizon Walker Rangers, and Circle of the Land (Grassland) Druids.
• Totem Barbarians that take the 3rd level Eagle ability can Dash as a bonus action.
• Battlerager Charge, the Battlerager Barbarian’s 10th level ability, allows you to Dash as a bonus action as long as you’re raging.