Bag of Holding Q

[WARPED1]

It says for the bag, if it is punctured, all that is held within is lost forever, pretty cut n dry IMO!

 

[Beholder Bob]

If the artifact is sentient, have it claim possession of the dim space, changing it, shaping it, reaching out to other demi/pocket planes. When next they look into the bag, they find it is a doorway, not just a big bag inside. Perhaps the artifact, while unable to open the bag itself, is capable of preventing it from being closed once opened (it does now possess this little place). Put an x-dim dungeon inside, a labyrinth created by that little bit of nastiness. Think hellraiser 3, when the cube is placed in a unfinished building's foundation. The entire structure developed around the cube & its nature. Do the same for this. Also, consider what planes it could connect to (determined by who made the artifact and your cosmology).

If per above - make it a tough adventure - but leave a clue as to the final disposal of the artifact.

Oh - you can no longer just puncture the bag - the artifact has shaped and stabalized the dim-space, it belongs to it. The bag is now just a doorway (one of X) - Artifacts of evil do not die quietly to the sound of a tearing bag.

 

[XCorvis]

You know, there's no reason the artifact has to let the party put it in the bag.

 

[Mike Sullivan]

IMHO a vanilla 2500 gp magic item should not be able to safely store or permanently dispose of evil magic items. Does anyone share this intuition? Anyone have an explanation why a bag of holding could not be used as an artifact storage/disposal system?

I agree with you.

So, there are really a few seperate issues, here, right?

Issue 1: Can a bag of holding be used to safely permenantly store your particular magic item?

I'd personally rule that a wraith would have no trouble getting out of a bag of holding. They aren't meant to serve as prisons, particularly not prisons for critters that can squeeze through small spaces. I'd just say that the wraith oozes out of the "closed" (it's not airtight or anything) bag and goes to town.

Issue 2: Can a bag of holding be used to safely permenantly store arbitrary other magic items?

I'd be incline to say "yes," with the proviso that if said magic item has an "influence" that affects people around it but not touching it, that that influence can ooze out of the bag -- even a "closed" bag -- in a similar manner to your wraith.

But you want to use a bag of holding to smuggle around something that affects people who touch it, or people who see it, or the like? Sure. That's no more abusive than wrapping it up in a blanket, as far as I see it.

Issue 3: Can a bag of holding be used to destroy potent magical artifats?

It does rather ruin the whole tolkienesque fun of going on a quest to destroy an evil magical artifact if all you need is money that's well within the means of a party of 5th level adventurers, and a couple of weeks of a magic-user's time, to destroy any artifact. So. How to rule in such a way as to consistently avoid that?

You could rule that puncturing a bag from the inside doesn't destroy anything -- that it, instead, spills out of the bag, or is lost on another plane, or otherwise is non-permenantly "lost." While that's obviously a departure from the description in the DMG, I don't think that it's particularly abusive or anything. You might have to be careful with how you describe objects forced out of the bag in this manner to prevent people from using bags of holding as very expensive grenades, but I think that could be easily curbed.

You could rule that certain magical artifacts are so strongly tied to the magical continuum of your game world that they resist being removed from normal Prime Material Plane space. Such an artifact could be passed through a Gate and would simply go to the other physical side of the Gate without switching planes. Similarly, if it were put into a bag of holding, it would simply rest in the actual, physical bag, cancelling access to the "non-dimensional space" until it was removed from the bag again. Again, I can't think of any particular abuses that would result from such a ruling, though the explanation for it is a little bit hand-wave-y.

Or, finally, you could rule that the power of a sufficiently big artifact will temporarily make it impossible to destroy that non-dimensional space (or "access to that non-dimensional space"), sustaining it with its own magic even when the bag's magic has collapsed -- thus, the bag would remain accessible until the artifact had come out, at which point it would collapse. You could describe this as either an intentional countermeasure placed by the designers of artifacts who didn't want any fumbling do-gooder to be able to wreck their masterpiece, or a simple side-effect of the magical potence of the item -- think of it as being like trying to collapse a building that someone has filled with concrete -- the magical aura of the artifact forces the non-dimensional space "open," even in the face of forces which would naturally close it. Again, there's some hand-waving required there.

Hope that helps.

 

[Mordane76]

Issue 1: Can a bag of holding be used to safely permenantly store your particular magic item?

I'd personally rule that a wraith would have no trouble getting out of a bag of holding. They aren't meant to serve as prisons, particularly not prisons for critters that can squeeze through small spaces. I'd just say that the wraith oozes out of the "closed" (it's not airtight or anything) bag and goes to town.

Unless I'm mistaken, there is a notation in the Bag of Holding that states it has only a limited amount of air in it for a breathing creature once closed -- hence it is air-tight. Also, it's not like it opens like a normal bag; this is metaphysics at best, since we're dealing with non-dimensional or extra-dimensional spaces -- IIRC, a dimensional anchor spell or similar effect can block one's access to the contents of a bag of holding, so the brim doesn't directly 'open' into the bag itself.

