How many undead can you transport in a type 4 bag of holding


Rules Questions


How many undead can you transport in a type 4 bag of holding?
In our legacy of fire campaign this has come up with our party's necromancer.

In asking I am assuming a mixed bag of zombies and skeletons. Would skeletons be able to cram in tighter due to lack of fleshy bits getting in the way?

I hope this question is at least a little entertaining.


This came up when my party tried to shove the remains of a red dragon into a bag of holding so that they could use its scales for armor later on.

I think the first important question to consider is that, sure, they can fit in the bag, but can they get through its opening?

Assuming these undead can, consider the bag's 1500 lb. and 250 cubic feet limit. The former is probably going to be the limiting factor here, so depending on whether they're zombies or skeletons, divide that from the weight limit and you have your amount.

It would more than likely be up to the GM to adjudicate a weight for them.


uncleden wrote:

How many undead can you transport in a type 4 bag of holding?

In our legacy of fire campaign this has come up with our party's necromancer.

In asking I am assuming a mixed bag of zombies and skeletons. Would skeletons be able to cram in tighter due to lack of fleshy bits getting in the way?

I hope this question is at least a little entertaining.

I guess you could go primarily by their weight. Arguably you'd be able to pack them pretty tightly if you had them lay foot to head in alternating sequence. Otherwise, I'm not entirely sure. The main thing would depend on the size and type of the skeletons. A hydra skeleton would likely take up much more room than a human skeleton, but arguably the human skeleton could be placed inside the hydra skeleton's ribcage or something.

Otherwise, I'm not sure...
Actually, depending on the level and/or spells available to the necromancer, you could smuggle your undead around as inanimate objects. If you have tons of bone, use fabricate to turn them into sculptures made out of bone (it's called Scrimshaw and it's art), then use fabricate to put them back together again before animating them.

If you have wall of stone, fabricate, and stone to flesh, you can create an army of undead out of nothing. Cast wall of stone to get a crapload of raw material. Cast fabricate to turn all the raw stone into statues of your favorite creatures. Cast flesh to stone which turns them into corpses. Cast animate dead to produce your army of skeletons which you just created out of stone.

Now, while that's not technically storing them in a bag of holding, it definitely makes them more portable, which I think is where the question comes from originally, right?


Actually, you'd also need to cast Decompose Corpse on each one to make skeletons. You can't make skeletons out of stuff with meat still on it. The UM book has decompose skeleton, and restore corpse, to remove/add meat from bones to make skeletons or zombies.


mdt wrote:
Actually, you'd also need to cast Decompose Corpse on each one to make skeletons. You can't make skeletons out of stuff with meat still on it. The UM book has decompose skeleton, and restore corpse, to remove/add meat from bones to make skeletons or zombies.

Or you could just do it by hand, the way we did back when I was in necromancy school. Damn kids these days.

Seriously though, if you're allowing the old Libris Mortis, your necromancer should be researching how to make his undead into Swarmshifters.

A type 4 bag of holding can carry lots of sand...


Ashiel wrote:


I guess you could go primarily by their weight. Arguably you'd be able to pack them pretty tightly if you had them lay foot to head in alternating sequence. Otherwise, I'm not entirely sure. The main thing would depend on the size and type of the skeletons. A hydra skeleton would likely take up much more room than a human skeleton, but arguably the human skeleton could be placed inside the hydra skeleton's ribcage or something.

Otherwise, I'm not sure...
Actually, depending on the level and/or spells available to the necromancer, you could smuggle your undead around as inanimate objects. If you have tons of bone, use fabricate to turn them into sculptures made out of bone (it's called Scrimshaw and it's art), then use fabricate to put them back together again before animating them.

If you have wall of stone, fabricate, and stone to flesh, you can create an army of undead out of nothing. Cast wall of stone to get a crapload of raw material. Cast fabricate to turn all the raw stone into statues of your favorite creatures. Cast flesh to stone which turns them into corpses. Cast animate dead to produce your army of skeletons which you just created out of stone.

Now, while that's not technically storing them in a bag of holding, it definitely makes them more portable, which I think is where the question comes from originally, right?

