The big difference is the Bag Holding IV weighs 60lbs where portable weighs nothing. If you are Str 8 Wizard with an entire library of books with you a 60lb bag is very heavy, portable hole is not.
Also the portable hole is bigger than bag of holding IV. The bag of holding holds 1500 lb in 250 cu feet. The portable has no weight limit and holds 1130 cubic feet.
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The big difference is the Bag Holding IV weighs 60lbs where portable weighs nothing. If you are Str 8 Wizard with an entire library of books with you a 60lb bag is very heavy, portable hole is not.
Also the portable hole is bigger than bag of holding IV. The bag of holding holds 1500 lb in 250 cu feet. The portable has no weight limit and holds 1130 cubic feet.
It's pi•r^2 not pi•d^2
283 cu.ft.
By Portrait spell do you mean treasure stitching?It frequently gets used at my table for what I call "clown-carring."
(Hint: Party members inside of the Portable Hole don't count towards your limit when teleporting.)
You need to move your entire household how far and where and when?
1) USe the portrait spell with a Rod of Widen to shrink 20 x 20 x 20 stacked crates down to a flat surface. Roll it up, stick in the portable hole.
2) acquire a gorgon or medusa. Petrify all travelers and their households. Arrange them on another portrait, shrink them down. Alternately, use item spells to reduce them in size first. Place in portable hole.
3) Use Mass Reduce to shrink down anyone else who didn't want to be petrified.
4) Use Mass reduce on any horses or other large creatures to save area, then petrify and turn them into a painting. Pile random goods on top.
5) Put everyone into the portable hole. Pick up portable hole.
6) Teleport to the new location.
7) Break Enchantment everyone out of petrified status (may take 2 or 3 spells). Unitemize and unreduced all parties. Convert paintings back to goods.
8) Move into new abode.
==Aelryinth
yes!
Couldn't remember the name, thank you.==Aelryinth
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You can use it to make a convertible.
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1: holds my undead minions. Necromancers best friend since undead typically don't need air.
2: I have a valet familiar who need not breath or has air bubble on can stay inside a portable crafting lab.
3: portable library
4: store potential animate or experimental creatures for future experiments.
5: life bubble and a hole can be used as a means to carry a living army into a place that a single person can slip in easier than an entire group.
The possibilities are huge.
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Hmmm... Portable Hobbit Hole? yes... I can see the Portable Hole furnished like Bilbo Baggins' house... :)
One problem is that even for a Hobbit, a Portable Hole is really cramped. Another problem is that the occupant is vulnerable to assassination by way of package delivery, if said package contains a Bag of Holding.
When you are swallowed by a Half Dragon Tyrannosaur you can open your portable hole and fire the loaded cannon you have stored inside. Side effects include deafness and breakage of your wine collection you had also stored in the portable hole
It's for when your DM doesn't handwave what fits in a bag of holding. They hold about 280 cubic ft of stuff without a weight limit. They also have a bigger mouth than a BOH so larger objects can fit in them *at all*
I had a character who had the inside of a portable hole tricked out into a sweet bedroom/office that he popped a tent on top of when he was out adventuring.
That is how I have seen it used. Good for storage, better for TARDIS style camping. :D
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We always allowed for flexible use of the hole, as in, you could sew it into a pocket or backpack... granted, FINDING stuff in it was difficult, but the look on someones face when you pull a ten foot pole out of your pocket is worth it.
I keep seeing comments about GMs ignoring encumbrance rules... that hurts my brain... They aren't optional, STR exists for more than just combat, and things like Bags of Holding and Handy Haversacks list capacity for a reason...
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I keep seeing comments about GMs ignoring encumbrance rules... that hurts my brain... They aren't optional
All rules are optional, especially those can only be properly enforced by strict and tedious book-keeping.
GM: "Searching the merchant's room, you find an engraved cigarette case, a painting of two dragons fighting, a small statuette of a female minotaur, and a small box of semi-precious stones. You reckon you could sell them for 400gp in total."Player: "OK. How much does each of them weigh? I'm only 8.5lbs from medium load. Wait... 8.8lbs, I forgot about those arrows I fired."
GM: (Sighs and starts researching the question instead of getting on with the story.)
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wouldn't lava turn to solid stone as the rules of entropy apply uniformly across the multiverse? (i.e. heat always moves towards a cold body, or radiates out to space via convection and radiation?)
If the portable hole is closed, where does the heat flow to?
I keep seeing comments about GMs ignoring encumbrance rules... that hurts my brain... They aren't optional, STR exists for more than just combat, and things like Bags of Holding and Handy Haversacks list capacity for a reason...
