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I can think of absolutely no good reason for either houserule.
Do you like having to play the accounting minigame for keeping track of myriad random crap? That's not a game, to me, that's work.
I agree with that sentiment, but everybody is entitled to their own opinions. I've left tables because they wanted to play Accountants and Offices, and I wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons.
As in, they had a miasma of random additional junk to track which took up loads of session time, but I wanted to dungeon crawl and fight dragons and the like, I want to be clear that I am not saying that there is one true way to play; if they enjoy it, great. It's just not for me.
In a really gritty, high-difficulty campaign I could see going after the PCs' BOHs (or component pouches, spellbooks etc.) But I doubt it's so common as to render the bags themselves useless. Besides, any DM who tries this knows it will work exactly once before the PCs become so annoyingly paranoid ("there's a bag of holding in the treasure? Don't put anything in it, we can sell it later") as to negate any benefit the "gotcha" moment would have provided.
Most DMs I know hand out extraplanar storage just so the players don't turn the strength-based characters into glorified pack-mules inside of 5 sessions. (Assuming they don't just get actual pack mules instead.)
But mules have far more personality than BoH's, and can be used in much the same way: "We chuck that onto Muffin"
Assuming you're not just joking - they aren't always practical though, e.g. going underground, or fighting something with AoE attacks (like a dragon), or climbing ladders etc. And for situations that function better with a small party (e.g. teleport, rope trick, group flight, group invisibility etc.) they count as extra party members, in some cases even multiple extra party members. Lastly, they're easy to kill, and once dead you're faced with the problem of making it back to town with everything they were carrying plus your own gear.
BoH and other ED-storage have been created in D&D to _remove_ bookkeeping and micro-managing carried weight, as to allow everyone to focus on the interesting parts of the game. Micromanaging them or making them unsafe totally defeats the purpose.
__________________ So you know, university Physics D&D 3.5 Optimization is essentially three seven years of this discussion among like-minded enthusiasts. Done with supercomputers, access to the textsplatbook collections of five continents and thirty languages with thousands of classes, prestige classes, feats and spells.
On four hours sleep a night.
With no sex.
You're not going to find the loophole these guys missed.
I can think of absolutely no good reason for either houserule.
Do you like having to play the accounting minigame for keeping track of myriad random crap? That's not a game, to me, that's work.
IIRC, the BoH was originally an FILO/LIFO item, but that rule changed in an early edition.
And there's usually no accounting involved. When the party has ten minutes to spare, the player says "I get my ten foot pole out of my bag of holding" and the DM says "you find it about fifteen items in" and the player says "great, I repack the bag with the pole on top".
As for the extra spell for (H)HH, why does this item get such a great effect for nothing? RAW, there is no difference whatsoever in the creation of a BoH and an (H)HH, but one has a significantly different effect. Additional effect, additional spell. Makes perfect sense.
And as a side note, the BoH is 2'x4' because it is meant to be carried over the shoulder. It is also meant to be made of red velvet with white fur trim around the mouth.
Last edited by jackattack : 10-08-2012 at 02:57 PM.
BoH and other ED-storage have been created in D&D to _remove_ bookkeeping and micro-managing carried weight, as to allow everyone to focus on the interesting parts of the game. Micromanaging them or making them unsafe totally defeats the purpose.
Precisely this
Quote:
Originally Posted by jackattack
And as a side note, the BoH is 2'x4' because it is meant to be carried over the shoulder. It is also meant to be made of red velvet with white fur trim around the mouth.
BoH and other ED-storage have been created in D&D to _remove_ bookkeeping and micro-managing carried weight, as to allow everyone to focus on the interesting parts of the game. Micromanaging them or making them unsafe totally defeats the purpose.
I don't agree with this since both the BoH and managing loot transportation were big parts of 2e. Carts, bandits who see your carts and mules, copper dragon hordes (in cp), creative looting of valuable but huge objects like iron or adamantine structures. Even stuffing characters and other living creatures into a BoH to circumvent obstacles. It's quite amazing the fun you can have simply with moving objects, especially when a campaign involves tomb raiding. As it often does, whether the DM loves it or hates it.
Ignoring lesser aspects of adventuring has all the advantages and disadvantages of video games: simpler but less creative. You have to strike a balance between keeping the campaign interesting and yet avoiding time consuming paperwork. Remove all the lesser details and it's just a monster grind with some unimportant cut scenes (no matter how well written they may be) in between.
