D&D 5E Bag of Holding Question

[D1Tremere]

Most of my groups do not find book keeping to be fun, so we just use the dimensions of the bag to determine if something is able to fit inside. The actual contents are not tracked meticulously with regard to exact weight size, just for egregious items. Generally, so long as they don't try to put something in that is too large or exceed the total weight allowance of the bag it is fine.

 

[CleverNickName]

Hmm - I'd read that as referring to the exterior dimensions. It's actually very ambiguously worded.

Oh well, I don't care. I'm still going to let them shove 10 ft poles in there.

Same here.
Me: "You slide the ten-foot pole into the bag of holding. It consumes 10 squares of space on account of its awkward, inflexible shape."
Player: "Cool beans. I need to make some room first..." (removes the longbow) "Hey Bixie, can you carry this for me?"

 

[DemoMonkey]

50 house cats would take a huge amount of time, depending on the chance of one escaping when you added another.

However 1 lion would take an infinite amount of time because you'ld be, y'know. Dead.

 

[R_J_K75]

we can assume that its interior dimensions are roughly 4 x 4 x 4 fee

Im not too good at math so I could be missing something like multiplying by 144, but youre saying 64 feet cubed is 4 foot by 4 foot by 4 ft? if you have 64 cu ft, wouldnt it be 64 dived by 3 for a nice even space, be 21 per side, l x w x d?

 

[R_J_K75]

No, the wording in 5th edition is deceiving, but that's the external appearance (as is more explicitly stated in previous editions). If the internal dimensions were 2 feet in diameter and 4 feet deep the bag would only hold a bit more than 12.5 cubic feet (the circle having an area of pi times the one-foot radius in squared feet, times four for the depth).

Since the dimensions of the interior space are not defined, just the total volume, it's DM's choice as to what the maximum length you can fit in a bag of holding is, but if you insist on an immutable defined cylinder, three feet in diameter and nine feet long is about right.

1,812 liters.

I'll eat crow and reading your post and thinking of my last post, I think you are correct. You can fit a spear into the space but the diameter will be smaller.

 

[CleverNickName]

64 cubic feet can be:
64' x 1' x 1'
32' x 2' x 1'
8' x 8' x 1'
4' x 8' x 2'
4' x 4' x 4'
Etc...

 

[R_J_K75]

"You slide the ten-foot pole into the bag of holding. It consumes 10 squares of space on account of its awkward, inflexible shape."

Leads to the argument that that the bag conforms to whatever is in it until it reaches its limit then KABLOOEY!

 

[R_J_K75]

64 cubic feet can be:
64' x 1' x 1'
32' x 2' x 1'
8' x 8' x 1'
4' x 8' x 2'
4' x 4' x 4'
Etc...

Like I said I was never a good math student, this looks better than my interpretation which Im sure is wrong..

 

[embee]

50 house cats would take a huge amount of time, depending on the chance of one escaping when you added another.

However 1 lion would take an infinite amount of time because you'ld be, y'know. Dead.

I would much rather face off against one lion than 50 house cats.

A lion is a CR1 creature that does an average 6hp of damage per hit. It has pack tactics and gets a +5 bonus to hit. A cat is a CR0 creature with no hit bonus and no pack tactics. But it does an average 1hp of damage per hit.

Pack tactics is useless for a solitary lion. But even without pack tactics, because of the action economy, it's not long before those 50 cats overwhelm an adventurer.

For example, I just rolled 50 d20 in Google. Seventeen of them came back higher than 16 and three of those were nat20. So you're looking at about 20hp of damage per round from a 50-strong herd of house cats versus the 6hp you'd get from fighting one lion.

And that's not even taking into account what would happen if you were playing with the optional flanking rules.

There's a reason why killing a herd of cats would get you 500xp but one lion only gets you 200xp.

 

[Lanefan]

The way I handle it: make an 8x8 grid on a sheet of paper. Each square represents one cubic foot of material. Then, whenever a character puts something in the bag, have them write the item's name in one or more of the squares, depending on how many cubic feet of space it would take up (minimum 1 cubic foot¹). When they run out of squares, the bag is full.

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1. A lot of players will balk at this, so expect arguments. "But I can fit all of this stuff into the same cubic foot!" My usual answer to that is "If it's so small, why are you putting it in a Bag of Holding, instead of your belt pouch?" But I digress. If players have a problem with the "one item per square" minimum, you can invite them to tediously keep track of every ounce and cubic inch of every item in every Bag of Holding instead. I recommend a spreadsheet for that.

I'd be one who'd argue with this, in that for me part of the purpose of a BoH is to store a lot of little bits and pieces that are otherwise a pain to carry and-or you'd prefer not be easily detected.

Now if you make a list of how many of each common "small thing" e.g. coins, daggers, darts, gems, vials, fill a cubic foot, then fine.

Then again, keep in mind the BoH is (I think) loosely based on Mary Poppins' bag; and she pulls out some pretty big pieces from that.