I have a bit of issue with my DM on the subject of the bag of holding. The description says about how much can be held in a bag of holding, however the DM argues that it can't be opened wide enough to store large items and that the opening can only be opened about roughly 10".
There's nothing detailing how wide it can open but I do argue the description does mention if someone was inside that they suffocate after 2 minutes.
So I'm curious on how you would all rule it. Would you be able to carry a person or large item such as furnature or statues?
I have a bit of issue with my DM on the subject of the bag of holding. The description says about how much can be held in a bag of holding, however the DM argues that it can't be opened wide enough to store large items and that the opening can only be opened about roughly 10".
There's nothing detailing how wide it can open but I do argue the description does mention if someone was inside that they suffocate after 2 minutes.
So I'm curious on how you would all rule it. Would you be able to carry a person or large item such as furnature or statues?
Even with only 10", there are creatures small enough to fit in the bag.
However, I've always played and DM'd (20+ years) that a creature can be placed in the bag in conjunction with reduce person and larger objects can be placed in the bag with shrink item assuming that the reduced dimensions allow them to fit in the bag's dimensions (see below). Living creatures still need to either hold their breath or otherwise contend with no air.
Though I had never bothered to calculate it before, the description of the bag states it is about "2 feet by 4 feet", which I take to mean 2 feet in width and 4 feet long. So, you could open the bag into a cylinder with a total circumference of 4 feet, which works out to a radius of 7.63" or a diameter (i.e. the amount the bag could be "opened") of just over 15".
Your DM's estimate of 10" was certainly fair since there could be variations in bag size, but even then I'd still say the reduction spells would work.
I have a bit of issue with my DM on the subject of the bag of holding. The description says about how much can be held in a bag of holding, however the DM argues that it can't be opened wide enough to store large items and that the opening can only be opened about roughly 10".
There's nothing detailing how wide it can open but I do argue the description does mention if someone was inside that they suffocate after 2 minutes.
So I'm curious on how you would all rule it. Would you be able to carry a person or large item such as furnature or statues?
The very first sentence in the item description tells you the dimensions of the bag:
"This appears to be a common cloth sack about 2 feet by 4 feet in size."
A sack generally has the opening on the "tall" side, so it stands to reason that the Bag of Holding is 2'x4', with a 2' opening at the top. You can't expand that to be wider than 2'.
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I always add fluff to my personal bag of holdings that they were designed to open to a max of 5 feet wide. That's enough room for most stuff\bodies to fit into without an issue.
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The very first sentence in the item description tells you the dimensions of the bag:"This appears to be a common cloth sack about 2 feet by 4 feet in size."
A sack generally has the opening on the "tall" side, so it stands to reason that the Bag of Holding is 2'x4', with a 2' opening at the top. You can't expand that to be wider than 2'.
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The very first sentence in the item description tells you the dimensions of the bag:"This appears to be a common cloth sack about 2 feet by 4 feet in size."
A sack generally has the opening on the "tall" side, so it stands to reason that the Bag of Holding is 2'x4', with a 2' opening at the top. You can't expand that to be wider than 2'.
And if you want to apply some extra nerdliness to it, for putting anything not flat into it, you're looking at an oval or circle with a circumference of 2 ft. For something of uniform shape, that's a circle with a diameter of roughly 1.25 feet.
And if you want to apply some extra nerdliness to it, for putting anything not flat into it, you're looking at an oval or circle with a circumference of 2 ft. For something of uniform shape, that's a circle with a diameter of roughly 1.25 feet.
Thank you for providing that math... I was honestly drawing a blank on how to calculate that, so it's good information!
And if you want to apply some extra nerdliness to it, for putting anything not flat into it, you're looking at an oval or circle with a circumference of 2 ft. For something of uniform shape, that's a circle with a diameter of roughly 1.25 feet.
The very first sentence in the item description tells you the dimensions of the bag:"This appears to be a common cloth sack about 2 feet by 4 feet in size."
A sack generally has the opening on the "tall" side, so it stands to reason that the Bag of Holding is 2'x4', with a 2' opening at the top. You can't expand that to be wider than 2'.
Myeh. You could stick a gnome it in.
