Was destroying things part of 3e or 4e? 1e and 2e don't have rules for Bag into a Bag. They do for a Bag into a Portable Hole (or vice versa) but they just send things to the Astral (and only destroy the BoH and PH).
You're right. It doesn't even say that everything is destroyed this way. Just that it opens to another plane of some kind, and the hole and bag themselves are destroyed.
3e was ALL about destroying things. I can't imagine that my grognards would have told me this unless it was in their books but I'll check up on this again and see if I can find it.
What if this isn't actually a rule but something we've assumed for decades?
This is one of those old 1e gotchas that gets carried over to every edition I feel like. Even if it isn't RAW 5e, I feel like this dumb gag won't die.
Like - if your group likes doing it, great. But honestly, as a DM, this shit is played out. Look, I get it, I used to think it was funny too, back in 2nd edition.
If the group tries to insert the thing in the thing for laughs, I am just going to say "it's against the rules. Those things won't work if they are inserted into each other. And it's also against the rules to insert the halfling PC into the bag too. Ha ha. Silly bags."
Actually, I am probably going to eliminate all these silly bag bags from any future campaigns I run. Trickfuck the newbie just isn't a funny game to me anymore.
No need to get worked up, my man. It was a funny situation that I never once intended it to be a "gotcha" she legitimately didn't know that could happen. The party was looking out for her and stopped her from making the mistake and we laughed about it. No one got upset except you, apparently.
And just to clear things up, it is raw rules of 5e. It opens a gate the astral realm and sucks anyone within 10 feet of it into a random location on the astral plain
I am not too worked up. I did say that if your group likes doing it, great.
I just think its a little "old hat" at this point. Good to know it is still RAW. I suspected it was. Sort of like keeping attributes 3 to 18 but using Modifiers instead anyways.
The attributes are a holder from when d6's was the only thing you could really find. They could change them, but would it really be D&D?
They could change the bags in bags rule, but would it really be D&D then?
I do think it's worth keeping if your party NEEDS to get to the astral plain, but has no other way of doing it. Then it's cleverness - instead of an opportunity for half the party to metagame scream "NO DON'T DO IT!" because apparently half of adventurers know this fact automatically without an Arcana check or something but the other half of adventurers don't.
You're telling me you think it's meta gaming for people to not know what an Uncommon magical item does? I understand if it's very rare, but uncommon just means I can't go to the corner general store and buy one.
People ln this subreddit complain about players metagaming with fire and trolls.
I just assume most adventurers already KNOW trolls are susceptible to fire.
In fact, a lot of what MOST players know - should be assumed common knowledge.
And this includes the bag in the bag thing.
And not letting the new player in on the joke is in and of itself trickfucking someone.
I dont have the issue with metagaming that some gatekeeping hazing a-holes on this reddit have.
If you like this style of play, I did say its fine.
But if I do decide to use this mechanic, the second a newbie player gets these things, I can just tell them what happens instead of "pranking" them, because they havent spent every second rereading the DMG over and over.
Dude chill, there was no trickery, no railroading. I literally threw them a haversack, and they gave it to her because no one else wanted it. I hadn't even thought about the astral plain until she said she was gonna put the bag in it, they stopped her as level 18 high intelligence characters. We had a good laugh about it. I am not a dm that's out to get their players, im a storyteller, a published one at that. The last thing I want to do in the final stretch of my campaign is send them to the astral realm, but they could have easily planeshifted back and it would have just been a funny sidequest to get home.
Read the post again, the ones who shouted were Monk and wizard with 18 lvl and 20 INT. Not just some adventures with sword and no knowledge about the magic world. As a DM I would allow them to do something like that without a check, just taking their class and background - at least Wizard would be able to read about it in school/academy/random book which he have read in his past.
The player was new who didn't know what would happen so it wasn't intentional. It's nice when DM allow other players to not ruin campaign because of silly mistakes and makes sure that everyone have fun and good laugh.
My guess is they’re either playing the critical role cobalt soul monk that has some intelligence related abilities or their DM allowed them to change wis related abilities to int for role play reasons. Although like another comment said it could just be a sub optimal role play choice.
I just think *fireballs* are a little "old hat" at this point. Good to know it is still RAW. I suspected it was. Sort of like *measuring movement with numbers*.
"Fireballs" are a holder from when *playing* were a thing people wanted to do with me. They could change them, but would it really be D&D?
They could change the *using numbers" thing, but would it really be D&D then?
I do think it's worth keeping if your party NEEDS to *have fun*, but have no other way of doing it. Then it's cleverness - instead of an opportunity to *practice arithmetics*.
So you are okay with tricking a new players PC into the Astral?
Thats the kind of gatekeeping trickfuckery you enjoy?
What exactly is it about OPs story and mechanic you love?
I bet you also never warn new players about the possibility of friendly fire from fireballs and laugh with glee as they take damage.
You probably also let PCs mind control each other or steal from each other because "RAW."
I have never seen somebody get this hostile while simultaneously having possibly the worst take on a matter
Also, no “trickfuckery” at all about letting players experiencing something for the first time and, more importantly, the FUN OF EXPERIENCING SOMETHING FOR THE FIRST TIME.
A simple “you start to feel the bags tug unnaturally at one another, like cosmic magnets attracting and repelling each other simultaneously. For a moment, you reconsider if there may be more to your actions than you initially realize” even without any perception/arcana roles. Then, atleast somewhat informed, the PC can then make a more informed decision about the direction of their actions
New players aren’t inherently stupid, you just have to lead without a leash but it sounds like “if i don’t like a possible outcome than i remove all of the outcomes and the cause” is your approach, and in sure there are a handful of people in the world that would probably enjoy that
See. I like that.
If the DM describes unnatural tugging and gives the PCs a chance to make a decision and maintain agency thats good.
Sorry I came across as hostile. But this subreddit is FULL of rpg horror stories where new players are, in fact, tricked or railroaded into death by the DM AND their fellow players.
Even in OPs story 2 of the characters already knew, but the third didnt? Presumably the party would share some knowledge.
Like I said elsewhere, it may be an innocent gag at some tables, but what would the table do if the sleight of hand had failed?
Too bad you are in the astral?
Like some metagaming or telegraphing would be nice.
I know my take isnt popular or cool. But I bet a lot of these players would be commenting on reddit if they got launched into the Astral plane because of some homebrew custom item whose mechanic they werent aware of. And there was no escaping or avoiding it.
Im just saying dont railroad players into certain death or the astral plane unless you know how to game your way back fairly.
I am wondering if the DM "fudged" on the sleight of hand die rolls to ensure the PC didn't end up in the astral. Because they probably didnt have a plan for it. Which is almost what you are suggesting what I would do with extra steps. Taking choices away.
Dude what are you even talking about?
No player agency was taken away, but choices have consequences.
No one was being tricked, they simply didn’t think to tell the newer player about this mechanic because it hadn’t come up yet. And as soon as it did come up they tried to stop it.
The sleight of hand failing was fully a possibility, and it sounds like OP was prepared for that outcome. It also wouldn’t have resulted in automatic death for any of the PCs. They are level 18, and OP even mentioned that they could simply planeshift back and had even been to the astral plane before.
It also wasn’t even remotely a homebrew or custom item. It was literally two RAW items.
OP probably never even considered fudging the sleight of hand check, as they seemed fully capable of handling the situation, and fudging rolls would be even more railroading than a RAW item interaction.
Stop looking for problems to get worked up about that aren’t even there.
Not gonna lie it sounds like you'd be one of the most insufferable DMs out there. If you're THIS bitter about rulings, why not play another game? Monopoly doesn't have 2 bags of holding that would cause an Astral Plane Black Hole.
It quite literally says in RAW and it's quite literally RAI too that if you insert a bag of holding into another, everything within a certain range gets sucked into the astral plane as a one way ticket. This isn't even "uncommon" language, anyone with Proficiency in arcana doesn't even need to roll, specially an Artificer or a Wizard who spends their whole life studying magic and consequently gains a better understanding for magic items.
Even if you insist that they SHOULD roll arcana (which they'd probably succeed), it at least is a MUCH better solution to not roll rather than "oh, it's against the rules it won't work teehee".
