Thoughts About Boots

31 Oct, 2026

I have struggled, lately, to write anything for the RPG Blog Carnival. For the sake of collegiality I like to take part if I have something to contribute, but for more than a few months this year I couldn't quite land on anything worth saying. I'm not sure if what I have to say about this month's topic is all that valuable either but, well, I think I can get something written this time, which is an improvement. And, as it happens, what I have to say concerns a pair of boots.

Source: Vincent van Gogh, 1887 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Vulcan Stev is hosting the Carnival again, with his post, "Magic Items, the Weirdest and Best – RPG Blog Carnival" at Vulcan Stev's Database. Clarifying the title, he writes the following:

I want to know about that ONE magical item that you just can’t forget either as a player or DM. Was it homebrewed? Was it it found in seldom used expansion ruleset? Was it a mundane magical item that you or a player found a use for that made it everyone else’s jaw drop?

This is a struggle for me, not because I can't think of any such items but because, off the top of my head, I can think of many magic items that changed the shape of a whole encounter: the immovable rod against the pirate ship, the eversmoking bottle in the encounter with the beholder, and the dust of dryness in the climactic aboleth fight. There was also the giant-slaying shortsword that knocked the cloud giant countess out of the sky, but the first three are a bit more interesting because they were creative combat applications for objects that aren't weapons. Despite how quickly I can think of them, though, I've already said all I really have to say about them: utility items often change an encounter far more dramatically than cool weapons do.¹

No, although they come less quickly to mind, I think I should tell you about the stormrider boots instead.

The party, the Royal Adventuring Company of the Silver Wing, had uncovered an underwater laboratory of the Sages of Liberty, where those renegade scholars had been experimenting with blood rites. The Sages wanted to see if they could recreate yuan-ti ascensions without strengthening or relying on the serpent gods. I had placed three successful² subjects (two abominations and an anathema) in cages in one little room and I had planned that when one of the lead researchers realized the laboratory was under attack, she would run to pull a lever to release the yuan-ti. She had begun to see the yuan-ti as divine, after all, and wanted to give them a fighting chance. The other lead researcher would chase after her and try to stop her from releasing them. What the party would see is a weird blood mage appear from around a corner on her turn, spoiling for a fight, until she notices something down the hallway, looks alarmed, and dashes off. My hope was that this would peel one PC away from the other two, who would be busy fighting the guards and a recusant paladin. When this lone PC approached the room, they would overhear an argument between the scholars, and then hear the cages begin to open. They wouldn't have time to get to the lever and stop the cages from opening, however, so the yuan-ti would join the second phase of the encounter, with one PC separated and vulnerable.

I forgot, though, that the half-orc fighter had the stormrider boots, which give her a 90' walking speed for one round per long rest. She was the one that heard the conversation, so she activated her boots, zoomed into the room on a bolt of lightning, cold-cocked the scholar pulling the lever, and closed the opening cages with main strength. This dramatically changed the encounter, and I worried my players had trivialized an important fight again.

Fortunately, I had prepared a lot, so I could think through the logic of the situation: the yuan-ti had been made from humanoid volunteers, so the reason they were still in their cages was only because they had never tried to get out, not because they couldn't. In fact, the cage doors were probably not terribly strong, I reasoned in the moment, and the serpentine horrors would not passively await their fate now that the laboratory was under attack. They'd try to lift the cage doors, batter them down, or bewitch someone into opening them.

So, while the fighter fought the blood mage and a giant constrictor, the yuan-ti horrors variously tried to bash their way free or use their spells and features on the half-orc. The anathemas tried to suggest that she let them go in exchange for power and glory, and each time she succeeded on her roll by a hair. (Once she had to use her Lucky feat, in fact.) And then, just as she finished off her opponents, the anathema successfully used its Ophidiophobia Aura on her, making her frightened of all snakes and yuan-ti. The unconscious giant constrictor lay in the doorway, and yuan-ti were in cages on all sides of the room, so she could not move in any direction, and was not close enough to anyone to attack. The rest of the table reminded the fighter's player that she could take the Dodge action, but she prefers to roleplay in moments like this. She said the fighter sat down on the ground, her arms around her knees, quaking in terror as the monstrous creatures whispered their promises and threats.

The other two had been finishing up their part of the fight around the same time, and the next round the paladin dashed around the corner with Aura of Courage, suppressing the frightened condition. I found this to be a remarkable and beautiful moment: the fighter alone and terrified, until her friend joins her and restores her bravery. In fact, a recurring theme in the Sages of Liberty arc had been an examination of the different kinds of bravery and cowardice, which this moment developed wonderfully. So then the fighter and the paladin left the room, regrouped in the hallway with the bard, and, deciding they had to finish it, returned to the room to kill the yuan-ti just before they broke their way out of their cages.

This sequence had some of the most tension this campaign has ever seen. The terror of discovering that an anathema was on the loose would be over in a moment; the terror of the anathema soon escaping its cage lasted over a few long rounds. That tension made it far more memorable, and far more interesting, than it would have been if the yuan-ti had been released from their cages when I planned. Although I nearly panicked when my player surprised me with her boots, in the end I learned a good lesson: the threat of danger is often more interesting than the danger itself.

I love magic items. Magic items are a great way of building a character's identity mechanically that doesn't rely on default class progression. I talked about that a little bit in my post "Wildermyth and Advancing Characters Through Transformations." One day I'd like to start a campaign by letting each player choose, at character creation, an uncommon magic item that their character starts with and a rare magic item that I will promise to make available to their PC by 10th level (that is, that I promise to use as a quest hook). That way they could develop a character build around those specific items. Of course, flooding your campaign with magic items (as I have done with the Fortunes of Ewistar) can cause certain balance problems, which is part of the reason The Salt-Goddess and Her Wares is built to convert many lower-rarity magic items into fewer higher-rarity magic items. But, shoot, I do love magic items!

If you also love magic items, Vulcan Stev will surely have a round-up of all the other carnival posts on this topic published soon, and here are a few things I've written over the years on the subject:

• "Items That Play With Taxonomies"
• "Magic Shops and Their Alternatives: June 2025 Blog Carnival"
• "The Best And Only Magic Item Market"
• "June 2025 RPG Carnival Round Up: Magic Shops and Their Alternatives"
• "The Natural Magic of Stones"
• "How I Plan Horror Games"
• "Announcement: Extravagant Sehlkwen's Rumours of Treasure Is Published!"
• "Product Announcement: The Salt-Goddess and Her Wares!"

#DnD #fortunes of ewistar #magic items #rpg blog carnival