PDA

View Full Version : Rule #23: Never put infinite space inside infinite space.



Dragero
2010-01-13, 08:34 PM
...It makes a boom.

I was playing the partys wizard(Idiot wizard it seems...). We just got a TON of loot (Big bad guys` stronghold raid ftw) and where around lev 8-11.

We Where having trouble carrying our stuff, near full encumbermence. Our Bag of holding was full, as was our Portable hole. I, wanting to reduce the load even more, Tell the DM I`m gonna put the PH in the BoH.

He looks concerned. He opens up one of his books, chokes on his tea, and asks me if I`m sure I want too. (OHH I should have known) I say yes, and after some calculations/ rolling he says

"OK, as you put the bag in the hole, a rift in the fabric of reality opens. It sucks up your bag, hole, and all the things nearby. You feel like your flying. As you look down, your already inside the rift, dead"

At least it was an epic way to die. Apparently we took out a whole forest :D

This was 3.5 btw....

Lysander
2010-01-13, 08:41 PM
Actually BOH in a PH should have just destroyed both items and their contents. You have to combine them the other way, PH in a BOH to open a rift that sucks things in. And that wouldn't prove fatal, you'd just be stranded in the astral plane. It's a timeless plane so you could float there immortally forever, never needing to eat or sleep, stranded unless you can plane shift away or something finds you.

Starbuck_II
2010-01-13, 08:41 PM
Not sure why you died, but yes that is one epic way to go. Would have been better had you been fighting some enemies when you tried it.

taltamir
2010-01-13, 08:45 PM
you really should have gotten a knowledge arcanna check to know that PH and BoO cause a big boom when mixed... :)

jmbrown
2010-01-13, 08:47 PM
*Sigh* I miss the golden days when none of us knew the intricacies of the game and the DMG was explicitely forbidden from player's eyes (my first DM even had a piece of tape saying "NO PLAYER'S ALLOWED").

Now it's normal for the player to crack open the DMG and make a laundry list of items he wants. At least 4E did what 3E should have done and stick the magic items in the PHB.

Dragero
2010-01-13, 08:48 PM
Yeah our DM sorta hates us......always de-railing his campaign. He also seemed to want to just get a new party going so he was looking for a way to muder us. (we had about 97 magic items in our holes/bags, because we killed a god or two.....don`t ask how.)

And I think it was actualy a PH in a BoH....

Dragero
2010-01-13, 08:51 PM
you really should have gotten a knowledge arcanna check to know that PH and BoO cause a big boom when mixed... :)

Yeah my Wizard doesn`t get knoledge checks.....He has a "Ring of Drunkeness" That makes him drunk 24/7 (A curse from one of the gods we killed.....)

Zincorium
2010-01-13, 08:51 PM
This has always struck me as, if not the most annoying rule, at least the most pointless rule they carried over from previous editions.

It:
A. Has no actual explanation. There is nothing inherently unstable about extraplanar space in any other instance where it appears, and the BoH and PH exception to this is not justified.

B. Screws over the players for doing something completely innocuous. Did they put the two together? Lost all their stuff. Instantly, no save, no corrective action available. It's like an ethereal rust monster with ghost touch antenna.

C. Doesn't need to happen. You put one in the other? Great. You have to go into one to get into the other. All normal rules apply for each.

taltamir
2010-01-13, 08:57 PM
when i said a knowledge check I meant a knowledge DC5 or 10 at most. allow untrained... the fighter could have heard about it, the bard should have heard about it, etc.

that is only if you didn't buy it from someone, if you bought it he should have warned you (aka, "you recall that the merchant who sold it to you said never to put one inside the other or it goes boom")

that is only if you are sticklers for RAW, your DM really should have just house ruled that it does "nothing". as in, the bag will not go into the portable hole, nothing happens. This also prevents using them offensively... now that you know that it destroys and everything in a 100 foot blast with no save you can use it to kill gods safely (mind control someone to do it next to them)

Lysander
2010-01-13, 09:05 PM
This has always struck me as, if not the most annoying rule, at least the most pointless rule they carried over from previous editions.

It:
A. Has no actual explanation. There is nothing inherently unstable about extraplanar space in any other instance where it appears, and the BoH and PH exception to this is not justified.