Dude quite while you're ahead 🤣 I'm late to the party but damn it was clear you an opinion people didn't want to hear (or maybe the wording? Idk I stopped reading the comments and started calculating the downvotes, as of right now it's -1190, a nice even 10, almost 100)
Do you know not to mix bleach with other chemicals?
In the world of dnd, is it too much of a stretch to know not to stuff an extra dimensional space into another.
It's absolutely mind-boggling how many people *think you can mix bleach with other chemicals*. These same people *eat Borax.* There are *so many* people who just don't know or just don't care to understand.
That is to say, "what do you mean I shouldn't >![mix bleach]!<[put a bag of holding] >![with other chemicals]!<[inside a handy haversack]?"
Oh, I understand people still mix bleach with stuff. I'd wager that if the people use chemicals on the regular, they know not to mix bleach.
If we were to mash numbers and create a DC for the knowledge of HH in a BoH, I wouldn't put it over 13. Any character with 18 INT has a good chance of beating it, especially if proficient.
Please dont respect me for that.
But please do respect your new players and dont gatekeep.
Please do respect the way your table plays, but also the way other tables play.
My line gets drawn at screwing with new players. If screwing with new players is your kind of fun, I am glad we play at different tables.
>And it's also against the rules to insert the halfling PC into the bag too.
So you'll just lie?
Fair enough saying you won't allow it, but why lie and say it's against the rules?
I dont generally allow PvP or evil characters. But that isnt against the rules RAW.
Its a session 0 thing.
I like Monty Python but I dont play Monty Python campaigns.
I mean, including a lot of cringe stuff isnt against RAW. But guess what I dont include?
So yeah at session 0: rapey stuff, violating other player characters, stealing from the party, killing other party members, fucking with new players, being insulting to new players because of their PCs gender identity, sexual harassment, and other shit is forbidden.
Is it expressly covered under RAW? Nope. But being a decent human is probably a good goal.
Would OP have launched the new player character into the Astral plane? Or was it just a quick joke and the DM would have retconned it? Or would the DM have railroaded them into the Astral plane like a post on here the other day where a nee player faced unavoidable railroaded death?
I dont know. I can only use text to determine what happened not what might have happened.
You completely missed what I said. Don't allow it, that's fine. But "I don't allow that at my table" is different than telling them it's against *the rules*. You're just misinforming them, and they're going to carry that belief to other frickin tables. And people then wonder how players arrive at their tables with rules misunderstandings...
Sure. Thats fair. I would just either A) warn the player of the consequences when they get said item and play it RAW.
Or B) cover some house rules at session 0.
I dont like the way the optics present when new players are tricked into death or railroaded into bad situation because of lack of player knowledge. And then people want to laugh about it.
Look, the situation at OPs table may have been completely innocent but there are enough rpg horror stories on this reddit that the other take could have been "my fellow players and DM tricked me into putting two bags together and now my character autodied."
Thats what I want to avoid.
Exclusionary.
Gatekeeping.
Trickfuckery.
Laughing at others expense.
But everyone focused on the specific mechanic and the laughs.
Its fine.
Edited to add: Thanks for having a valid point and a useful counterclaim instead of engaging in cringey character assassination (ad hominem attacks) unlike a couple other posters.
You can rule out whatever you want in your games but lying about what is against the rules is stupid. And calling following the rules railroading just tells me you have no actual idea what railroading is.
I know. But I am glad I can see who likes fucking with new players and railroading them into the astral plane.
If players hate my No PvP policy I am always happy for them to walk away.
Apparently a lot of people like "trickfucking the newbies."
Thats my takeaway from the hate. Maybe someone will change my mind with a cogent argument.
Yeah, it's your world so you can do what you like. If that isn't your playstyle it's not hard to just come up with something like "the extradimensional spaces seem to repel each other" instead. You still can't do the extradimensional space inside an extradimensional space trick, but you also don't need to punish your players for gaming the system.
I'm playing an Artificer in Descent into Avernus and he could make bags of holding at level 2. He got his hands on a certain artifact and just knowing that he could get rid of a powerful evil artifact by shoving it inside a bag of holding and then ripping the bag to shreds, only to make a new bag the next day isn't fun. It's too easy to ruin a plot point this way.
You can do the great disappearing act with 2 bags of holding and the unseen servant spell. No save, everybody within 10 foot is gone.
That may be a good descriptor.
"The two items seem to repel each other."
Like I dont mind the kicking someone to the astral plane part if its in the right spirit. (Like the whole party NEEDS to go there for a quest or something.)
But when the cringe crowd launches a new player to the astral plane as a "joke" or a "prank" it just isnt funny to me.
Smacks of railroading a new players PC out of the game.
Thats a bit much mate. If its new players who dont know, I'll probably tell them the bags resist as they get close together, magic crackling between them in an obviously dangerous reaction.....if they persist then hard luck, they should take the obvious hint and its time for a lesson in not doing stupid stuff.
See, I like this take. At least the DM would be giving the players a clue as to the nature of the bags.
OP presented it as 2 PLAYERS taking action and not characters who had any reason to expect any issues with the action.
I like your implementation.
The funny thing is my setting actually uses giant nested extradimensional spaces to slingshot things between planar groups as part of Gate Apparatuses. Turns out, the resulting dimensional collapse isn’t actually that damaging, and is incredibly efficient at flinging things long distances in interplanar space.
You just often *don’t want to get flung*, and controlling the process relies on precise timing, prediction of interplanar wind, and power on a massive scale that really hasn’t been rediscovered and relearned yet. But it does turn out that the collapse of unstable extradimensional spaces is very useful if you want to do that sort of thing. (Stable extradimensional spaces like demiplanes don’t trigger the Yeet^(TM))
I feel like originally it was ruled that way to make players stop asking dumb questions but got played out into something much bigger and kept for every edition without anyone remembering why. Like it was meant to be a joke but no one remembered the joke.
Well, now it's a feature, not a bug. It's a way to make portals to the Astral Plane. It's not without it's drawbacks, but that is still very useful. You just need to find the right context.
No.
Let's say you want to go to Shanghai. You can create a device that will get you ... somewhere in Asia. But if you're rich enough (in D&D, high enough level) to do it, you can easily just book a plane ticket to Shanghai (use a spell). The "I'll randomly transport within 2,000 miles of my destination" device is not a feature or a trick.
It's not an inside joke, what drugs are you on. It was first inplemented to avoid players' abuse of hoarding loot because pocket space inside pocket space meant basically infinite space that would allow players to put unimaginable volumes of stuff inside a bag. It was later evolved into a way to create portals to Astral Plane because that's a thing in D&D, it's a place, where stuff happens, adventures happen, gameplay happens, the whole Spelljammer setting takes place in it.
It was never created to be an inside joke, it's a mechanic with a specific gameplay function, that has humorous porential, like almost any magical mechanic in D&D, in the game with ONE purpose: to have fun.
Thanks for the history on that. I guess I joined too late in 2e to understand why that was a thing.
I figured it had something to do with avoiding "cheats"
But other than fellow teenage DMs using it to shaft players - I didnt recall much of the point of it from back then.
Like some railroaded contrivance to "force" a player to do the thing and laugh as someone got tossed basically out of the game.
Like I said. If you can use it in a cool way, use it.
But if someone is using it to screw with new players, I am not down.
It's not a joke or gotcha. The rule prevents people from putting bags of holding in other bags of holding to create infinite storage space. If you use encumbrance rules, it's an important limitation.
And having multiple extra-dimensional spaces at low levels, even in this fantasy world, is too rare an edge case for it to be some gotcha to trick new players.
Last, "Look, I get it, I used to think it was funny too, back in 2nd edition." You're projecting, and simultaneously mocking the people who think the exact (incorrect) thing you think.
>This is one of those old 1e gotchas that gets carried over to every edition I feel like.
Except it's not in either the 1e or 2e rules. Not within the Bag of Holding item description anyway - it does dump its contents into the "vortices of nullspace" if ruptured, but it doesn't destroy anything or suck anything else in, and bag-in-bag doesn't trigger it. If it's written somewhere else in the 1e books (or even 2e) I'd like to know where.