You can easily fit a human in a bag that wide around by shimmying them in
Shoulder width of the average person is a bit greater than 15" (more like 36", give or take) and that doesn't even take into account the width of dwarves (about as wide as they are tall) or females, or barbarians with 20 STR (like Arnie)
Shoulder width of the average person is a bit greater than 15" (more like 36", give or take) and that doesn't even take into account the width of dwarves (about as wide as they are tall) or females, or barbarians with 20 STR (like Arnie)
Which is why you hold the person or other item to go in on a slant. You put in one arm first. Hold it up put the hand in the bag so that the bottom of the bag rests against their arm pit then the head, get them a little ways into the bag and the rest should fall in.
Yall's math is way off.
If you're sewing a 2 foot by 4 foot gunny sack, you get two pieces of cloth 2 foot by 4 foot, and you sew them together on three sides, then you put a draw string in the fourth side. This is how gunny sacks have always been made.
Here's the wikipedia article on the nonmagic version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunny_sack
Notice the picture on the right.
So the 2 foot dimension is not the circumference. 4 feet is the circumference. The diameter depends on how you hold the mouth of the sack open. You could fit a 2 foot wide (diameter) piece of poster board in the sack by having it open long and slim. You could fit a 1.273 foot diameter kickball in the sack if the mouth were widened out into a circle. You could fit a 1 foot by 1 foot wooden post in the thing if you held the mouth open in a squareish shape.
All that said, every time I've used the things in game we just ignored the opening and said stuff shrank to fit in it, by something we liked to call "magic."
All that said, every time I've used the things in game we just ignored the opening and said stuff shrank to fit in it, by something we liked to call "magic."
Conversely, seeing as how there's no mention in the bag's description regarding the dimension of items which can be placed inside, I've always assumed that the opening of the bag can stretch (within reason) to accommodate whatever you try to push inside as long as it falls within the bag's weight limit. How hard could it be to make spandex-like material once you've figured out how to warp spacial dimensions?
Yall's math is way off.
If you're sewing a 2 foot by 4 foot gunny sack, you get two pieces of cloth 2 foot by 4 foot, and you sew them together on three sides, then you put a draw string in the fourth side. This is how gunny sacks have always been made.
That's what I was thinking myself -- the whole "2 feet width would give you *4* feet of circumference to play with -- otherwise you wouldn't be able to slide something that was nearly 2 feet wide into the bag.
Or you could always use a portable hole
A portable hole is a circle of cloth spun from the webs of a phase spider interwoven with strands of ether and beams of starlight, resulting in a portable extradimensional space. When opened fully, a portable hole is 6 feet in diameter, but it can be folded up to be as small as a pocket handkerchief. When spread upon any surface, it causes an extradimensional space 10 feet deep to come into being. This hole can be picked up from inside or out by simply taking hold of the edges of the cloth and folding it up. Either way, the entrance disappears, but anything inside the hole remains, traveling with the item.
The only air in the hole is that which enters when the hole is opened. It contains enough air to supply one Medium creature or two Small creatures for 10 minutes. The cloth does not accumulate weight even if its hole is filled. Each portable hole opens on its own particular nondimensional space. If a bag of holding is placed within a portable hole, a rift to the Astral Plane is torn in that place. Both the bag and the cloth are sucked into the void and forever lost. If a portable hole is placed within a bag of holding, it opens a gate to the Astral Plane. The hole, the bag, and any creatures within a 10-foot radius are drawn there, the portable hole and bag of holding being destroyed in the process.
Added benefit that a Portable Hole has no weight. 6' in diameter and 10' deep is pretty damned big....AND it only costs 10,000gp
This is not a question that is answered in Pathfinder, D&D 3.5, D&D 3rd Edition, or in either edition of AD&D, nor is it explicitly answered in any other version of the D&D game.
However, looking at the original 1974 D&D boxed set, we see:
Bag of Holding: A sack-sized magical bag which will contain 10,000 Gold Pieces as if they were only 300. Objects up to 10' length and 5' width and 3' height may be stuffed into the bag, but the weight equivalent, regardless of the weight of the object, then becomes 600.
Which is to say, you originally could get an object with a circumference of up to 16 feet (5 feet *2 + 3 feet *2) into the "sack-sized" bag. Between that and the modern bag description mentioning putting people in it, I think the reasonable interpretation is that the opening can magically accommodate objects too big to otherwise fit through it.