The HHH is a nice compromise because it's wearable and allows rapid access to several small items for combat yet with an 80+20+20 lb. capacity you won't be stuffing any people or statues into it nor do you have instant access to a 1000 item inventory. You need the less convenient potato sack known as the BoH for those.
Yes, they had to change it from a place to put all of the loot the players wanted to pack out of the dungeon, into a place to put all of the gear the players wanted to pack into the dungeon.
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Originally Posted by Deophaun
And when the party doesn't have ten minutes to spare, what then? You need to have been playing an accountant the whole time.
Unless your DM handwaives what your players carry, there is probably a list of what's in your bag of holding. (And your backpack, and your belt pouch.) The last item in is probably at the bottom of the list. Work your way up from there.
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Originally Posted by Deophaun
Yes. Less than half the weight and a fraction of the volume for roughly the same price equates to nothing...
Does this mean that my magic user can produce whatever effect he wants with Craft Wondrous Item and a thousand gold pieces? (Cos now I can make a Gem of True Seeing into X-Ray Specs!) Or should my character be restricted to the spells he knows, and rewarded for having an extensive spell book?
The weight and capacity of the bag are in keeping with the BoH table. Logically, the price of an (H)HH should have been zero (prices drop in roughly 2500gp increments) or 1250gp (Type I is half the price of a Type II).
And around CL9, a thousand GP really isn't much, especially for the advantage of avoiding AoOs.
I believe the 3rd point was sarcasm. The HHH sacrifices carrying capacity for convenience; it's not strictly better than a similarly priced BoH (even though it's often better).
Or should my character be restricted to the spells he knows, and rewarded for having an extensive spell book?
Yes, it's always a good idea to shaft spontaneous casters more than they already are, and give the prepared casters as much help they don't need as possible.
I believe the 3rd point was sarcasm. The HHH sacrifices carrying capacity for convenience; it's not strictly better than a similarly priced BoH (even though it's often better).
I believe ericgrau's assessment is accurate. That was almost certainly sarcasm, however ill-advised it might be to use it on an internet forum. Deophan, if I understand him correctly, is stating that HHH gives up carrying capacity for convenience, and there are times when it is not the optimal item for its price.
__________________ Round 4: Eat Brains.
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Originally Posted by Gavinfoxx
Well at least your houserule skill check fumbles have houseruled fumble confirmations.
Sarcastically stated, but still I think intended as a counterpoint. Which I address by restating that any caster with the secret chest spell can somehow reproduce a feat-quality effect without knowing an additional spell, RAW. I call that a bargain for the price...
Basically, in most cases just going by RAW you don't even _need_ ED storage for your loot, if only you have a large enough supply of gunnysacks and your DM doesn't starve you through weeks and weeks of wilderness and ghost towns before you can finally liquidate your hard-earned loot.
I once ran the numbers on this but I'm not sure where to look for them now; I'll just try to figure it out again: let's say your party kills an Adult Red Dragon (CR15) at level 12 and takes its stuff. The party Melee fighter alone has probably a Str around 24 by that time, which allows him to carry a Medium Load of up to 466 lbs. His armour and weapons account for maybe 66 lbs, leaving 400lbs to spare for hauling loot.
A CR15 dragon's hoard, on the other hand, consists of some coins and a pile of junk and brummagem weighing 330 lbs total, according to the Draconomicon.
The BSF by himself can haul off an entire dragon hoard and then some; not to mention that by that time, the party can probably simply teleport directly from the lair into a pawn shop. And I hope you wouldn't demand a level 12 party to slay more than one dragon at a time. ;)
--> ED storage like BoH is there simply for convenience and to avoid interruptions to the adventure, which would otherwise occur if the party had to return to town every time the inventory was full. Diablo, anyone?
HHH is even more convenient thanks to the "instant retrieval" property, it also allows the PCs to carry the gear required by the game system (various alternative weapons and items for different scenarios) without looking plain silly, so it's actually good for immersion without hampering flexibility.
__________________ So you know, university Physics D&D 3.5 Optimization is essentially three seven years of this discussion among like-minded enthusiasts. Done with supercomputers, access to the textsplatbook collections of five continents and thirty languages with thousands of classes, prestige classes, feats and spells.
On four hours sleep a night.
With no sex.
You're not going to find the loophole these guys missed.
Sarcastically stated, but still I think intended as a counterpoint. Which I address by restating that any caster with the secret chest spell can somehow reproduce a feat-quality effect without knowing an additional spell, RAW. I call that a bargain for the price...
Who on earth cares? It costs a Wizard almost nothing to learn a new spell. It's almost always in his best interests anyway. The overwhelming majority of Wizards will get a Boccob's Blessed Book ASAP anyway, so it won't even matter much. By the time they fill up a BBB, the cost of a new one will be so trivial that it won't matter.