B. Screws over the players for doing something completely innocuous. Did they put the two together? Lost all their stuff. Instantly, no save, no corrective action available. It's like an ethereal rust monster with ghost touch antenna.

C. Doesn't need to happen. You put one in the other? Great. You have to go into one to get into the other. All normal rules apply for each.

It doesn't really seem like that big an imposition though. Don't put one magic bag in the other magic bag. Okay.

Zincorium
2010-01-13, 09:15 PM
It doesn't really seem like that big an imposition though. Don't put one magic bag in the other magic bag. Okay.

Yeah, but if there's no reason to make the imposition at all, and no one has given me one, then no imposition is warranted.

Lysander
2010-01-13, 11:40 PM
Yeah, but if there's no reason to make the imposition at all, and no one has given me one, then no imposition is warranted.

I guess it's to prevent people from screwing over encumbrance rules by having extradimensional space nested within extradimensional space to infinity.

Although I don't know if anything happens if you put a bag of holding inside another bag of holding, or a portable hole within another portable hole.

kamikasei
2010-01-14, 03:31 AM
I guess it's to prevent people from screwing over encumbrance rules by having extradimensional space nested within extradimensional space to infinity.

If I have the wealth to burn on an arbitrary number of bags of holding, I don't want to be bothered about encumberance. What does it add?


Although I don't know if anything happens if you put a bag of holding inside another bag of holding, or a portable hole within another portable hole.

Nothing does.

Pharaoh's Fist
2010-01-14, 03:37 AM
Although I don't know if anything happens if you put a bag of holding inside another bag of holding, or a portable hole within another portable hole.

Let's go in my A hole and find out.

dsmiles
2010-01-14, 05:06 AM
I thought we just discussed not doing this in another thread. Somebody didn't do their homework! :smallbiggrin:

lord_khaine
2010-01-14, 05:49 AM
Let's go in my A hole and find out.

I think its nececary to vigorously probe your A-hole first, to determine if its safe for the general population.

BobVosh
2010-01-14, 06:00 AM
I claim Pharaoh's A-hole for SCIENCE!

Slayn82
2010-01-14, 07:01 AM
Thats a rule from the time when you didnt order those things in "Ye Olde Wizarde Shoppe". And up to 2nd Edition, looting things was the biggest improvement a player could get to his character.

So, encumbrance rules were often enforced, to the point that 11 level wizards loved the convenience of summoning a few donkeys to carry the treasure. Portable holes could not enter portable holes, and Bags of Holding could not enter Bags of Holding.

A wizard usually treated his most powerfull magic like someone would treat a piece of plutonium. Powerfull, usefull, but it took just a little error in handling to screw you. Teleportation? Well, only after giving a coke or other bribe to the DM, because that spell could simply kill you in horrible ways. Entombed on earth, falling from the sky or maybe losing a limb - thats so fun. (Actually, on a strange and different way, yes, it was. The dangers meant that when you actually suceeded, it was awesome.)

pasko77
2010-01-14, 07:23 AM
when i said a knowledge check I meant a knowledge DC5 or 10 at most. allow untrained... the fighter could have heard about it, the bard should have heard about it, etc.

lol, not really.
I dont think your average peasant could answer these questions.
Lets say DC 20, more than acceptable, if a little easy.
As for the bard having heard, yes, they have a whole ability to simulate this, then such a low DC is not necessary.

jmbrown
2010-01-14, 07:27 AM
This has always struck me as, if not the most annoying rule, at least the most pointless rule they carried over from previous editions.

It:
A. Has no actual explanation. There is nothing inherently unstable about extraplanar space in any other instance where it appears, and the BoH and PH exception to this is not justified.

Bag of holding and portable hole aren't extradimensional, they're nondimensional. They're demipanes that exist outside the normal planar structure. You can't planeshift into a bag of holding nor can spells that work across dimensions (like transdimensional spell metamagic) affect items inside. Placing a bag of holding and portable hole together is the equivalent of the universe dividing by zero.


B. Screws over the players for doing something completely innocuous. Did they put the two together? Lost all their stuff. Instantly, no save, no corrective action available. It's like an ethereal rust monster with ghost touch antenna.
Pretty much every player knows the rammifications. It's not like the DMG is off limits considering you're practically required to root through it if you make a higher level character unless the DM assigns you goods yourselves.

