Is it possible to 'train' a bag of devouring to be a sidekick, or a familiar. Does the bag have the intelligence to learn to trust you to feed it, and not see you as just the next tasty treat?
That's a GM question, but I'd allow it.
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The creature on the other side of a Bag of Devouring, the Ihagnim, has a base EIGHT Hit Dice. And this is in 1st edition. That'd be, like, TWELVE hit dice in today's editions.
A bit too potent for even Improved Familiar, and as an Outsider, doesn't qualify to be an animal companion. I guess you could maybe take it as cohort using the Leadership feat?
Gorbacz not withstanding..
I would say no.
It is a Cursed Item, and should be treated as such.
It could make an entertaining sidekick but its ability to devour anything is a bit too powerful in the hands of a PC. I'd only let you impress a young one that only has one mouth, the same way you can take a wyrmling dragon as an improved familiar, and I'd limit the usefulness to about that.
It's only a Cursed Item because 1st edition didn't have a way to categorize "plane shifted mouth parts of Astral-dwelling intelligent ooze"!
It is a Cursed Item, and should be treated as such.
Also a cursed item, because if you badly fail your craft check on making a Bag of Holding.... you end up with a bag of devouring instead.
LOL
no commit
my last DM gave one to one of our allies.
It had a dungeon inside of it, inckuding the guy who created it, it had a bunch of random items it would spew out at random (If it was fed well enough).
Sure the items doesnt work out like that but who cares, we had a blast with that "item".
Our DM gave us a Bag of Holding which was in-fact a Bag of Devouring. We now use it to dispose of corpses and bio-waste.
Best item we have (and we have some pretty good stuff.)
Where is the creature listed?
And on a related note, can you intentionally fail your craft roll while making a Bag of Holding to make a Bag of Devouring?
make the adjustments to a mimic to make it a cr1 its pretty much the same thing if not better.
i say a lvl5 wiz with the right feat could have it as a familiar
as for a side kick buy one name it Tobey make sure you remember to feed him
I'd name mine Pochepoke...
<---------- You rang?
My answer is, as always, depends. How high fantasy a game are you playing? Do 1-3 level characters get to ride Gryphons or intelligent dinosaurs? Then sure if the bag is the only magic item anyone has seen in the largest city in your empire then maybe if I thought the plot opportunites it presented were interesting enough. if the bag of devouring is the only magic item anyone has seen in your entire world then it has likely eaten all the other magic items in the game and is so dangerous it might as well be Candlejack.
According to it's description, it can also appear to be a bag of tricks.
There was an "Ecology" article on the Bag of Devouring a long time ago in Dragon Magazine (271, sadly I don't have that one). Were some enterprising players IMC wanting to do that, I would make it a continual challenge and source of adventure hooks and complications for them. After all, this is an interdimensional being with a completely alien mindset. Who knows what would appeal to it?
It lives on the astral plane and is Neutral. It has average to exceptional Intelligence (8-16 depending on it's HD).