Bag of Holding Q

[Cheiromancer]

This might be a rules question, but I suspect it requires house-ruling:

My PCs have recently acquired a minor artifact that spawns incorporeal undead at regular intervals. It can be broken, but it spontaneously repairs itself after a few hours (even if the pieces are separated). They have decided to commission a bag of holding in which to store the artifact for safe keeping, or to use to get rid of it once and for all.

From the SRD:

The bag of holding opens into a nondimensional space: Its inside is larger than its outside dimensions. Regardless of what is put into the bag, it weighs a fixed
amount....If the bag is overloaded, or if sharp objects pierce it (from inside or outside), the bag ruptures and is ruined. All contents are lost forever.

So will this work? If a wraith forms inside a closed bag of holding is it confined inside? If the bag is punctured, is the artifact finally dealt with?

Somehow it seems to easy a solution to the general problem of disposing of dangerous items. Any thoughts?

 

[Nightfall]

If it just spawns a lot of wraiths I don't see it doing that much harm to the bag. That being said they STILL could harm the bag IF they all decided to some how work to gether.

Mmm bag of wraiths!

 

[3rdedreichcommander]

Here's a thought...Let's say I don't know a Lich (he's undead too!) is spawned inside the bag and not right away but after awhile he comes up with a plan to puncture the bag while casting a spell to protect him and his ever growing army and the artifact that he has claimed as his own. His plan works but has a side effect that he didn't know of but loves anyway it tears the dimintional fabric between the land of the living and the land of the dead. So out from the bag pours his minions, himself and the artifact plus more dead begin pouring from the dimensional rip and he and his crew take over the world.

There are ways to make easy solutions bite the characters in the butt.

 

[CalrinAlshaw]

The artifact would ACTUALLY be floating around in the astral plane. I'd say some random astral inhabitant/traveller would acquire the item. That way the artifact wouldn't be removed from the game.

Calrin Alshaw

 

[Eccles]

The term "nondimensional space" doesn't sound to me like the Astral Plane. I'd certainly have to tell the players that time would still pass within the bag; which might differ from their reading of "nondimensional".

I'd have picked this up and run with it. I mean - a bag of wraiths? How many evil nasties could instantly take over the world with a bag of wraiths? It's still an ultimate item of evil, with the added benefit of overwhelming power as soon as the bag's opened. How many wraiths could your group deal with?

And, of course, all the baddies can sense the item has been trapped, and would therefore go hell-for-leather to open the bag, destroy the bag, etc...

Can you say 'armageddon'?

 

[Alratan]

Wouldn't it be easier just to planeshift to the Positive Energy Plane and leave the Artifact in a strongly positive dominant region.

 

[harmyn]

It is a non-dimensional space, so the wraiths would be trapped in the bag. If they weigh nothing, then technically they won't overfill it. If the bag ever gets cut or overfilled though its contents immediately spill back into the Prime Plane where the bag was at the moment. The players should just hope that the wraiths can't find a way to damage the bag.

I think their best bet is the Positive Plane suggestion made already.

 

[SylverFlame]

I house ruled (so this does not apply anywhere but in my games) that time does not pass in a bag of holding except for spell duration and life span. Therefore, in my games I'd say that the spawning of wraiths would not occur in the bag of holding, as it is not a duration. However, this has no basing in official rules so it can't help you. I would, however, toy with the idea of having the item "build up time" so that when it hit the real world again it would throw up all the wraiths that would have popped out in the bag but couldn't. Fun to see when the player "randomly" reaches into the bag and is confronted with a hoard of undead nasties.

 

[Mordane76]

This might be a rules question, but I suspect it requires house-ruling:

My PCs have recently acquired a minor artifact that spawns incorporeal undead at regular intervals. It can be broken, but it spontaneously repairs itself after a few hours (even if the pieces are separated). They have decided to commission a bag of holding in which to store the artifact for safe keeping, or to use to get rid of it once and for all.


So will this work? If a wraith forms inside a closed bag of holding is it confined inside? If the bag is punctured, is the artifact finally dealt with?

Somehow it seems to easy a solution to the general problem of disposing of dangerous items. Any thoughts?

Incorporeal Undead have no weight. Depending on how loose you want to be, you could thus rule that they also have no definite dimensions; a wraith is a shadow of life, it shifts unpredictably (mutably). Hence, the wraiths could never fill the bag. I think this would be a great way to create a major artifact using the minor artifact and the bag -- as the wraiths form, they reach a point where their concentrated evil suffuses the bag as well, creating something awful. Or... you could just use the bag containing the artifact as a "Wraith Cannon;" you open the bag and a stream of ability draining wraiths spew forth onto your enemy...

 

[Cheiromancer]

I may have misrepresented the nature of the artifact. It produces a wraith, and when the wraith is destroyed it waits a few rounds, then makes another. But wraiths don't actually pile up without limit.

So far I see a consensus that the wraith will not be able to escape the bag. Harmyn thinks that if the bag is punctured it re-appears on the Prime, which to me doesn't seem to agree with the text of bag of holding. Calrin Alshaw's suggestion that it be picked up (and retrieved) on the astral seems more likely. Still, though, the item description states the contents of the bag "are lost forever."

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?