And if it does happen, oh well. Live and learn. It's not the end of the world. Now you have a cool story to tell at bars if you lived. Maybe the DM will take pity on you and give you an easy adventure to put you back up to your WBL.


C. Doesn't need to happen. You put one in the other? Great. You have to go into one to get into the other. All normal rules apply for each.

Boring. I like the idea that they're volatile in reaction to each other.

Alternatively, portable hole + bag of holding makes a great weapon. Sure, it's a 22K gold weapon, but just send a charmed mook up to the big bad and say "place object A in object B." If you have planeshift you can do it yourself. Leave the villain to fend for himself against astral dreadnoughts and other planar horrors.

Dragero
2010-01-14, 07:37 AM
I thought we just discussed not doing this in another thread. Somebody didn't do their homework! :smallbiggrin:

Sorry :(

I never thought of that bomb Idea :D

WE CAN DEFEAT THE SKELETON NUKES!!!!!

Zen Master
2010-01-14, 07:38 AM
Pretty much every player knows the rammifications.

But not every player. The OP and his party were clearly left out of the loop. Personally, I wish the game still held that type of surprises for me :)


Boring. I like the idea that they're volatile in reaction to each other.


Yea - what the game needs is more crazy and unpredictable magic effects, not less.

GallóglachMaxim
2010-01-14, 07:48 AM
Let's go in my A hole and find out.

Is it one of these? (http://www.enworld.org/forum/2539869-post44.html)

kamikasei
2010-01-14, 07:50 AM
It's not like the DMG is off limits considering you're practically required to root through it if you make a higher level character unless the DM assigns you goods yourselves.

I'm not sure what your point is. The way you talk about player access to the DMG makes it sound like you think having the magic items in there, and giving players license to look at magic item descriptions in order to decide how to equip their characters, is bad because then they can see other rules that should be DM-only knowledge by looking at the rest of the book.

But the bag/hole interaction is described in the entries for each magical item, not some separate section in the DMG. So unless the players are never told anything about their items, say via a skill check, but have to find out their uses via trial and error, it's a piece of information as legitimate for a player and character to be told as the capacity of the bag or the dangers of piercing it.


Boring. I like the idea that they're volatile in reaction to each other.

I really don't think "boring" is a fair description of "two magic items don't happen to catastrophically explode when put together, because why on earth would they?". Is it "boring" that wearing a hat of disguise and gloves of dexterity together doesn't instantly kill the wearer, no save, and bind their soul forever in torment? (Or that DMs argue it's mollycoddling to tell the players this when they get the items, or remind them of it when they suggest wearing both items together...)

jmbrown
2010-01-14, 08:06 AM
I'm not sure what your point is. The way you talk about player access to the DMG makes it sound like you think having the magic items in there, and giving players license to look at magic item descriptions in order to decide how to equip their characters, is bad because then they can see other rules that should be DM-only knowledge by looking at the rest of the book.


That's exactly what my point is but my opinions on magic items come from another time.


But the bag/hole interaction is described in the entries for each magical item, not some separate section in the DMG. So unless the players are never told anything about their items, say via a skill check, but have to find out their uses via trial and error, it's a piece of information as legitimate for a player and character to be told as the capacity of the bag or the dangers of piercing it.

Yes, they're described in each entry meaning most real life players know exactly how they operate. Combining the two items shouldn't even be an issue because you know what will happen. If you combine them then it's your error just like casting fireball too close to your allies. The players shouldn't be immune to their screw ups even if it means crippling them.

Everyone knows fire is hot so don't complain if you stick your hand in the fire.


I really don't think "boring" is a fair description of "two magic items don't happen to catastrophically explode when put together, because why on earth would they?". Is it "boring" that wearing a hat of disguise and gloves of dexterity together doesn't instantly kill the wearer, no save, and bind their soul forever in torment? (Or that DMs argue it's mollycoddling to tell the players this when they get the items, or remind them of it when they suggest wearing both items together...)


Catastrophic is a pretty big overstatement, don't you think? We're not talking about smashing a staff of power here. Both combinations require something going to the astral plane. Shoot, recovering your lost items might be an adventure in itself. There's plenty of divination magic that would make it easy on you.

kamikasei
2010-01-14, 08:22 AM
That's exactly what my point is but my opinions on magic items come from another time...

Yes, they're described in each entry meaning most real life players know exactly how they operate.

