I made an NPC with a bag of devouring on his person...

[frankthedm]

Yeh, that was a great article. It described a big, floating jellyfish-like monster that lived on another plane, and it fed via extra-dimensional mouths--i.e., bags of devouring.

The article went on to say that if a PC could capture such a beast and transport it back to his home plane, he might could use its 'mouths' as means of traveling to other dimensions. Pretty cool stuff.


Tony M

Horrible article, It ignored the rules of the item and ignored the creature that had already been stated out for the bag years before. It attempted to make the bag a survivable experience and weakened the creature rediculously..

 

[ST]

I don't want to go giving unsolicited advice, but it sounds like you're dealing with non-game issues in game. Any chance you tried to talk to the player about your problems with their character before setting up this boobytrap?

Just sayin'. I personally have a distaste for using the GM chair as a chance to punish people, no matter how annoying they might have been.

 

[Mouseferatu]

As far as plausability, we just finished a long-running campaign in which one of the characters carried a bag of devouring on her person for, oh, close to half the campaign. It was just something cool that she'd found, knew it was dangerous, and kept it in another container until/unless she thought it would be useful.

And wearing it openly on her belt to discourage pick-pockets is exactly the sort of thing she might have done, if:

A) We'd spent much time in big cities, and

B) It had ever come up.

 

[Seeten]

I dont see a problem. They tried pick pocket one time too many, by the sounds of it.

 

[tonym]

Horrible article, It ignored the rules of the item and ignored the creature that had already been stated out for the bag years before. It attempted to make the bag a survivable experience and weakened the creature rediculously..

Hm. I didn't know there was a previous creature statted-out before... Do you remember where?

Anyhow, I still think it's clever. I don't mind that the writer deviated from the DMG, or that a PC might somehow survive being devoured.


Tony M

 

[Mr. Lobo]

Hm. I didn't know there was a previous creature statted-out before... Do you remember where?

Anyhow, I still think it's clever. I don't mind that the writer deviated from the DMG, or that a PC might somehow survive being devoured.


Tony M

Yeah, I'm with you on this one tonym. I've never used the ideas yet but they certainly gave me some things to think about.

Now I want to go back and leaf through my old rules books, going back to original D&D, and check on the history and evolution of this little gem. When I looked up the 3.5 SRD rules I was shocked to learn that the bag destroyed the victim in one round. Of course my memory may have been tainted by the Dragon article.

Will post what I find.

 

[Hammerhead]

"Hey, that's my Bag of Devouring, don't open it?" And the character opened it? Man, that is funny.

 

[Hurtfultater]

I don't want to go giving unsolicited advice, but it sounds like you're dealing with non-game issues in game. Any chance you tried to talk to the player about your problems with their character before setting up this boobytrap?

Just sayin'. I personally have a distaste for using the GM chair as a chance to punish people, no matter how annoying they might have been.

I'm pretty sure the first post explicitly solicits opinions and implicitly solicits advice, insofar as it asks if the act was mean.

That said, yeah. If you killed a character because how it was played annoyed you, it was mean unless you have a universally understood agreement that the GM can do those sorts of things and it's fine with the player.

Any idea, though, why the player opened the bag despite the warning? Was the NPC in the past unreliable or was the warning in a joking tone?

 

[dekrass]

I have to say your motivation in placing the bag of devouring in front of the thief may be questionable.
But they were warned and still opened it.
Not only did the character deserve to be devoured, that kind of death is great comedy.

I've had PCs in my games that would do just about anything they were told not to.
Usually the player knows the PC won't last.

Overall I'd say don't sweat it.

 

[Virel]

No way! I hated that charectar and I'm glad she's dead.

The NPC? Well he's Trent Gordon Swashbuckler extroidanoire. I wrote him up loaded with magical items. He's the only high level NPC they are going to run into and he is there adventureing contact in sharn. He's going to be sending them on expeditions to xendrik. High cha, high int, low wis. Think Willy Wonka meets Captain Kirk.

Hmm, that's the sort of DMing that gets the DM's pet NPC's poisioned and/or assassinated and the body disintergrated and remants are burned with the ashes tossed into a running body of water in several groups I've played with. In this case, putting the NPC's body in the bag would have poetic justice. After all if he's got all the niffty loot, why waste time adventuring - the PC's should just off him since he "set up" their "friend".