Yes, because there is nothing more fun than having to look up the weight of everything you want to pick up and constantly adding up the weight of the items you are carrying ... "ok, we just beat the dragon, lets continue down the hall ... no wait, lets spend the next hour adding instead"
A definite play style choice in non-PFS
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wouldn't lava turn to solid stone as the rules of entropy apply uniformly across the multiverse? (i.e. heat always moves towards a cold body, or radiates out to space via convection and radiation?)If the portable hole is closed, where does the heat flow to?
One could hypothesize that the walls of the extradimensional space have a constant temperature X, that is inferior to lava's temperature, which results in a constant heat flow from the lava to the wall of the space.
If the extradimensional space is a perfectly closed system, like a perfect thermos, then yes one could keep ice or lava in there. I would argue against it for the very reason outlined here, as the item was probably not designed to be weaponized as such. I would also argue against it because heat or ice would create pressure or a vacuum effect with the air present within the space, so you have the added problem / perk of having this space serve as a perfect pressure vessel.
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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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wouldn't lava turn to solid stone as the rules of entropy apply uniformly across the multiverse? (i.e. heat always moves towards a cold body, or radiates out to space via convection and radiation?)If the portable hole is closed, where does the heat flow to?One could hypothesize that the walls of the extradimensional space have a constant temperature X, that is inferior to lava's temperature, which results in a constant heat flow from the lava to the wall of the space.
If the extradimensional space is a perfectly closed system, like a perfect thermos, then yes one could keep ice or lava in there. I would argue against it for the very reason outlined here, as the item was probably not designed to be weaponized as such. I would also argue against it because heat or ice would create pressure or a vacuum effect with the air present within the space, so you have the added problem / perk of having this space serve as a perfect pressure vessel.
In my particular example the lava was only contained in the hole for a few rounds involving teleport and a handy volcano. Even if the sides of the container were a perfect thermal conductor at absolute zero most of the lava would remain hot for the minute or so they needed.
But yeah, the physics behind quite a few magical effects gets wonky if you go into too much detail.
I keep seeing comments about GMs ignoring encumbrance rules... that hurts my brain... They aren't optionalAll rules are optional, especially those can only be properly enforced by strict and tedious book-keeping.
GM: "Searching the merchant's room, you find an engraved cigarette case, a painting of two dragons fighting, a small statuette of a female minotaur, and a small box of semi-precious stones. You reckon you could sell them for 400gp in total."
Player: "OK. How much does each of them weigh? I'm only 8.5lbs from medium load. Wait... 8.8lbs, I forgot about those arrows I fired."
GM: (Sighs and starts researching the question instead of getting on with the story.)
GM: "1 lb, 10 lb, 5 lb, 1 lb"
Literally took longer to type than to make up the numbers.
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One could hypothesize that the walls of the extradimensional space have a constant temperature X, that is inferior to lava's temperature, which results in a constant heat flow from the lava to the wall of the space. If the extradimensional space is a perfectly closed system, like a perfect thermos, then yes one could keep ice or lava in there.
Trying to apply real physics to magical effects is always fraught with peril. The interior of a Portable Hole is an extradimensional space with finite boundaries, but those boundaries aren't really "walls" in any conventional sense; they're planar boundaries. I'd say that heat can't dissipate out through those boundaries when the opening to the hole is closed for the same reason that PCs can't tunnel their way through them: there's simply nothing beyond them; nowhere for the heat to escape to.
I would argue against it for the very reason outlined here, as the item was probably not designed to be weaponized as such.
If you're looking for a way to limit what PCs can place within a hole, I'd propose looking at the nature of the item itself. A portable hole is essentially a circle of magical cloth 6-ft across. Even when placed upon a flat surface and the center of the cloth effectively disappears, some measure of it's cloth edges remain; characters need that edge so they can pull the hole away from a surface. Having that fabric edge where lava (or acid) can flow over it into the hole would seem to be a very bad idea. If the fabric suffers sufficient damage, the item will eventually be destroyed. Certainly there are workarounds that clever PCs can devise to get damaging substances in and out of the hole safely, but it's still a risky proposition; one which thrifty PCs may prefer to avoid for fear of loosing an expensive item. Just my 2¢.
^That certainly sounds reasonable. Although I would think that people would try hard to invent various specialized (and probably a lot more expensive) versions of Portable Holes to alleviate some of these limitations, as well as to have different sizes (and maybe even ones that are Bag-of-Holding-safe).
I don't know about other peoples games but in mine the point somehow became making cheesy Silent Hill references. "There was a hole here once, but it's gone now."