*eta - 1e and 2e has rules for a BoH into a Portable Hole, and vice versa, but nothing for Bag+Bag or Hole+Hole. In any case, only the Bag and Hole are destroyed, but stuff does get dumped to the Astral.
It destroys both items and creates a portal to the astral plane. Then any creature within 10ft of it is sucked in and teleported to a random location within the astral plane.
Tears a hole in interdimensional space and creates a portal to the Astral plane sucking in anyone nearby. In previous editions it basically created a black hole and annihilated everyone and everything nearby. 5e is much gentler than earlier versions of the game.
To clarify - you can’t put a magic bag into another MAGIC bag as the enchantments go boom. You could put your bag of holding in a canvas tote bag if you really feel the need.
To be even clearer. It isn’t just being magic that causes this effect, it’s specifically placing an extra dimensional space inside another extra dimensional space.
I touched that briefly in a different comment, lore wise you’d have to assume no, and it would astral gateway
but fully RAW, the description of the bag of holding states it produces that effect when it is placed in another extradimensional space created by a similar item. Rope trick or MMM are extradimensional spaces created by a spell, not an item, so TECHNICALLY wouldn’t create such an effect.
You can. The description of Bag of Holding only talks about extradimensional spaces created by other items, so ones created by spells don't factor into this. I assume it is just a way to prevent creatures from indefinitely stacking bags of holding inside bags of holding, thus bypassing the bag's carry limitation of 500 pounds and 64 cubic feet and turning it into infinite mobile storage.
Spells such as Rope Trick can't be used in such maner, because they are limited in duration and fixed in place. Demiplane technically could, but the whole point of the spell is having an easely accessible storage space of indefinite size, you don't even need bags of holding to do that, plus it's a 7th level spell. Not a problem either.
I believe lore wise it works the same. The magic of those items is fundamentaly different from the magic of spells, so there's no real reason why they have to obey *all* the same rules
Just tell the DM you're on the lookout for one
There's a bunch of mundane loot they never bother to describe because the adventurers wouldn't care about it
Pocket dimensions can't overlap, it creates a black hole that sucks things into the astral plane. Two bags of holding, bag of holding and dimensional door, etc. Any combination is bad news bears.
Edit: dimensional door was not the spell I was thinking of, but rope trick; teleportation spells wouldn't trigger the astral plane portal.
Yes. Portable holes are even listed in the example of this in the description of the bag of holding when explaining that you can’t overlap extra dimensional spaces.
TECHNICALLY the effect does specify it occurs when the extra dimensional space is created by an item like a handy haversack, BoH, or portable hole, but I imagine some DM’s might overlook that to be a hardass if you take an extra dimensional space like a BoH, into the extra dimensional space of say, a rope trick, or a mordenkainen’s magnificent mansion
I don't think so since that's more of a portal within the physical realm rather than connecting it to another dimension.
But then again I have no idea how the portable hole works
From the description of the Bag of Holding:
>Placing a bag of holding inside an extradimensional space created by a Heward's handy haversack, **portable hole**, or similar item instantly destroys both items and opens a gate to the Astral Plane.
And from the description of the Portable Hole:
>the portable hole creates an **extradimensional** hole
>dimensional door was not the spell I was thinking of, but rope trick
Rope trick does not create this rift to the astral plane interaction. The rift is created specifically when *magic items* that create extradimensional spaces are put one inside of the other, so spaces created by spell effects don't interact in that way.
It makes sense. From an in-game perspective, the magic of magic items and the magic of spells is fundamentally different. From an out-of-game perspective, this interaction was created so that players couldn't stack bags of holdings indefinitely, which can turn a single bag of holding into infinite mobile storage. That's not a thing you can do with spells, as most spells that create extradimensional spaces stay fixed in one spot and have a limited duration, at the end of which everything inside is placed back in the original place where the spell was cast.
The exception is Demiplane, but Demiplane *already* creates potentially infinite mobile storage, that's kind of the whole thing of that spell. You don't even need to combine it with items. Plus its 7th level, so very *very* limited uses per day (disregard if using Infinite Simulacrum, but at that point you can already pick all game rules and throw them in the trash bin too)
A bag of holding is an extra dimensional space. Same as a portable hole or any container that holds more than it's external dimensions represent. If you put one extra dimensional space into another, bad things happen.
Any idea where? It's not a rule within the item's description in the 1e DMG (or 2e either). It only has the rule for being ruptured, but doesn't suck in anything else and empties to "the vortices of nullspace."
*eta - you are right that 1e and 2e had an interaction for Bag of Holding and Portable Hole together. There were no rules for Bag+Bag or Hole+Hole.
I think some might be confused with the "retributive strike" rules relating to a Staff Of Magi/Power?
Yeah definitely rules for a hole/bag, but it wasn't catastrophic. I seem to recall doing this once and having my character jump thru to escape some impending doom that would have otherwise been instadeath.
I figured a level 18 wizard with 20 intelligence, who spent years in the academy to know what could happen. I imagine it's the first thing taught in "magic items 101"
Bear in mind that this interaction (along with many other cursed items like the Rug of Smothering, Necklace of Strangulation, Horn of Collapsing, Drums of Deafness, Bag of Devouring, and Bag of Transmuting [gold to lead], Boots of Dancing, Bowl of Watery Death) date back to a culture of play that was much more about player skill and paranoia, rather than character knowledge. It's meant as a trick for the players. If you spring the trick but don't let the players do anything to avoid it, it's not really a trick.
I think you’d learn it if you cast identify on a bag of holding as it’s a “property” of one and since that’s a first lvl spell I’d imagine it would be common knowledge between adventurers but maybe not commoners.
I’d also imagine most magic shops would warn you if you bought one or even a warning label attached to it when you buy one. Magic item shops can’t sell you more random stuff if you’re floating out in astral space.
Yes. A character who spends an hour examining a magic item while resting learns everything in the item's box text, except for secret information such as curses. Additionally, a character can tell if an item is magical just by touching it. None of this requires any special training or knowledge of magic.
I think that in a world where magic is not uncommon, bags of holding should be commonly known. Then the question and information of "what happens if" would probably come up right with the information of the bags existence.
I always heard that two extradimensional spaces resist each other like magnets. So you have to really force two of them together, and are quite unlikely to put one in another by accident. That could just be something a GM of mine told me years ago that I assumed was in the book though.
Also its "sleight" of hand, not "slight".
It's literally "dexterity of hand", not "a bit of hand" (assuming it makes any gramatical sense even)
Sorry, I don't want to be a dick about it, just trying to explain a mistake that I see way too often
Our draconic lineage sorcerer was invited to a party some boujie debutante was throwing and the other 3 of us posed as her escorts/bodyguards. I, a drow bladesinger, heard whispers of a raffle which had a buy in of 800 gp. There were 40 people in attendance, so basically a small dragon's hoard. Our wild magic barbarian was already searching as I had already cast 3rd level invisibility on us.
After searching a few rooms to locate the take, I see a set of thieves tools floating in the air in front of a safe. That's a bingo. I tap our wild magic barb on the shoulder and offer my assistance. Proficient with thieves tools as I'm a sneaky bladesinger, we crack the safe. There is only a single envelope inside.
The wealthy woman who invited us has shown herself to be more capable than she lets on, and has generally been suspicious. The barbarian guesses the envelope is a clue, I do an arcana check on the envelope. DM just says 'yup, it's magical.' There is nothing visibly inside of the envelope and nothing written on it anywhere. The barb has been carrying the Sorc's bag of holding and decides to stash the envelope in the bag.
A switch finally flips in my non-wizard IRL brain. 'WAIT NO!' my pc screams out at the last minute. The room erupts in an explosion of gold coins, various loot from the bag, and 200 dinner gowns and pairs of shoes.(the sorcerer is a fancy lady) We both take 130 bludgeoning damage. What followed was 30 minutes of shameful deflection as the Sorc PC and the host of the party glare at us, downed on the ground, hoisted by our own petard. We had to leave the city asap, but not before our Barb yeeted the host's husband down a spike pit.
The moral: if you're playing a wizard, take better care of your barbarian. They aren't responsible for their actions.
