OK so we have had yet another rules question come up and are after some RAI feedback..
things we have already ruled in our game (where a character can cast AP at will as a SLA)
1) your body that forms is not affected by anti-magic fields (as if you were a called creature)
2) your body wakes up without any conditions that affected the projection (blindness/feeblemind etc)
3) when your projection ends any projecting items that you had when the projection was first cast disappear. ie, if you projected with a sword then gave that sword away; when your personal AP ends the sword vanishes.
4) non-projecting items you find (loot) do not vanish and instead drop to the floor where you were.
5) consumable items are consumed in both projection and real world. food spoils (beyond use); potions become inert; charges are expended from wands/staves; spell slots are used etc.
6) projecting equipment that is broken IS NOT broken in 'real-life' but a disjunction spell will ruin them.
this is our current issue.. Portable holes/bags. currently we have been ruling that "projects an astral copy of you and all you wear or carry" means that your bag of holding is copied. of course the bag is just a portal to an extradimensional space and that portal is copied. Therefore any items in that space are the real items (not projecting at all) and to get loot back you can put stuff in your bag of holding. Does this seam reasonable to people?
the reason for asking is this.. the party decided to project before travelling into the abyss. they have traveled deep deep into the realms where even gods cannot see and it turns out gods cannot planeshift into/out of either. Jubilex 'killed' 3 members of the party and another demon (ripper) killed another; we have also rescued a fair few other people. those who were killed have managed to make it back to us (somehow) but there are only two who are still APing (both have their own AP going). until now even though they cannot planeshift out the projection is working properly and real bodies wake up. So the plan for getting people out of the abyss is to climb in a portable hole carried by one of the still-projecting guys, and end the projection.
do people think this SHOULD work; as in; does that seem like a fair interpretation of the rules and a well thought out and reasonable way of exiting the deepest layers of the abyss?
There's no real guideline for how a projected portable hole's contents work, so anything the GM decides is fair game. If you're just asking for opinions, yeah, it seems fine--more reasonable than some of the other house rules above, in fact.
That seems consistent with how you've established the rules of astral projection and it's a nice creative way of resolving the problem. If I was GMing the scenario with the above rules, I'd allow it.
which of the house rules above do you think are unreasonable?
1, 5 and 6) the way we have been interpreting it is that you have a new mundane form created on whichever plane you manifest.. magic from your equipment seems through the ether to the minifested form as a two way link (similar to the silver cord). essentially the magic of each item is shared by both real and projected form.
so if your projected sword breaks then it breaks in projected form, but its a copy so thats fine; in the real world the sword is fine and retains its magic as it is no longer sharing it with the astral one. you could get the sword back by returning to the astral then manifesting again (as copies are made of all the items etc)
if you get hit by a disjunction that destroys the magic of the sword though then that is a different matter; likewise if you use the magic in a wand then the material plane one is also expended.
as we have ruled that the body formed is mundane (similar to a major creation non-magic item) it isnt affected by antimagic.. well, it doesnt disappear. of course magic items it is carrying etc are still suppressed.
3 and 4) this seemed logical to all of us; we cannot imagine it being workable any other way
2) most contentious perhaps. we discussed whether mental effects should stay etc but decided it would be easier to state flat out that such things dont stay when you return to normal form.. this may still change though.
Ah, I misunderstood 3 as "giving away an astral sword gives away your real sword". Yeah, it all looks consistent and reasonable to me.