In last nights game we ended up with a mixed bag of 7 zombies and skeletons. The issue came up when we needed to cross some water and water walking could not affect all of our undead canon fodder and the meanie cleric (me) refused to use another slot to be able to cast it twice.

I hadn't thought about the weight issue. I was looking at this as more of an issue of volume. I found some real life examples that seem to apply.
The record for how many people have crammed into a VW bus is 34.
VW Bus: 34, Pasco Bug Jam, Pasco County Fairgrounds, Dade City, Florida, USA, 14 November 2010
http://www.recordholders.org/en/list/carcram.html

I also found that one model of vw bus had the dimensions of 75″ x 165″ x 67 1/2″. This works out to 483.3984375 cubic feet.
Based on that being a little less that twice the volume of the bag of holding I feel it is safe to assume that there is room for about 17 zombies in there. Skeletons might be able to fit tighter.

So as you said it seems to boil down to weight.


uncleden wrote:

How many undead can you transport in a type 4 bag of holding?

In our legacy of fire campaign this has come up with our party's necromancer.

In asking I am assuming a mixed bag of zombies and skeletons. Would skeletons be able to cram in tighter due to lack of fleshy bits getting in the way?

I hope this question is at least a little entertaining.

I would strongly advice against putting skeletons into the bag of holding.

Being mindless and having claws just seems like the fastest route to bursting the bag and destroying the content.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
uncleden wrote:

How many undead can you transport in a type 4 bag of holding?

As a GM, I general do a quicky calculation. And this has come up, though usually in an effort to move humans medium distances quickly. (Evacuate a town, get a bunch of refugees over a river etc.)

If they are functional animated undead, I'd 5' by 5' by 5' (standard medium sized creature) is 125 cubic feat. I'd let them squeeze without risk of puncturing. So that would get 4 in by volume. Beyond that I would have a risk of puncture.

For unanimated skeletons I'd go by weight and put it at about 50 lbs a skeleton. Zombies needing to be relatively intact would still go by the above volume.


Been reading Go to Looking For Group lately?


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Ashiel wrote:
If you have wall of stone, fabricate, and stone to flesh, you can create an army of undead out of nothing. Cast wall of stone to get a crapload of raw material. Cast fabricate to turn all the raw stone into statues of your favorite creatures. Cast flesh to stone which turns them into corpses. Cast animate dead to produce your army of skeletons which you just created out of stone.

Stone to flesh makes flesh. I don't think it makes bones or anything else other than inert flesh. One could argue they are not even corpses and therefore excludes the possibility of zombies as well as skeletons. Either way, I don't think your trick would work.


Lacking any fleshy-bits I think it would come down to the weight of the skeletons since they would be pretty collapse-able.

The next logical conclusion is this could lead a Transformers style combiner undead monster when unleashed from the bag: Mega-undead-a-tron.


Ravingdork wrote:
Ashiel wrote:
If you have wall of stone, fabricate, and stone to flesh, you can create an army of undead out of nothing. Cast wall of stone to get a crapload of raw material. Cast fabricate to turn all the raw stone into statues of your favorite creatures. Cast flesh to stone which turns them into corpses. Cast animate dead to produce your army of skeletons which you just created out of stone.
Stone to flesh makes flesh. I don't think it makes bones or anything else other than inert flesh. One could argue they are not even corpses and therefore excludes the possibility of zombies as well as skeletons. Either way, I don't think your trick would work.

It does indeed seem that the wording of stone to flesh has changed slightly, whereas in 3E and 3.5 it said casting it on statues creates a corpse. So you are correct.

However, there are other methods. Repeated castings of polymorph any object can produce corpses from rocks (or people from dirt, 'cause wizards are godlike like that). Also, while it would be goofy-expensive to do, clone produces unused bodies that could be animated. You could animate a number of things by taking a skin sample this way.


Radamanthius wrote:
The next logical conclusion is this could lead a Transformers style combiner undead monster when unleashed from the bag: Mega-undead-a-tron.

Reach in to retrieve skeleton, get pulled in instead.


Lvl 12 Procrastinator wrote:
Radamanthius wrote:
The next logical conclusion is this could lead a Transformers style combiner undead monster when unleashed from the bag: Mega-undead-a-tron.
Reach in to retrieve skeleton, get pulled in instead.