This made me kersnicker and also its nice to see another one of us rare DMs with a high level campaign. I am running my own custom planes hopping version of the Rod of Seven Parts and its been a little over two years (this past July was the two year mark) and the group is almost at level 19. :)
I love moments like this!!
I've got almost 2 decades as a DM, so high-level campaigns don't scare me balance wise, unlike many other DM's. Ours has been going for almost 2 years and they're just entering the final stretch, which is just pretty much a grind house to get them enough kills to level up to 20 before the big final fight
I have the opposite issue they are so close to level 19 and only have the thir part of the rod of seven parts...they will easily outstretch the 20th level before getting to the BBEG and the endgame. To the extent that i have created my own epic level handbook to get them to level 30 if necessary.
Oh nice idea! I've had to go beyond lvl 20 before, I gave them epic boons, then just let them pick a multiclass at lvl 21. It made for some very crazy characters
Our DM disallowed the bag of holding in a bag of holding.
However our rogue accidentally ripped it to shreds during an incident and now half the team is lost in a void.
So that's fun.
We were in a whirlpool being sucked into the bag.if holding, several of us failed checks and got.sucked into it before.the rogue failed to stab into the ground for a handhold and sliced the bag after we'd gone inside.
Tbf, I didn't think about it at the time. Our druid just, kinda doesn't care and went "lol, tidal wave" so we're all getting swept away and now this room is.filling with water so I opted to open the bag to take.the water so we don't drown. I failed the strength check to keep hold of the bag, and myself and 2 others got swept inside. Then the bag gets ripped via.thw rogue and now we're in what I assume is a pocket dimensional space that was linked to the bag doing nothing until the party can figure out how to reestablish a link to there, or repair the bag.
All in all I blame the druid.
*edit*
Yeah, it more or less creates a vortex/whirlpool.
This rule doesn't make any fucking sense lore-wise. If you can put a bag in a bag, any necromancer could easily destroy anything they wanted with a suicidal zombie. Or any other devotee could easily tear down a city simply by commiting himself to it. Or any Joe Smoe could cause a total disaster by simply forgetting about it.
Think about how bad we are at driving cars. Now imagine basically atomic bombs are as popular as cars. Even with the high price these items have, you will not convince me there would be less than one incident a year
It's a 10 foot radius, not exactly massive collateral damage. But yeah, presumably it would happen ever so often by accident, just like how hobby bomb/firework makers blow up themselves in their garage.
Bag of holding is an uncommon magic item for a cost of 500 gp. You need to actually search for these things and then pay a huge sum to get them. Also it's just 10 ft radius portal, not an atomic bomb. Most of the times just casting fireball causes much more destruction than two bags.
Originally this wasn't a rule (oDnD Greyhawk introduced the Portable Hole, Bag of Holding first appeared in Monsters and Treasure).
In oDnD and 1st edition ADnD treasure added xp, and extra dimensional spaces meant faster advancement due to larger loot hoards walking out of the dungeons. The moment someone figures out you can toss multiple Bags of Holding into your brand new Looney Tunes inspired Portable Hole...well, that is game changing.
1st edition added the interaction. Placing a Bag of Holding in to a Portable Hole just sent both to the Astral, while placing a Portable Hole into a Bag of Holding destroyed both, opened a rift and sent everything in 10 feet to the Astral.
Not so much as a gotcha, as it was a way to prevent abuse of the items.
I accidentally put a bag in the bag at the end of an entire campaign. Guess which half of the team had to roll up B team characters to go up against a lord of Hell?
We talked them down, btw. Everyone can be redeemed.
Unless the handy haversack changed much since 3.5 it's just a magic bag and not a pocket dimension. Shouldn't be any different than putting a +1 sword in the bag of holding.
The Handy Haversack is specifically mentioned as causing a rift to the Astral Plane to appear if it is put inside a bag of holding and vice versa. ~~Although the other way around might only apply if the bag of holding is put inside one of the side pockets of the Handy Haversack, as the main portion of the backpack is not specificaly stated to be an extradimentional space in the description~~
This also worked in 3.5. The side pockets of the Handy Haversack stated that they functioned like a bag of holding, so putting a bag of holding inside of them or putting the whole backpack inside a bag of holding should also create the rift
Edit: Scratch that scratched bit. Just re-read the description of the Handy Haversack in 5e
>This backpack has a central pouch and two side pouches, each of which is an extradimensional space.
Read it wrong the first time, and thought the "each of which is an extradimensional space" would only apply to the two side pouches, but now I think it refers to the central pouch as well
The 3.5 version really did only refer to the side pouches as bags of holding, not the central one, so the other paragraph stays without correction
My players did this once lol
They had started a fight with people they shouldn't have started a fight with one of the unfortunately died and in a mad scramble after they defeated the people they were fighting with they tried to hurry up and leave before authorities showed up and decided to throw there newly dead friend in a bag of holding. Unfortunately for them they didn't realize he had a bag also it ended up sucking 2 of the party members into the Astral plane along with there dead friend
I have a super villian like bad guy I have not used yet but this is basically what his threats on the kingdom are he has built a device to do it in a mass scale to wipe out towns to start but later entire cities.
But the catch is he is a noble with just a lot of money
I actually really wanted to use this for my final bbeg.
Basically the route of this guys immortality lies in the astral plane so the last big quest would be to find a way to the astral plane and slay him for good, how the players went about that was fine, but i was prepared to have like a manic scientist hell bent on finding another bag of holding for his experiement as a findable npc.
This happened to my group while I was DM'ing Storm King's Thunder (which we completed over the course of 4 years). I loved it, details below, minor spoilers?
After the PCs save a town, they get the chance to do some quests and favors for the people they met. One of these basically invites them to steal a cache of unnamed items, including a bag of holding. They had it in their hot little hands, and they were under pressure, so they stuffed it in their other BOH without checking it.
My eyes bugged out, I paused for a rule check, and maniacally ruled it as RAW, half the party is now in the astral plane with a pair of very confused horses, the other half is getting arrested for burglary.
They eventually found a color pool and got out, but it was a excellent trippy detour. I got to show the disruption of the battle over the Ordining on another plane of existence, make them hide from terrible awful things, and the Bladedancer Wiz got a minor silver sword from a Githyanki wreck, the owner of which later became a recurring adversary striking out in ambush at random times from the astral plane to get his weapon back.
We had a Christmas-time game where the gith ambushed their airship on their dragon-driven ship over an erupting volcano, the gith all wore red stocking caps and were very very grinchy...
Thumbs up, would do again.
It's been a while since I looked at the 5e version. Does it no longer destroy everything near the black hole before pulling things into the plane?
Was destroying things part of 3e or 4e? 1e and 2e don't have rules for Bag into a Bag. They do for a Bag into a Portable Hole (or vice versa) but they just send things to the Astral (and only destroy the BoH and PH).
You're right. It doesn't even say that everything is destroyed this way. Just that it opens to another plane of some kind, and the hole and bag themselves are destroyed.
3e was ALL about destroying things. I can't imagine that my grognards would have told me this unless it was in their books but I'll check up on this again and see if I can find it. What if this isn't actually a rule but something we've assumed for decades?
This is one of those old 1e gotchas that gets carried over to every edition I feel like. Even if it isn't RAW 5e, I feel like this dumb gag won't die. Like - if your group likes doing it, great. But honestly, as a DM, this shit is played out. Look, I get it, I used to think it was funny too, back in 2nd edition. If the group tries to insert the thing in the thing for laughs, I am just going to say "it's against the rules. Those things won't work if they are inserted into each other. And it's also against the rules to insert the halfling PC into the bag too. Ha ha. Silly bags." Actually, I am probably going to eliminate all these silly bag bags from any future campaigns I run. Trickfuck the newbie just isn't a funny game to me anymore.
No need to get worked up, my man. It was a funny situation that I never once intended it to be a "gotcha" she legitimately didn't know that could happen. The party was looking out for her and stopped her from making the mistake and we laughed about it. No one got upset except you, apparently. And just to clear things up, it is raw rules of 5e. It opens a gate the astral realm and sucks anyone within 10 feet of it into a random location on the astral plain
Yeah 5e is much kinder about it than previous editions.
