#I think it's clever and I'm curious if this has implications for the story later

[artsyastronaut-fandom-blog]

Has anyone talked about desert skies and how a lot of the sphere movers are based on deities??? Like Hephaestus was obvious to me cuz duh I read Percy Jackson and the prime mover is definitely giving G-d but I was looking at the transcripts when I saw the spellings of some of the names others names and I was like hold on a minute...

so I looked it up and huehuecoyotl, xochitlicue, land her sister Cihuacoatl are named after Aztec deities specifically, a god of mischief, a goddess of flowers+life/death (kinda like Persephone which also partially sparked this thought spiral) and a goddess of midwives/fertility/death in childbirth. Which I think is interesting given the events of season one

Even ones only briefly mentioned like ceto of the 27th sphere being named after a primordial sea deity, or morfran of the 7th sphere being named after a warrior in Celtic myth. I know that's not technically the same but I think that's kinda neat and wonder if anyone else noticed

[dmsden]

Left Holding the Bag...of Holding

Hullo, Gentle Readers. We have a super-fun questions today. My good friend Kalenidus wants to know, “ Ok, so a case I'm always curious about involves bags of holding. There doesn't seem to be a time limit in regards to holding the bag open and placing something in it. So I wondered, could a person climb into a bag of holding, but leave their hand sticking out, holding onto someone else so they don't fall in, then get pulled back out of the bag? Seems like a nifty trick to say get someone out past the bars of a jail or a small opening.”

I have to say that I love when players take a well known magic-item and find some fun new users for them. When I ran Tomb of Horrors recently, the wizard’s Immovable Rod was by far the MVP of the module. This is such an entertaining idea of a way to use the bag of holding in an innovative way! I’m not your DM, but if this were my campaign, I would let a player do this for sure. 

A couple of interesting thoughts to ponder on. Technically, the bag doesn’t have an “open” or “closed” state, so, if a breathing person is inside it, they only have 10 minutes of air. As a DM, however, I would allow the bag to be held open, allowing for more air. The bag also doesn’t discuss things being partly inside and partly outside, a living creature escaping the bag, or how difficult it is to find something in it. It does indicate that retrieving an item (presumably including someone inside it) takes an action. 

For purposes of Kalenidus’ example, Person A could get in the bag of holding, Person B could reach the bag out through the bars of the cell, then use an action to retrieve Person A. Person A could then repeat this for the other folks, ferrying people out of the cell fairly quickly. There is absolutely nothing in the Rules As Written that indicates this wouldn’t work.

I suppose a DM who was a stickler for RAW could disallow the possibility of keeping the bag open. The implications of the later text about the bag of holding being torn, for example, could be because the bag is a small gate to a pocket dimension. The DM could therefore rule that the pocket dimension only has so much air, and someone inside cannot benefit from the bag being held “open”. As soon as their face passes the opening, they are limited to the air in the pocket dimension. Personally, I think that then requires me to think about how long it takes the air in the pocket dimension to be replenished, and if having items in the bag of holding limits the amount of air also within it. These are not things I care to concern myself with, so I’m fine with the bag of holding being able to be held open to allow more air.

Similarly, I would allow a flying character with a bag of holding to ferry their party over a river of lava. A paladin could carry a prisoner unnoticed through a marketplace that’s filled with guards who are looking for him. A clever party could allow one or two people to sleep in it with the bag, still open, suspended from a tree, allowing them to get the drop on any attackers. Of course, these kinds of scenarios tempt me to prevent misuse of the bag through fun story beats. What if an urchin tries to pickpocket the paladin and ends up falling in? What if someone steals the bag, with the people trapped in it? What if a tree-climbing owlbear goes into the bag looking for food? Complications are the meat and drink of memorable tales down the line.

It’s never occurred to me before, but a bag of holding that you’re willing to sacrifice is the poor man’s gate spell, as long as all you wanted to do was get into the Astral Plane. You could get a couple of characters in (maybe more using a reduce spell or polymorph) and then pierce the bag, rupturing the bag and sending its contents into the Astral Plane. Thus begins a new adventure!

Kalenidus, I hope this helped answer your question. I thought this was a super fun topic, and I’ll happily answer any like this that anyone has down the road. I love picking apart weird little rules anomalies.

I don’t often do advertisements here, but, as I was preparing this article, I spotted this SUPER cool item. It’s a flap for a messenger bag that’s a beautiful replica of the Bag of Holding from the DMG. Check it out at https://www.forfansbyfans.com/bag-of-holding-messenger-flap-24204.html