On the other hand, crafting, already a poor choice for a Sorcerer, who was already almost-strictly inferior to the Wizard, just became that much worse.
My loft is great for storing bulk items that I don't need often but I'd trade half the space for a way of putting my arm into the trapdoor and pulling out the Christmas decorations without having to move most of the other contents first.
That really only matters in real life though. As a player, it's no more work to say "I grab the McGuffin out of my bag of holding" than it is to say "I grab the McGuffin out of my handy haversack". And as long as you're not in combat it doesn't matter how long it takes your character really.
__________________
If build a man a fire, he'll be warm for a day.
If you set a man on fire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
In a really gritty, high-difficulty campaign I could see going after the PCs' BOHs (or component pouches, spellbooks etc.) But I doubt it's so common as to render the bags themselves useless. Besides, any DM who tries this knows it will work exactly once before the PCs become so annoyingly paranoid ("there's a bag of holding in the treasure? Don't put anything in it, we can sell it later") as to negate any benefit the "gotcha" moment would have provided.
The other thing is that from an in-universe perspective, if targeting an enemy's bag of holding to destroy the items inside was a common tactic, the people making bags of holding would very quickly start making them out of something much sturdier than cloth to defeat that tactic.
__________________
If build a man a fire, he'll be warm for a day.
If you set a man on fire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Unless your DM handwaives what your players carry, there is probably a list of what's in your bag of holding. (And your backpack, and your belt pouch.) The last item in is probably at the bottom of the list. Work your way up from there.
So the bags of holding in your campaigns are like Las Vegas? What goes into the bag stays in the bag? People aren't saying "Hey, I need object X right now, let's take that out?" It stays in the bag until you get it to Ye Olde Magic Shoppe to empty it? No one ever says "Hey, the wand of cure critical is more useful than that ornately carved, gold accented statue we just got. Be sure to put that on top?" Because if not, your counterpoint is not a counter at all, and that's why point #1.
So BoHs in your universe are like a bazaar in a bag? Anything you want at the tip of your fingers, even if you didn't actually say it was in your inventory?
The original use of the BoH (intended or not) was to completely strip a dungeon of its contents without worrying about encumbrance. That's why jokes about parties taking furniture and statues exist -- they actually happened in games on a regular basis.
And yeah, everything in the bag could stay there until the party left the dungeon. That was the trade-off for being able to carry tons of stuff. Anything the players thought might come in handy could be carried elsewhere. And if they made an error in judgement, they had to find a safe place and find what they needed, or actually live with the disadvantage for a few minutes.
The modern use of the BoH (intended or not) is to completely equip a party for any and every contingency without worrying about encumbrance. And since the bag is full of mission-essential gear, it is unacceptable that the player should wait to get anything, or get the wrong thing. Or that the party should actually be limited in what they can carry, and be forced to make tough choices about their gear.
That's what (H)HH is for. That's why it has a sorting function. That's also why it has less capacity than even the smallest BoH. It is intended to fulfill the "need" to be uber-prepared with instant recovery and no risk during combat.
If you don't like accounting, don't do it. If you are comfortable saying "we buy everything we could possibly need and stuff it in a bag of holding", that's great. But I think part of the game is deciding what gear to equip my character with, bound by the limits of encumbrance and item cost. I think it encourages roleplaying when my character tries to research the upcoming dungeon, and it encourages player interaction when I ask the other people at the table whether I should bring the wand of fireballs or the ice sword +3.
And it's actually fun to overcome an obstacle or an opponent with the tools at hand, especially when you realize that you should have brought the ice sword +3 but didn't. Those are the stories that are fun to tell and to listen to.
And my last word on this topic (yay!) is that I started out by presenting two alternative approaches to a couple of common magic items without saying they were better, or that anyone need use them, or judging anyone else's play styles.
Last edited by jackattack : 10-08-2012 at 05:30 PM.
So the bags of holding in your campaigns are like Las Vegas? What goes into the bag stays in the bag? People aren't saying "Hey, I need object X right now, let's take that out?" It stays in the bag until you get it to Ye Olde Magic Shoppe to empty it? No one ever says "Hey, the wand of cure critical is more useful than that ornately carved, gold accented statue we just got. Be sure to put that on top?" Because if not, your counterpoint is not a counter at all, and that's why point #1.
Interestingly enough, Bags of Holding have specific rules on getting items out: "Retrieving a specific item from a bag of holding is a move action—unless the bag contains more than an ordinary backpack would hold, in which case retrieving a specific item is a full-round action."