Issue 2: Can a bag of holding be used to safely permenantly store arbitrary other magic items?

I'd be incline to say "yes," with the proviso that if said magic item has an "influence" that affects people around it but not touching it, that that influence can ooze out of the bag -- even a "closed" bag -- in a similar manner to your wraith.

But you want to use a bag of holding to smuggle around something that affects people who touch it, or people who see it, or the like? Sure. That's no more abusive than wrapping it up in a blanket, as far as I see it.

No. Unless the "influence" has the ability to affect victims across planar boundaries, then it can't do it once inside a bag of holding. See my reasoning for the wraith as above. But, if the damaging effect you refer to in your second paragraph requires direct physical or visual contact, then I say you're correct.

Issue 3: Can a bag of holding be used to destroy potent magical artifacts?

I agree with most of this as possible options for what to do, though, about the topic at large.

 

[der_kluge]

Think of the bag like a bag of fish you've bought at the pet store. The bag contains water and fish (and maybe some rocks if the pet store owner happened to scoop up some).

So, you put the bag of water in your fish tank to ensure that the temperatures are in equilibrium. That bag of fish is your bag of holding. You can put as much stuff into it as you want, but it never weighs anything, because it always just floats in water.

But, if a fish in the bag somehow punctures the inside of the bag, all the contents will seep out into the aquarium. And really, the aquarium could be any plane that you want, but the astral seems like a good choice. Since the astral connects all planes, only the astral would be suitable, otherwise the bag might be unavailable if it doesn't immediately connect to whatever plane you might be on.

So, if the bag ruptures, the contents would just float out onto the astral. I hate to think about how much stuff the Githyanki might acquire this way.

 

[ZSutherland]

I really like Beholder Bob's idea, and personally would go with that, but if you don't, you have to ask a few questions.

1) Can the object be stored in such a fashion? Well, here we need some clarification. Does the object really "make" a wraith via very powerful Conjuration (Creation) magic or does it summon/call a wraith? If the first is the case, the answer to question 1 is probably, "yes." If the second option (or some other option is true) the answer is probably, no. The reason for this is that I doubt the object could summon/call creatures from another plane whilst stuck in the extra-dimensional space, and as artifacts are powerful and regularly intelligent, it would be very displeased to cease functioning. More importantly, if this is the method by which it functions, putting the object in the bag in the first place is putting something with an open connection to another plane in an extra-dimensional space, which is just a hop-skip-jump away from opening your bag in your rope trick room.

2) Assuming you can get the object in the bag at all, does destroying the bag destroy the object as well? Almost certainly not, though how you choose to go about that is up to you. We're not talking about the PC's kewl l3wt. We're talking about a potent, evil artifact. You've already said that if it's destroyed, it simply reforms later. This is not a characteristic of most things in D&D, so I don't think it's all that hand-wavey to say that the "and all the contents are destroyed forever" line of the bag's description doesn't apply here. Then again, perhaps destroying the bag does destroy the item, temporarily. Perhaps the shards of the object are locked in tiny fragments of the extrad-dim space and are scattered throughout the Material plane (or Astral or others).

The fact is: you're right. Allowing some pansy, 2.5k item to undo years (if not decades or centuries) of evil work is just plain silly. It's certainly clever on the part of your players to work the rules that way, but make it come back and bite them.

If you're really mean, perhaps the object takes over the extra-dimensional space (and anything else in there) and moves the space out of the bag, setting up its demi-plane. The next time they open the bag, it's just a bag, and they have to jaunt off & find the object again.

Z

 

[Mike Sullivan]

Unless I'm mistaken, there is a notation in the Bag of Holding that states it has only a limited amount of air in it for a breathing creature once closed -- hence it is air-tight.

Or, alternately, perhaps air just doesn't naturally tend to pass through the boundary. Just because you'll suffocate in something doesn't mean that you can't force air through it. It could require some kind of conscious impetus to cross the dimensional barrier, which a wraith or artifact could provide (or simulate) while normal air can't.

My hypothetical ruling would be based on the idea that the bag isn't intended to be a prison or quarantine area, and I don't see any reason to make rulings that make it ideal for the purpose. It holds things. If it holds your pet bunnies, they'll tend to suffocate. But it's not designed to specifically entrap things that are trying to escape it -- whether they be semi-physical wraiths or malevolent magical auras, and I don't see any reason why such things should have difficulty passing through the gate.

 

[Mordane76]

I can see your POV on the air and wraith, Mike Sullivan, and hence the aura, but I don't necessarily agree, but I can see the POV.

 

[Mike Sullivan]

Fair enough.