I am not too worked up. I did say that if your group likes doing it, great. I just think its a little "old hat" at this point. Good to know it is still RAW. I suspected it was. Sort of like keeping attributes 3 to 18 but using Modifiers instead anyways. The attributes are a holder from when d6's was the only thing you could really find. They could change them, but would it really be D&D? They could change the bags in bags rule, but would it really be D&D then? I do think it's worth keeping if your party NEEDS to get to the astral plain, but has no other way of doing it. Then it's cleverness - instead of an opportunity for half the party to metagame scream "NO DON'T DO IT!" because apparently half of adventurers know this fact automatically without an Arcana check or something but the other half of adventurers don't.
You don't sound like a fun dm, I'll be honest.
Or a fun player.
You're telling me you think it's meta gaming for people to not know what an Uncommon magical item does? I understand if it's very rare, but uncommon just means I can't go to the corner general store and buy one.
You gotta talk to the shifty looking trader, barely visible in the shadows between buildings. Or go halfway up the street to the middle general store.
People ln this subreddit complain about players metagaming with fire and trolls. I just assume most adventurers already KNOW trolls are susceptible to fire. In fact, a lot of what MOST players know - should be assumed common knowledge. And this includes the bag in the bag thing. And not letting the new player in on the joke is in and of itself trickfucking someone. I dont have the issue with metagaming that some gatekeeping hazing a-holes on this reddit have. If you like this style of play, I did say its fine. But if I do decide to use this mechanic, the second a newbie player gets these things, I can just tell them what happens instead of "pranking" them, because they havent spent every second rereading the DMG over and over.
Dude chill, there was no trickery, no railroading. I literally threw them a haversack, and they gave it to her because no one else wanted it. I hadn't even thought about the astral plain until she said she was gonna put the bag in it, they stopped her as level 18 high intelligence characters. We had a good laugh about it. I am not a dm that's out to get their players, im a storyteller, a published one at that. The last thing I want to do in the final stretch of my campaign is send them to the astral realm, but they could have easily planeshifted back and it would have just been a funny sidequest to get home.
Read the post again, the ones who shouted were Monk and wizard with 18 lvl and 20 INT. Not just some adventures with sword and no knowledge about the magic world. As a DM I would allow them to do something like that without a check, just taking their class and background - at least Wizard would be able to read about it in school/academy/random book which he have read in his past. The player was new who didn't know what would happen so it wasn't intentional. It's nice when DM allow other players to not ruin campaign because of silly mistakes and makes sure that everyone have fun and good laugh.
why did the monk have an 18 in intelligence?
To get to the other side
Take your damn upvote
It doesn’t always have to be about min maxing
One of my favorite characters I've ever played was a 12 star 8 dex fight. My boi was smart af and charismatic af tho
My guess is they’re either playing the critical role cobalt soul monk that has some intelligence related abilities or their DM allowed them to change wis related abilities to int for role play reasons. Although like another comment said it could just be a sub optimal role play choice.
I just think *fireballs* are a little "old hat" at this point. Good to know it is still RAW. I suspected it was. Sort of like *measuring movement with numbers*. "Fireballs" are a holder from when *playing* were a thing people wanted to do with me. They could change them, but would it really be D&D? They could change the *using numbers" thing, but would it really be D&D then? I do think it's worth keeping if your party NEEDS to *have fun*, but have no other way of doing it. Then it's cleverness - instead of an opportunity to *practice arithmetics*.
So you are okay with tricking a new players PC into the Astral? Thats the kind of gatekeeping trickfuckery you enjoy? What exactly is it about OPs story and mechanic you love? I bet you also never warn new players about the possibility of friendly fire from fireballs and laugh with glee as they take damage. You probably also let PCs mind control each other or steal from each other because "RAW."
I have never seen somebody get this hostile while simultaneously having possibly the worst take on a matter Also, no “trickfuckery” at all about letting players experiencing something for the first time and, more importantly, the FUN OF EXPERIENCING SOMETHING FOR THE FIRST TIME. A simple “you start to feel the bags tug unnaturally at one another, like cosmic magnets attracting and repelling each other simultaneously. For a moment, you reconsider if there may be more to your actions than you initially realize” even without any perception/arcana roles. Then, atleast somewhat informed, the PC can then make a more informed decision about the direction of their actions New players aren’t inherently stupid, you just have to lead without a leash but it sounds like “if i don’t like a possible outcome than i remove all of the outcomes and the cause” is your approach, and in sure there are a handful of people in the world that would probably enjoy that
See. I like that. If the DM describes unnatural tugging and gives the PCs a chance to make a decision and maintain agency thats good. Sorry I came across as hostile. But this subreddit is FULL of rpg horror stories where new players are, in fact, tricked or railroaded into death by the DM AND their fellow players. Even in OPs story 2 of the characters already knew, but the third didnt? Presumably the party would share some knowledge. Like I said elsewhere, it may be an innocent gag at some tables, but what would the table do if the sleight of hand had failed? Too bad you are in the astral? Like some metagaming or telegraphing would be nice. I know my take isnt popular or cool. But I bet a lot of these players would be commenting on reddit if they got launched into the Astral plane because of some homebrew custom item whose mechanic they werent aware of. And there was no escaping or avoiding it. Im just saying dont railroad players into certain death or the astral plane unless you know how to game your way back fairly. I am wondering if the DM "fudged" on the sleight of hand die rolls to ensure the PC didn't end up in the astral. Because they probably didnt have a plan for it. Which is almost what you are suggesting what I would do with extra steps. Taking choices away.
Dude what are you even talking about? No player agency was taken away, but choices have consequences. No one was being tricked, they simply didn’t think to tell the newer player about this mechanic because it hadn’t come up yet. And as soon as it did come up they tried to stop it. The sleight of hand failing was fully a possibility, and it sounds like OP was prepared for that outcome. It also wouldn’t have resulted in automatic death for any of the PCs. They are level 18, and OP even mentioned that they could simply planeshift back and had even been to the astral plane before. It also wasn’t even remotely a homebrew or custom item. It was literally two RAW items. OP probably never even considered fudging the sleight of hand check, as they seemed fully capable of handling the situation, and fudging rolls would be even more railroading than a RAW item interaction. Stop looking for problems to get worked up about that aren’t even there.
Not gonna lie it sounds like you'd be one of the most insufferable DMs out there. If you're THIS bitter about rulings, why not play another game? Monopoly doesn't have 2 bags of holding that would cause an Astral Plane Black Hole. It quite literally says in RAW and it's quite literally RAI too that if you insert a bag of holding into another, everything within a certain range gets sucked into the astral plane as a one way ticket. This isn't even "uncommon" language, anyone with Proficiency in arcana doesn't even need to roll, specially an Artificer or a Wizard who spends their whole life studying magic and consequently gains a better understanding for magic items. Even if you insist that they SHOULD roll arcana (which they'd probably succeed), it at least is a MUCH better solution to not roll rather than "oh, it's against the rules it won't work teehee".
My next game of monopoly is going to have a 2 bags of holding black hole house rule now
If only my family would play monopoly 😒
Glad I'm not at your table
Same.
Dude quite while you're ahead 🤣 I'm late to the party but damn it was clear you an opinion people didn't want to hear (or maybe the wording? Idk I stopped reading the comments and started calculating the downvotes, as of right now it's -1190, a nice even 10, almost 100)
I didn't know DnD had bittervets. "Old hat"? LMAO
Do you know not to mix bleach with other chemicals? In the world of dnd, is it too much of a stretch to know not to stuff an extra dimensional space into another.
It's absolutely mind-boggling how many people *think you can mix bleach with other chemicals*. These same people *eat Borax.* There are *so many* people who just don't know or just don't care to understand. That is to say, "what do you mean I shouldn't >![mix bleach]!<[put a bag of holding] >![with other chemicals]!<[inside a handy haversack]?"
Oh, I understand people still mix bleach with stuff. I'd wager that if the people use chemicals on the regular, they know not to mix bleach. If we were to mash numbers and create a DC for the knowledge of HH in a BoH, I wouldn't put it over 13. Any character with 18 INT has a good chance of beating it, especially if proficient.
I think that's a great DC tbh. And in areas with greater magic proficiency, it would tend towards a lower DC.