So while you'd think putting the useful stuff on top might help... by RAW, it doesn't.
__________________
Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.
The modern use of the BoH (intended or not) is to completely equip a party for any and every contingency without worrying about encumbrance. And since the bag is full of mission-essential gear, it is unacceptable that the player should wait to get anything, or get the wrong thing. Or that the party should actually be limited in what they can carry, and be forced to make tough choices about their gear.
..Yes, exactly, which is why the modern Bag of Holding *also has a quick-pull function.* It's a move action to get any specific item out of it, or at most a Standard if it's loaded beyond the capacity of a standard backpack. The difference between that and the Haversack is the Haversack is never more than a move, and getting something out of the Haversack doesn't provoke AoO. With neither item are you intended to have to dump the entire thing out and root around for what you want - the Haversack is just a little more convenient on a combat-relevant timescale, where the Bag will use up your more potent action and is unsafe to pull from while standing next to an enemy.
So BoHs in your universe are like a bazaar in a bag? Anything you want at the tip of your fingers, even if you didn't actually say it was in your inventory?
Unless your DM handwaives what your players carry, there is probably a list of what's in your bag of holding. (And your backpack, and your belt pouch.) The last item in is probably at the bottom of the list. Work your way up from there.
And if your character sheet was made using some Char generator, probably the list of said objects is in alphabetical order.
With HHH, the item you need is at hand, with BoH isn't, and you had to search for it.
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Originally Posted by Kaiyanwang
Great analysis KA. I second all things you said
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Originally Posted by JoeYounger
Great analysis KA, I second everything you said here.
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Originally Posted by Ryu_Bonkosi
If I have a player using Paladin in the future I will direct them to this. Good job.
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Originally Posted by grimbold
THIS is proof that KA is amazing
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Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost
Killer Angel, you have an excellent taste in books
So BoHs in your universe are like a bazaar in a bag? Anything you want at the tip of your fingers, even if you didn't actually say it was in your inventory?
The original use of the BoH (intended or not) was to completely strip a dungeon of its contents without worrying about encumbrance. That's why jokes about parties taking furniture and statues exist -- they actually happened in games on a regular basis.
And yeah, everything in the bag could stay there until the party left the dungeon. That was the trade-off for being able to carry tons of stuff. Anything the players thought might come in handy could be carried elsewhere. And if they made an error in judgement, they had to find a safe place and find what they needed, or actually live with the disadvantage for a few minutes.
The modern use of the BoH (intended or not) is to completely equip a party for any and every contingency without worrying about encumbrance. And since the bag is full of mission-essential gear, it is unacceptable that the player should wait to get anything, or get the wrong thing. Or that the party should actually be limited in what they can carry, and be forced to make tough choices about their gear.
That's what (H)HH is for. That's why it has a sorting function. That's also why it has less capacity than even the smallest BoH. It is intended to fulfill the "need" to be uber-prepared with instant recovery and no risk during combat.
If you don't like accounting, don't do it. If you are comfortable saying "we buy everything we could possibly need and stuff it in a bag of holding", that's great. But I think part of the game is deciding what gear to equip my character with, bound by the limits of encumbrance and item cost. I think it encourages roleplaying when my character tries to research the upcoming dungeon, and it encourages player interaction when I ask the other people at the table whether I should bring the wand of fireballs or the ice sword +3.
And it's actually fun to overcome an obstacle or an opponent with the tools at hand, especially when you realize that you should have brought the ice sword +3 but didn't. Those are the stories that are fun to tell and to listen to.
And my last word on this topic (yay!) is that I started out by presenting two alternative approaches to a couple of common magic items without saying they were better, or that anyone need use them, or judging anyone else's play styles.
No accounting doesn't mean not having a list of items in inventory. It just means not having to figure out which item is ranked 1st till last in HHH at all times.
PC: I take out my Cure Light Wounds wand
DM: Wait! Didn't you take out (and put back in) a Knock wand last session?
PC2: I remember you stuffing your HHH with loot from that encounter too.
PC: ...
All of this reminds me of one party I DM'd for, where the Tank strapped one of those ED quivers to the inside of his tower shield.
That said, I prefer the (H)HH. I've used them to great effect, particularly with my PF Alchemist - where her HH was stocked with an unfeasable number of alchemical items. I've also seen BoH and PH 'built into' certain items (mostly homebrew) to provide almost limitless ammunition.
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Re: Bag of Holding VS Heward’s Handy Haversack
