D&D 5E (2024) Getting ready to use the Portable Hole + Bag of holding trick

GMMichael · 2026-04-13T02:21:10+0100

ECMO3 said:
The only other thing to mention is there is a ton of party loot in the portable hole a that will be lost

The only thing? What about the lich's ego? Pay it some compliments. I bet it needs a friend.

If one PC jumps on the grenade, she could become the lich's minion, creating a window for the others to get away. At least it's not a TPK.

Koloth · 2026-04-13T05:20:32+0100

ECMO3 said:
Identify spell: "If the object is a magic item or some other magical object, you learn its properties and how to use them, whether it requires Attunement, and how many charges it has, if any."

I think this falls under "its properties and how to use them". It is also written on the both cards the DM gave me when I identified the items.

Not sure that Identify will cover every possible abnormal use of a magic item. Bag of Holding(BoH) and Portable Hole(PH) are designed as stuff holding devices. I would expect that Identify will return normal information like how much crap it will hold, any size/weight limitations on said crap, types of crap that can be stored, how to get crap into/out the thing. Being turned into a plane shifting device if combined with different stuff holding device may well fall outside the realm of information that Identify provides.

If a polymorph potion is Identified, I don't think Identify will return the complete list of possible potion miscibility effects. Just the info about what happens if you consume the polymorph potion. Mixing a BoH and a PH are a form of item miscibility and IMO, outside the realm of Identify.

I really think that the original ruling about plane shift and loss of items was to prevent the use of a PH full of several BoH to create a near infinite storage system. Not to create a standard use combo plane shift grenade. Would not be out of line for the GM to rule that putting a BoH inside a PH results in a pile of stuff as both things empty before falling inert to the ground. Or some other interesting but not plane shifting effect.

But as OP mentioned, the situation is dire, maybe the GM will buy off on the effort and resultant cost.

TheSword · 2026-04-13T11:39:35+0100

Koloth said:
Not sure that Identify will cover every possible abnormal use of a magic item. Bag of Holding(BoH) and Portable Hole(PH) are designed as stuff holding devices. I would expect that Identify will return normal information like how much crap it will hold, any size/weight limitations on said crap, types of crap that can be stored, how to get crap into/out the thing. Being turned into a plane shifting device if combined with different stuff holding device may well fall outside the realm of information that Identify provides.

If a polymorph potion is Identified, I don't think Identify will return the complete list of possible potion miscibility effects. Just the info about what happens if you consume the polymorph potion. Mixing a BoH and a PH are a form of item miscibility and IMO, outside the realm of Identify.

I really think that the original ruling about plane shift and loss of items was to prevent the use of a PH full of several BoH to create a near infinite storage system. Not to create a standard use combo plane shift grenade. Would not be out of line for the GM to rule that putting a BoH inside a PH results in a pile of stuff as both things empty before falling inert to the ground. Or some other interesting but not plane shifting effect.

But as OP mentioned, the situation is dire, maybe the GM will buy off on the effort and resultant cost.

It’s a pretty famous power. Not to mention the DM has already given them a card with that effect’s description on it.

I’ll be honest you don’t give out a portable hole alongside a bag of holding as a DM without at least contemplating that it might be used in this fashion.

It feels a bit unreasonable to say the player can’t use it for this reason.

James Gasik · 2026-04-13T12:02:22+0100

To those of us unfortunate enough to have watched The Last Jedi, do you remember the Holdo Maneuver? This woman had the bright idea to accelerate a ship at relativistic speeds to ram a bigger ship, with predictable results.

I was left momentarily speechless. Not because of how awesome it was, but the implications. Surely, this can't have been a new idea. You have ships that can accelerate to the point they leave normal space. The drives required are small enough to fit on an X-Wing. An Astromech droid, of which the Galaxy far, far away is lousy with, can operate one. You could easily make a torpedo that's just a star drive with a droid brain and have it ram into anything you want gone.

The Death Star? No need to go looking for it's Achilles' Heel and a "one in a million shot". The Rebels could have sacrificed one ship! Or heck, why do you need a gigantic turbolaser array in the first place? For the cost of one Death Star, you could have two entire fleets of Imperial Star Destroyers- surely there's enough budget to create planet wrecking relativistic torpedoes?

The reason I bring all this up is, if it's known that two magic items, well known and apparently produced in enough quantities to be found in most campaigns (with one being an uncommon item, no less) can banish a problem to another plane of existence, why hasn't someone just skipped the middle man and created extradimensional grenades? Forget Beads of Force or a Necklace of Missiles, "Exilium Detonators" will be the new standard! Two tiny extradimensional spaces that are fragile enough to collide on contact with a solid object!

Any nation could afford to punt it's problems into the Phantom Zone! Has to be cheaper in the long run than supporting all these darned adventurers who wreck the economy and dodge taxes!

TLDR; it's cool if you allow this trick to be used, but if Bag/Hole/Haversack interactions are a known factor, someone would have weaponized them and streamlined the process by now to potentially impact the game world at large.

Not to mention paranoid immortal undead Wizards with nothing but time on their hands to create magical defenses against this sort of thing!