D&D General Liquids in Bag of Holding or Portable Hole?

I wonder why nobody talks about the difference between citizen and denizen anymore.

From Google: A citizen is a member of a state, usually by birth or naturalization, with legal rights and responsibilities within that state. A denizen, on the other hand, is someone who lives in or frequents a particular place, but is not necessarily a citizen of that place. Denizenship is often used to describe individuals who have limited rights and responsibilities compared to citizens.
I'm not anyone is a "citizen" of Bag World. If there are state in bag World, they are isolated. You might be a citizen of Harold's Zone, but still a denizen of Bag World.
 

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May help to treat it as the enterance hole moving to the stuff rather than the stuff moving to the hole.
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This may be relevant.



Since there's no gravity there's no direction for the water to flow if it's stationary in the bag. If you were to jostle the water bottle, some water would come out of the mouth but it wouldn't necessarily break surface tension, so it'd drip "around" the container until eventually you have the container floating in a bubble of water.
 


I wonder why nobody talks about the difference between citizen and denizen anymore.

From Google: A citizen is a member of a state, usually by birth or naturalization, with legal rights and responsibilities within that state. A denizen, on the other hand, is someone who lives in or frequents a particular place, but is not necessarily a citizen of that place. Denizenship is often used to describe individuals who have limited rights and responsibilities compared to citizens.
Look, if a Henchman is living inside my Bag of Holding, he's a denizen, not a citizen if I don't want him there!
 

The obvious answer is if RAW the bag contains enough air for one average medium creature (which I assume also means average anatomically modern human) to breathe for ten minutes, and it has an internal volume of 64 cubic feet, someone who is better at math than me can calculate the PSI it keeps air pressurized at and we can then determine how that affects air being displaced by water.

OK, I'll take the bait.

TL;DR: the famous netherese arcanist Avogadro Wished anyone to die after spending 10 minutes in a Bag of Holding in -1,013 DR and his spell still continues to take effect to this day.

The volume of Bag of Holding is 64 cubic feet. Feet is a fantasy unit D&D uses to make things sound medieval :) and 64 cubic feet are equal tpo 1,812 litres in the real world.

A man breathing for 10 minutes would consume oxygen (21% of air on the intake, 16% on the way out) but it's not lack of oxygen that would cause harm to the denizen of the bag -- the human could rebreathe air a few times before there isn't enough O2, it's the increased concentration of CO2. The minimal amount of O2 (at sea level) is around 10%, and 6-8% is lethal. The first risk encountered is the toxicity of CO2. It's 0.04% of the air inhaled, but 4% of the air expired. Rebreathing air with a 4% concentration of CO2 is enough to increase heart rate, 5% headache, 8-10% is enough for inconsciousness.

Now, a human is breathing 450 litres per hour if just standing (much less if sleeping, as low as 250, so ability to sleep quickly -- maybe magically -- should extend the time one can hide in a bag of holding). I assume the creature in the bag stays still to reach the 10 minutes. That's 75 litres, much, much less than the amount present in the bag at normal pressure.

An average human standing still exhales 18 litres of CO2 per hour. Over the course of 10 minutes, that would be 3 litres, increasing the CO2 from 0.04% to 0.2%. Not enough to create any significant toxicity.

So, the Bag of Holding must have a much lower pressure than regular air -- opening interesting possibility to increase food preservation while travelling with rations in a Bag of Holding. Our standing regular human would need to consume 90 litres of O2 per hour, or 9 litres in 10 minutes. That's quite low. Really, the amount of oxygen can't be the problem. It's what is present in rought 45 litres of air, over 1812 litres of the bag, so the bag would be... mostly empty of gas, with a pressure of roughly 25 hPa. Which isn't enough. At this pressure, water boils below the body temperature. You won't start to boil (the internal pressure of the body is enough) but saliva, tears, the humidity inside your lungs... will. It's not pleasant (as in, you die). So, the death at the 10 minutes mark shouldn't come for lack of overall O2, but from the effect of low pressure of O2 (as you rightly supposed).

Airline industry provides us with a chart for TUC (time of useful consciousness) according to altitude. You don't need to be unconscious to be disabled. In the event of rapid decompression (such as would be experienced by someone entering the low-pressure environment of the Bag) it's roughly 5,500 meters to be disabled after 10 minutes -- less if you exercized before entering hte bag. At this altitude the air pressure is arounds 500 hPA, half the sea level pressure. Such an environment is compatible with the effect of the bag, except that the stay in the bag wouldn't be fun at all, but the RAW don't mention it specifically. Why is this pressure constant, despite air being replenished between stays (if not, CO2 level would rise over several stays to become instantanouesly toxic) is left as an exercise to the reader.

What makes the situation wholly magical is that you can breath 10 minutes in the Bag of Holding... even if it is filled before with 1720 litres of water (the remainder of the volume being taken by you).

Note on the OP's question: I rule that object in the bag of holding are transported with no motion in a gravity-less planar bubble. That's why things inside the bag, like a pointy stick, can't damage the bag itself. So the pot of stew wouldn't spill, it would just stand there, motionless, until recalled. I would tentatively rule that it doesn't stay warm longer than it would if it was outside the bag, but I am not certain of that. I fear players pouring lava into their bag and asking it to empty itself at the foot of enemies if heat transfer wasn't a thing in the bag.

Edit: Naah, scrap it. I read again the RAW about the bag. It can't be an explanation involving pressure, since the time they survive is 10 minutes divided by the number of creatures. So 10 creatures would suffocate after 1 minute, which wouldn't be the case if the bag just had a lowered air pressure. There would still be enough air for the the crowd inside to breathe for 12-15 minutes before CO2 would become toxic... and 10 minutes before hypoxia causes terminal loss of performance, same with one creature.
 