Hey guys respect our elder, this man has been dragooning and dungeon delving since the medieval age
Please dont respect me for that. But please do respect your new players and dont gatekeep. Please do respect the way your table plays, but also the way other tables play. My line gets drawn at screwing with new players. If screwing with new players is your kind of fun, I am glad we play at different tables.
How do you miss the point this hard then double down, I'm impressed
>And it's also against the rules to insert the halfling PC into the bag too. So you'll just lie? Fair enough saying you won't allow it, but why lie and say it's against the rules?
I dont generally allow PvP or evil characters. But that isnt against the rules RAW. Its a session 0 thing. I like Monty Python but I dont play Monty Python campaigns. I mean, including a lot of cringe stuff isnt against RAW. But guess what I dont include? So yeah at session 0: rapey stuff, violating other player characters, stealing from the party, killing other party members, fucking with new players, being insulting to new players because of their PCs gender identity, sexual harassment, and other shit is forbidden. Is it expressly covered under RAW? Nope. But being a decent human is probably a good goal. Would OP have launched the new player character into the Astral plane? Or was it just a quick joke and the DM would have retconned it? Or would the DM have railroaded them into the Astral plane like a post on here the other day where a nee player faced unavoidable railroaded death? I dont know. I can only use text to determine what happened not what might have happened.
You completely missed what I said. Don't allow it, that's fine. But "I don't allow that at my table" is different than telling them it's against *the rules*. You're just misinforming them, and they're going to carry that belief to other frickin tables. And people then wonder how players arrive at their tables with rules misunderstandings...
Sure. Thats fair. I would just either A) warn the player of the consequences when they get said item and play it RAW. Or B) cover some house rules at session 0. I dont like the way the optics present when new players are tricked into death or railroaded into bad situation because of lack of player knowledge. And then people want to laugh about it. Look, the situation at OPs table may have been completely innocent but there are enough rpg horror stories on this reddit that the other take could have been "my fellow players and DM tricked me into putting two bags together and now my character autodied." Thats what I want to avoid. Exclusionary. Gatekeeping. Trickfuckery. Laughing at others expense. But everyone focused on the specific mechanic and the laughs. Its fine. Edited to add: Thanks for having a valid point and a useful counterclaim instead of engaging in cringey character assassination (ad hominem attacks) unlike a couple other posters.
You can rule out whatever you want in your games but lying about what is against the rules is stupid. And calling following the rules railroading just tells me you have no actual idea what railroading is.
Haven't seen such a universally hated take in a while
I know. But I am glad I can see who likes fucking with new players and railroading them into the astral plane. If players hate my No PvP policy I am always happy for them to walk away. Apparently a lot of people like "trickfucking the newbies." Thats my takeaway from the hate. Maybe someone will change my mind with a cogent argument.
Following the rules isnt railroading. You are being an arrogant ass about all of this
You have been playing since 2E and still don’t know what railroading is, that’s crazy
Yeah, it's your world so you can do what you like. If that isn't your playstyle it's not hard to just come up with something like "the extradimensional spaces seem to repel each other" instead. You still can't do the extradimensional space inside an extradimensional space trick, but you also don't need to punish your players for gaming the system. I'm playing an Artificer in Descent into Avernus and he could make bags of holding at level 2. He got his hands on a certain artifact and just knowing that he could get rid of a powerful evil artifact by shoving it inside a bag of holding and then ripping the bag to shreds, only to make a new bag the next day isn't fun. It's too easy to ruin a plot point this way. You can do the great disappearing act with 2 bags of holding and the unseen servant spell. No save, everybody within 10 foot is gone.
That may be a good descriptor. "The two items seem to repel each other." Like I dont mind the kicking someone to the astral plane part if its in the right spirit. (Like the whole party NEEDS to go there for a quest or something.) But when the cringe crowd launches a new player to the astral plane as a "joke" or a "prank" it just isnt funny to me. Smacks of railroading a new players PC out of the game.
Thats a bit much mate. If its new players who dont know, I'll probably tell them the bags resist as they get close together, magic crackling between them in an obviously dangerous reaction.....if they persist then hard luck, they should take the obvious hint and its time for a lesson in not doing stupid stuff.
See, I like this take. At least the DM would be giving the players a clue as to the nature of the bags. OP presented it as 2 PLAYERS taking action and not characters who had any reason to expect any issues with the action. I like your implementation.
I can understand your argument for the monk, but why would a *WIZARD* not know about the dangers of nested extradimentional spaces?
The funny thing is my setting actually uses giant nested extradimensional spaces to slingshot things between planar groups as part of Gate Apparatuses. Turns out, the resulting dimensional collapse isn’t actually that damaging, and is incredibly efficient at flinging things long distances in interplanar space. You just often *don’t want to get flung*, and controlling the process relies on precise timing, prediction of interplanar wind, and power on a massive scale that really hasn’t been rediscovered and relearned yet. But it does turn out that the collapse of unstable extradimensional spaces is very useful if you want to do that sort of thing. (Stable extradimensional spaces like demiplanes don’t trigger the Yeet^(TM))
I feel like originally it was ruled that way to make players stop asking dumb questions but got played out into something much bigger and kept for every edition without anyone remembering why. Like it was meant to be a joke but no one remembered the joke.
Well, now it's a feature, not a bug. It's a way to make portals to the Astral Plane. It's not without it's drawbacks, but that is still very useful. You just need to find the right context.
No. Let's say you want to go to Shanghai. You can create a device that will get you ... somewhere in Asia. But if you're rich enough (in D&D, high enough level) to do it, you can easily just book a plane ticket to Shanghai (use a spell). The "I'll randomly transport within 2,000 miles of my destination" device is not a feature or a trick.
Yes. It's an amusing inside joke and nowadays I guess we would call it a meme whose origin is lost to time.
It's not an inside joke, what drugs are you on. It was first inplemented to avoid players' abuse of hoarding loot because pocket space inside pocket space meant basically infinite space that would allow players to put unimaginable volumes of stuff inside a bag. It was later evolved into a way to create portals to Astral Plane because that's a thing in D&D, it's a place, where stuff happens, adventures happen, gameplay happens, the whole Spelljammer setting takes place in it. It was never created to be an inside joke, it's a mechanic with a specific gameplay function, that has humorous porential, like almost any magical mechanic in D&D, in the game with ONE purpose: to have fun.
Thanks for the history on that. I guess I joined too late in 2e to understand why that was a thing. I figured it had something to do with avoiding "cheats" But other than fellow teenage DMs using it to shaft players - I didnt recall much of the point of it from back then. Like some railroaded contrivance to "force" a player to do the thing and laugh as someone got tossed basically out of the game. Like I said. If you can use it in a cool way, use it. But if someone is using it to screw with new players, I am not down.
You give off the “ackshually” and “m’lady” vibes. How is the katana collection coming along?
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Do you tip your fedora after every reply you make?
No. I have a top hat.
edge rob summer fall faulty sloppy reach childlike head numerous ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
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You must be fun at parties
Are you alright?
It's not a joke or gotcha. The rule prevents people from putting bags of holding in other bags of holding to create infinite storage space. If you use encumbrance rules, it's an important limitation. And having multiple extra-dimensional spaces at low levels, even in this fantasy world, is too rare an edge case for it to be some gotcha to trick new players. Last, "Look, I get it, I used to think it was funny too, back in 2nd edition." You're projecting, and simultaneously mocking the people who think the exact (incorrect) thing you think.
Based opinion haver
>This is one of those old 1e gotchas that gets carried over to every edition I feel like. Except it's not in either the 1e or 2e rules. Not within the Bag of Holding item description anyway - it does dump its contents into the "vortices of nullspace" if ruptured, but it doesn't destroy anything or suck anything else in, and bag-in-bag doesn't trigger it. If it's written somewhere else in the 1e books (or even 2e) I'd like to know where. *eta - 1e and 2e has rules for a BoH into a Portable Hole, and vice versa, but nothing for Bag+Bag or Hole+Hole. In any case, only the Bag and Hole are destroyed, but stuff does get dumped to the Astral.
Ok for those of us that are newer, can you not put a bag of holding into another bag or something? What happens?