Lame. Sounds too Tim Burton / Corpse Bride


Lvl 12 Procrastinator wrote:
Radamanthius wrote:
The next logical conclusion is this could lead a Transformers style combiner undead monster when unleashed from the bag: Mega-undead-a-tron.
Reach in to retrieve skeleton, get pulled in instead.

Best side-quest idea ever.


Maezer wrote:
uncleden wrote:

How many undead can you transport in a type 4 bag of holding?

As a GM, I general do a quicky calculation. And this has come up, though usually in an effort to move humans medium distances quickly. (Evacuate a town, get a bunch of refugees over a river etc.)

If they are functional animated undead, I'd 5' by 5' by 5' (standard medium sized creature) is 125 cubic feat. I'd let them squeeze without risk of puncturing. So that would get 4 in by volume. Beyond that I would have a risk of puncture.

For unanimated skeletons I'd go by weight and put it at about 50 lbs a skeleton. Zombies needing to be relatively intact would still go by the above volume.

That's not friendly to the players though. We take up a 5 foot square in combat solely because combat is constantly in motion, and even something who isn't moving about, will have a roughly 5 foot zone around them that is their "bubble." And they will be moving throughout this area constantly.

The zombies aren't perfect 5 foot cubes. They are about 5.5 x 2 x .8, that's what you should use to be fair.


I agree with the person who mentioned that skeleton claws could puncture the bag while they are riding inside all crammed together. Even more so if it is a skeleton of a creature with spines or spikes.

As for weight...a while back I did some research on the internet, and it seems like a human skeleton is 15% of total body weight, so that is what I have used to determine skeleton weight for the necromancer in my game.


Radamanthius wrote:
Lvl 12 Procrastinator wrote:
Radamanthius wrote:
The next logical conclusion is this could lead a Transformers style combiner undead monster when unleashed from the bag: Mega-undead-a-tron.
Reach in to retrieve skeleton, get pulled in instead.
Lame. Sounds too Tim Burton / Corpse Bride

What, and Michael Bay wasn't already too over the top?


Lvl 12 Procrastinator wrote:
Radamanthius wrote:
Lvl 12 Procrastinator wrote:
Radamanthius wrote:
The next logical conclusion is this could lead a Transformers style combiner undead monster when unleashed from the bag: Mega-undead-a-tron.
Reach in to retrieve skeleton, get pulled in instead.
Lame. Sounds too Tim Burton / Corpse Bride
What, and Michael Bay wasn't already too over the top?

Michael Bay? Yes

TF Generation 1? Never (bigger TF nerd than RPG nerd)

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Being a GM I hate the way the Bag of Holding is abused by everyone. So that being said I'll go with the ruling my favorite GM handed down to us.

1. The Bag of Holding may only hold inanimate objects: coins, gems, jewelry, etc.
2. The opening of a Bag of Holding is only as big as a brown paper bag opening.
3. Any living creature placed in the Bag of Holding must make a Fortitude save each round or die.
4. Any undead or animated creature placed in the Bag of Holding is turned to dust or disenchanted.
5. If you want to carry around living, undead, or animated creatures in an extra dimensional space you need to find or create a Portable Hole.

Scarab Sages

kid america wrote:

Being a GM I hate the way the Bag of Holding is abused by everyone. So that being said I'll go with the ruling my favorite GM handed down to us.

1. The Bag of Holding may only hold inanimate objects: coins, gems, jewelry, etc.
2. The opening of a Bag of Holding is only as big as a brown paper bag opening.
3. Any living creature placed in the Bag of Holding must make a Fortitude save each round or die.
4. Any undead or animated creature placed in the Bag of Holding is turned to dust or disenchanted.
5. If you want to carry around living, undead, or animated creatures in an extra dimensional space you need to find or create a Portable Hole.

...but the Pathfinder Core Rules specifically address putting living things in the bag: they can survive for up to 10 minutes, then they suffocate. So for any undead or animated thing (or any living thing with immunity to suffocation, for that matter) there should be no problem with chilling out in the bag.

The sharp things could be an issue, though you could command all the skeletons to clench their fists and not move. They are, after all, mindless, controlled skeletons.

-Drillboss

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