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OK, I'll take the bait.

TL;DR: the famous netherese arcanist Avogadro Wished anyone to die after spending 10 minutes in a Bag of Holding in -1,013 DR and his spell still continues to take effect to this day.

The volume of Bag of Holding is 64 cubic feet. Feet is a fantasy unit D&D uses to make things sound medieval :) and 64 cubic feet are equal tpo 1,812 litres in the real world.

A man breathing for 10 minutes would consume oxygen (21% of air on the intake, 16% on the way out) but it's not lack of oxygen that would cause harm to the denizen of the bag -- the human could rebreathe air a few times before there isn't enough O2, it's the increased concentration of CO2. The minimal amount of O2 (at sea level) is around 10%, and 6-8% is lethal. The first risk encountered is the toxicity of CO2. It's 0.04% of the air inhaled, but 4% of the air expired. Rebreathing air with a 4% concentration of CO2 is enough to increase heart rate, 5% headache, 10% is enough for inconsciousnes.

Now, a human is breathing 450 litres per hour if just standing (much less if sleeping, as low as 250, so ability to sleep quickly -- maybe magically -- should extend the time one can hide in a bag of holding). I assume the creature in the bag stays still to reach the 10 minutes. That's 75 litres, much, much less than the amount present in the bag at normal pressure.

An average human standing still exhales 18 litres of CO2 per hour. Over the course of 10 minutes, that would be 3 litres, increasing the CO2 from 0.04% to 0.2%. Not enough to create any significant toxicity.

So, the Bag of Holding must have a much lower pressure than regular air -- opening interesting possibility to increase food preservation while travelling with rations in a Bag of Holding. Our standing regular human would need to consume 90 litres of O2 per hour, or 9 litres in 10 minutes. That's quite low. Really, the amount of oxygen can't be the problem. It's what is present in rought 45 litres of air, over 1812 litres of the bag, so the bag would be... mostly empty of gas, with a pressure of roughly 25 hPa. Which isn't enough. At this pressure, water boils below the body temperature. You won't start to boil (the internal pressure of the body is enough) but saliva, tears, the humidity inside your lungs... will. It's not pleasant (as in, you die). So, the death at the 10 minutes mark shouldn't come for lack of overall O2, but from the effect of low pressure of O2 (as you rightly supposed).

Airline industry provides us with a chart for TUC (time of useful consciousness) according to altitude. You don't need to be unconscious to be disabled. In the event of rapid decompression (such as would be experienced by someone entering the low-pressure environment of the Bag) it's roughly 5,500 meters to be disabled after 10 minutes -- less if you exercized before entering hte bag. At this altitude the air pressure is arounds 500 hPA, half the sea level pressure. Such an environment is compatible with the effect of the bag, except that the stay in the bag wouldn't be fun at all, but the RAW don't mention it specifically. Why is this pressure constant, despite air being replenished between stays (if not, CO2 level would rise over several stays to become instantanouesly toxic) is left as an exercise to the reader.

What makes the situation wholly magical is that you can breath 10 minutes in the Bag of Holding... even if it is filled before with 1720 litres of water (the remainder of the volume being taken by you).

Note on the OP's question: I rule that object in the bag of holding are transported with no motion in a gravity-less planar bubble. That's why things inside the bag, like a pointy stick, can't damage the bag itself. So the pot of stew wouldn't spill, it would just stand there, motionless, until recalled. I would tentatively rule that it doesn't stay warm longer than it would if it was outside the bag, but I am not certain of that. I fear players pouring lava into their bag and asking it to empty itself at the foot of enemies if heat transfer wasn't a thing in the bag.

Edit: Naah, scrap it. I read again about the bag. It can't be an explanation involving pressure, since the time they survive is 10 minutes divided by the number of creatures. So 10 creatures would suffocate after 1 minute, which wouldn't be the case if the bag just had a lowered air pressure. There would still be enough air for the people inside to breathe for

I've attempted to do these calculations before - except in my case it was a portable hole. I house ruled that the people survived for far longer than the spell says because it's just dumb. Of course, not the only dumb things they say, I just wish they had done a quick search and found something a touch more realistic.
 

I've attempted to do these calculations before - except in my case it was a portable hole. I house ruled that the people survived for far longer than the spell says because it's just dumb. Of course, not the only dumb things they say, I just wish they had done a quick search and found something a touch more realistic.

I wouldn't mind an answer that wasn't realistic, as long as it's lore explained (ie, the arcanist wish, or air being an element and oxygen not being a thing at all when it comes to breathing...) Lacking that... people seem to suffocate too quickly, indeed.

Fun thing: we had to discuss this breathing time at the game table recently, when a plan involved rescuing people from a prison by Misty Stepping inside, putting them all in a Bag of Holding, then Misty Stepping outside. We were low level enough that advanced teleportation wasn't available, but Misty Step is level 2, except it doesn't allow transporting people... except when they are all conveniently stacked in a bag.
 

Why does it matter? Who cares if the bucket of pain spills?
Well obviously, the players.
So, what is fun or more cool? Or are you looking at a reason to punish the players for making dumb real-world decisions in a fantasy game of magic and make believe?

Sure, make a ruling, but don't bring science or logic into it. Just figure out (or guess) what ruling will bring more fun and enjoyment to the table in the long run. Go with it. Logic doesn't matter.
 


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