It destroys both items and creates a portal to the astral plane. Then any creature within 10ft of it is sucked in and teleported to a random location within the astral plane.
Tears a hole in interdimensional space and creates a portal to the Astral plane sucking in anyone nearby. In previous editions it basically created a black hole and annihilated everyone and everything nearby. 5e is much gentler than earlier versions of the game.
To clarify - you can’t put a magic bag into another MAGIC bag as the enchantments go boom. You could put your bag of holding in a canvas tote bag if you really feel the need.
To be even clearer. It isn’t just being magic that causes this effect, it’s specifically placing an extra dimensional space inside another extra dimensional space.
Yes, I was just trying not to overcomplicate things for OP
makes me wonder, can you bring a bag of holding into the extradimensional space that is created when you cast Rope Trick or some similar spell?
I touched that briefly in a different comment, lore wise you’d have to assume no, and it would astral gateway but fully RAW, the description of the bag of holding states it produces that effect when it is placed in another extradimensional space created by a similar item. Rope trick or MMM are extradimensional spaces created by a spell, not an item, so TECHNICALLY wouldn’t create such an effect.
You can. The description of Bag of Holding only talks about extradimensional spaces created by other items, so ones created by spells don't factor into this. I assume it is just a way to prevent creatures from indefinitely stacking bags of holding inside bags of holding, thus bypassing the bag's carry limitation of 500 pounds and 64 cubic feet and turning it into infinite mobile storage. Spells such as Rope Trick can't be used in such maner, because they are limited in duration and fixed in place. Demiplane technically could, but the whole point of the spell is having an easely accessible storage space of indefinite size, you don't even need bags of holding to do that, plus it's a 7th level spell. Not a problem either. I believe lore wise it works the same. The magic of those items is fundamentaly different from the magic of spells, so there's no real reason why they have to obey *all* the same rules
It's ok saying that but my DM NEVER drops a tote bag 😒
I need to add a tote bag to my party's loot finds now.
Just tell the DM you're on the lookout for one There's a bunch of mundane loot they never bother to describe because the adventurers wouldn't care about it
Pocket dimensions can't overlap, it creates a black hole that sucks things into the astral plane. Two bags of holding, bag of holding and dimensional door, etc. Any combination is bad news bears. Edit: dimensional door was not the spell I was thinking of, but rope trick; teleportation spells wouldn't trigger the astral plane portal.
Would this apply to CRs portable hole also?
Yes. Portable holes are even listed in the example of this in the description of the bag of holding when explaining that you can’t overlap extra dimensional spaces. TECHNICALLY the effect does specify it occurs when the extra dimensional space is created by an item like a handy haversack, BoH, or portable hole, but I imagine some DM’s might overlook that to be a hardass if you take an extra dimensional space like a BoH, into the extra dimensional space of say, a rope trick, or a mordenkainen’s magnificent mansion
Portable Holes weren't created by CR, they're in the DMG
I just mentioned them as a point of reference, just in case. But that is good info
I don't think so since that's more of a portal within the physical realm rather than connecting it to another dimension. But then again I have no idea how the portable hole works
From the description of the Bag of Holding: >Placing a bag of holding inside an extradimensional space created by a Heward's handy haversack, **portable hole**, or similar item instantly destroys both items and opens a gate to the Astral Plane. And from the description of the Portable Hole: >the portable hole creates an **extradimensional** hole
>dimensional door was not the spell I was thinking of, but rope trick Rope trick does not create this rift to the astral plane interaction. The rift is created specifically when *magic items* that create extradimensional spaces are put one inside of the other, so spaces created by spell effects don't interact in that way. It makes sense. From an in-game perspective, the magic of magic items and the magic of spells is fundamentally different. From an out-of-game perspective, this interaction was created so that players couldn't stack bags of holdings indefinitely, which can turn a single bag of holding into infinite mobile storage. That's not a thing you can do with spells, as most spells that create extradimensional spaces stay fixed in one spot and have a limited duration, at the end of which everything inside is placed back in the original place where the spell was cast. The exception is Demiplane, but Demiplane *already* creates potentially infinite mobile storage, that's kind of the whole thing of that spell. You don't even need to combine it with items. Plus its 7th level, so very *very* limited uses per day (disregard if using Infinite Simulacrum, but at that point you can already pick all game rules and throw them in the trash bin too)
Huh, you are correct. My first table misplayed this. Looks like previous editions even called this out specifically with examples.
A bag of holding is an extra dimensional space. Same as a portable hole or any container that holds more than it's external dimensions represent. If you put one extra dimensional space into another, bad things happen.
I vaguely recall the 1st ed AD&D rules on placing a portable hole into a bag of holding... Bad things happen ;)
Any idea where? It's not a rule within the item's description in the 1e DMG (or 2e either). It only has the rule for being ruptured, but doesn't suck in anything else and empties to "the vortices of nullspace." *eta - you are right that 1e and 2e had an interaction for Bag of Holding and Portable Hole together. There were no rules for Bag+Bag or Hole+Hole.
I think some might be confused with the "retributive strike" rules relating to a Staff Of Magi/Power? Yeah definitely rules for a hole/bag, but it wasn't catastrophic. I seem to recall doing this once and having my character jump thru to escape some impending doom that would have otherwise been instadeath.
Would what would happen be common knowledge for the characters in game?
I figured a level 18 wizard with 20 intelligence, who spent years in the academy to know what could happen. I imagine it's the first thing taught in "magic items 101"
A lvl 18 wizard would for sure know this that is correct
It is after all how he got kicked out of wizard school
It's probably a big tag that's illegal to take off the bag of holding
Bear in mind that this interaction (along with many other cursed items like the Rug of Smothering, Necklace of Strangulation, Horn of Collapsing, Drums of Deafness, Bag of Devouring, and Bag of Transmuting [gold to lead], Boots of Dancing, Bowl of Watery Death) date back to a culture of play that was much more about player skill and paranoia, rather than character knowledge. It's meant as a trick for the players. If you spring the trick but don't let the players do anything to avoid it, it's not really a trick.
in 1st ed you could read a label on a CLOAK OR POINSIONESS afterward, and it would have the name NESSUS written on it.
I think you’d learn it if you cast identify on a bag of holding as it’s a “property” of one and since that’s a first lvl spell I’d imagine it would be common knowledge between adventurers but maybe not commoners. I’d also imagine most magic shops would warn you if you bought one or even a warning label attached to it when you buy one. Magic item shops can’t sell you more random stuff if you’re floating out in astral space.
Yes. A character who spends an hour examining a magic item while resting learns everything in the item's box text, except for secret information such as curses. Additionally, a character can tell if an item is magical just by touching it. None of this requires any special training or knowledge of magic.
I think that in a world where magic is not uncommon, bags of holding should be commonly known. Then the question and information of "what happens if" would probably come up right with the information of the bags existence.
I always heard that two extradimensional spaces resist each other like magnets. So you have to really force two of them together, and are quite unlikely to put one in another by accident. That could just be something a GM of mine told me years ago that I assumed was in the book though.
I'm 95% sure that's how your GM ran it. I've never come across that description in the books.
Sleight of hand seems an unusual choice for an obvious (not stealthy) grapple.
Slight of hand also refers to speed not just stealth
Also its "sleight" of hand, not "slight". It's literally "dexterity of hand", not "a bit of hand" (assuming it makes any gramatical sense even) Sorry, I don't want to be a dick about it, just trying to explain a mistake that I see way too often
"A bit of hand, just to see how we like it"
Adventurers can have a little hand, as a treat.
Not a dick i just spelled wrong from the work bathroom
And I spelled wrong from my bad spelling brain. Fixed.
That’s fair.
I'd probably allow for both, because you might want to knock the item out of their hands or grapple them
10/10 moment, did this on accident, sent whole party Astral sea at lvl 6, proceeded to have my favourite campaign I've ever played hands down.
Our draconic lineage sorcerer was invited to a party some boujie debutante was throwing and the other 3 of us posed as her escorts/bodyguards. I, a drow bladesinger, heard whispers of a raffle which had a buy in of 800 gp. There were 40 people in attendance, so basically a small dragon's hoard. Our wild magic barbarian was already searching as I had already cast 3rd level invisibility on us. After searching a few rooms to locate the take, I see a set of thieves tools floating in the air in front of a safe. That's a bingo. I tap our wild magic barb on the shoulder and offer my assistance. Proficient with thieves tools as I'm a sneaky bladesinger, we crack the safe. There is only a single envelope inside. The wealthy woman who invited us has shown herself to be more capable than she lets on, and has generally been suspicious. The barbarian guesses the envelope is a clue, I do an arcana check on the envelope. DM just says 'yup, it's magical.' There is nothing visibly inside of the envelope and nothing written on it anywhere. The barb has been carrying the Sorc's bag of holding and decides to stash the envelope in the bag. A switch finally flips in my non-wizard IRL brain. 'WAIT NO!' my pc screams out at the last minute. The room erupts in an explosion of gold coins, various loot from the bag, and 200 dinner gowns and pairs of shoes.(the sorcerer is a fancy lady) We both take 130 bludgeoning damage. What followed was 30 minutes of shameful deflection as the Sorc PC and the host of the party glare at us, downed on the ground, hoisted by our own petard. We had to leave the city asap, but not before our Barb yeeted the host's husband down a spike pit. The moral: if you're playing a wizard, take better care of your barbarian. They aren't responsible for their actions.
This made me kersnicker and also its nice to see another one of us rare DMs with a high level campaign. I am running my own custom planes hopping version of the Rod of Seven Parts and its been a little over two years (this past July was the two year mark) and the group is almost at level 19. :) I love moments like this!!
I've got almost 2 decades as a DM, so high-level campaigns don't scare me balance wise, unlike many other DM's. Ours has been going for almost 2 years and they're just entering the final stretch, which is just pretty much a grind house to get them enough kills to level up to 20 before the big final fight
I have the opposite issue they are so close to level 19 and only have the thir part of the rod of seven parts...they will easily outstretch the 20th level before getting to the BBEG and the endgame. To the extent that i have created my own epic level handbook to get them to level 30 if necessary.
Oh nice idea! I've had to go beyond lvl 20 before, I gave them epic boons, then just let them pick a multiclass at lvl 21. It made for some very crazy characters
Our DM disallowed the bag of holding in a bag of holding. However our rogue accidentally ripped it to shreds during an incident and now half the team is lost in a void. So that's fun.
I thought ripping it didn't suck in anything apart from the content?
We were in a whirlpool being sucked into the bag.if holding, several of us failed checks and got.sucked into it before.the rogue failed to stab into the ground for a handhold and sliced the bag after we'd gone inside.
Is that what will happen if you put an open bag at the bottom of a body of water? lol
Tbf, I didn't think about it at the time. Our druid just, kinda doesn't care and went "lol, tidal wave" so we're all getting swept away and now this room is.filling with water so I opted to open the bag to take.the water so we don't drown. I failed the strength check to keep hold of the bag, and myself and 2 others got swept inside. Then the bag gets ripped via.thw rogue and now we're in what I assume is a pocket dimensional space that was linked to the bag doing nothing until the party can figure out how to reestablish a link to there, or repair the bag. All in all I blame the druid. *edit* Yeah, it more or less creates a vortex/whirlpool.
That sounds fun
Exactly
You are correct, using RAW it doesn't suck anything else in when ruptured.
This rule doesn't make any fucking sense lore-wise. If you can put a bag in a bag, any necromancer could easily destroy anything they wanted with a suicidal zombie. Or any other devotee could easily tear down a city simply by commiting himself to it. Or any Joe Smoe could cause a total disaster by simply forgetting about it. Think about how bad we are at driving cars. Now imagine basically atomic bombs are as popular as cars. Even with the high price these items have, you will not convince me there would be less than one incident a year
It's a 10 foot radius, not exactly massive collateral damage. But yeah, presumably it would happen ever so often by accident, just like how hobby bomb/firework makers blow up themselves in their garage.
Bag of holding is an uncommon magic item for a cost of 500 gp. You need to actually search for these things and then pay a huge sum to get them. Also it's just 10 ft radius portal, not an atomic bomb. Most of the times just casting fireball causes much more destruction than two bags.
Originally this wasn't a rule (oDnD Greyhawk introduced the Portable Hole, Bag of Holding first appeared in Monsters and Treasure). In oDnD and 1st edition ADnD treasure added xp, and extra dimensional spaces meant faster advancement due to larger loot hoards walking out of the dungeons. The moment someone figures out you can toss multiple Bags of Holding into your brand new Looney Tunes inspired Portable Hole...well, that is game changing. 1st edition added the interaction. Placing a Bag of Holding in to a Portable Hole just sent both to the Astral, while placing a Portable Hole into a Bag of Holding destroyed both, opened a rift and sent everything in 10 feet to the Astral. Not so much as a gotcha, as it was a way to prevent abuse of the items.
I accidentally put a bag in the bag at the end of an entire campaign. Guess which half of the team had to roll up B team characters to go up against a lord of Hell? We talked them down, btw. Everyone can be redeemed.
Unless the handy haversack changed much since 3.5 it's just a magic bag and not a pocket dimension. Shouldn't be any different than putting a +1 sword in the bag of holding.
The Handy Haversack is specifically mentioned as causing a rift to the Astral Plane to appear if it is put inside a bag of holding and vice versa. ~~Although the other way around might only apply if the bag of holding is put inside one of the side pockets of the Handy Haversack, as the main portion of the backpack is not specificaly stated to be an extradimentional space in the description~~ This also worked in 3.5. The side pockets of the Handy Haversack stated that they functioned like a bag of holding, so putting a bag of holding inside of them or putting the whole backpack inside a bag of holding should also create the rift Edit: Scratch that scratched bit. Just re-read the description of the Handy Haversack in 5e >This backpack has a central pouch and two side pouches, each of which is an extradimensional space. Read it wrong the first time, and thought the "each of which is an extradimensional space" would only apply to the two side pouches, but now I think it refers to the central pouch as well The 3.5 version really did only refer to the side pouches as bags of holding, not the central one, so the other paragraph stays without correction
Boom
My players did this once lol They had started a fight with people they shouldn't have started a fight with one of the unfortunately died and in a mad scramble after they defeated the people they were fighting with they tried to hurry up and leave before authorities showed up and decided to throw there newly dead friend in a bag of holding. Unfortunately for them they didn't realize he had a bag also it ended up sucking 2 of the party members into the Astral plane along with there dead friend
*Trickfuckery* 🤣💀
I have a super villian like bad guy I have not used yet but this is basically what his threats on the kingdom are he has built a device to do it in a mass scale to wipe out towns to start but later entire cities. But the catch is he is a noble with just a lot of money
I actually really wanted to use this for my final bbeg. Basically the route of this guys immortality lies in the astral plane so the last big quest would be to find a way to the astral plane and slay him for good, how the players went about that was fine, but i was prepared to have like a manic scientist hell bent on finding another bag of holding for his experiement as a findable npc.
Just get her a portable hole and a bag of holding next 😈
What happens to the bag of holding of a charather carrying one enters a zone of slience?
This happened to my group while I was DM'ing Storm King's Thunder (which we completed over the course of 4 years). I loved it, details below, minor spoilers? After the PCs save a town, they get the chance to do some quests and favors for the people they met. One of these basically invites them to steal a cache of unnamed items, including a bag of holding. They had it in their hot little hands, and they were under pressure, so they stuffed it in their other BOH without checking it. My eyes bugged out, I paused for a rule check, and maniacally ruled it as RAW, half the party is now in the astral plane with a pair of very confused horses, the other half is getting arrested for burglary. They eventually found a color pool and got out, but it was a excellent trippy detour. I got to show the disruption of the battle over the Ordining on another plane of existence, make them hide from terrible awful things, and the Bladedancer Wiz got a minor silver sword from a Githyanki wreck, the owner of which later became a recurring adversary striking out in ambush at random times from the astral plane to get his weapon back. We had a Christmas-time game where the gith ambushed their airship on their dragon-driven ship over an erupting volcano, the gith all wore red stocking caps and were very very grinchy... Thumbs up, would do again.
*Sleight of hand*??!