But looking at this in the light of your first comment in the thread (where your objection seems to be to the players seeing inside the DMG, not to knowing how their magic items work), I don't really see the relevance of bringing up access to the DMG at all - it's a completely unrelated issue. (If your objection is "players should not have access to the descriptions of their magic items" then why does it matter if they're in the DMG or somewhere else?)


The players shouldn't be immune to their screw ups even if it means crippling them.

Everyone knows fire is hot so don't complain if you stick your hand in the fire.

Well, obviously not everyone does know about this interaction and I think it was poor form for the DM in this situation never to warn the players of it. But that aside... I think it comes down to DM style; I'm very much in favour of DMs asking "are you sure?" when it's clear the player is proposing an action having forgotten something important and relevant that there's a very good chance the character would be more aware of.


Catastrophic is a pretty big overstatement, don't you think?

Not really. Unfortunately, in 3.5, gear is important. If you lose all your stuff at high levels, it hurts a lot. Losing it all puts a serious dent in a character's power. As to later recovery, it depends on whether the "sucked into the void and forever lost" and "destroyed in the process" lines are meant to suggest (as it would seem to me) that the contents of both items are similarly forever lost or destroyed.

("Lost forever", geez - more legacy rules that make no sense...)

jmbrown
2010-01-14, 08:28 AM
My first post was simply the result of me remembering my first game when none of us knew what magic items did except through trial and error. The fact of 3.5 is that players are expected to know how the items they're purchasing work.

This is one of those exceptions and the DM didn't handle the situation by RAW, but I would just throw out a random number like 99% of players know what their items do and I probably wouldn't be too far off. If you don't want something bad happening, don't do it. The only time I could see it becoming an option is in an emergency situation where escape through a black hole is necessary. In that case you have to either rethink your escape options or turn the bag upside down and leave it behind. Most people only carry a type 1 or 2 so it's not a major loss in investment.

kamikasei
2010-01-14, 08:44 AM
I agree that if the players know that the rule is in force and they combine the items, not simply having forgotten about the effect, that they're bringing the result on themselves. I think they should be reminded about the effect just in case, though.

I don't think the rule should exist in the first place, though. It doesn't become less pointless and weird simply for being known.

Jolly Steve
2010-01-14, 10:00 AM
The infinite set of numbers has many infinite sets inside it. For example the set of whole numbers (which in turn contains the infinite set of odd numbers, and so on).

Narazil
2010-01-14, 10:02 AM
you really should have gotten a knowledge arcanna check to know that PH and BoO cause a big boom when mixed... :)
How would he know? Since when were level 9-11 parties experts on interplanar travel and rifts?
It's not like a lot people experience this, and live to tell the tale to others.

Sstoopidtallkid
2010-01-14, 10:18 AM
How would he know? Since when were level 9-11 parties experts on interplanar travel and rifts?
It's not like a lot people experience this, and live to tell the tale to others....Please tell me that's sarcasm. Level 9-11 is when you get Plane Shift, and even before that you've spent 9 levels fighting for your lives against all kinds of estoric magics where your knowledge of all the relevant facts about your and the opponents spells, abilities, and gear is the only thing that keeps you alive. Bags of Holding and Portable holes are common items. Not everyone will have them, but this sort of thing seems like even a medieval item shop would toss a disclaimer onto both just to be safe. And considering the Wizard has Int 24 and a know:Arcana check of +19 at the minimum, he should have gotten some sort of a mention of the fact. This is not the sort of thing a character will forget, even if the player does.

kamikasei
2010-01-14, 10:28 AM
How would he know?

Via a knowledge: arcana (or knowledge: the planes) check, exactly as taltamir said in the post you're quoting?

A level 9 wizard can make a bag of holding, so he should surely know enough about how it functions for the DC of such a check to be within his reach.

XiaoTie
2010-01-14, 10:40 AM
Is it one of these? (http://www.enworld.org/forum/2539869-post44.html)

Man, that was funny AND on-topic...sort of.

Narazil
2010-01-14, 10:41 AM
Just seems like pretty obscure knowledge, but I guess at level 9-11 you're pretty much past the point of human limits in terms of knowledge and stuff.

lsfreak
2010-01-14, 10:51 AM
Just seems like pretty obscure knowledge, but I guess at level 9-11 you're pretty much past the point of human limits in terms of knowledge and stuff.

As said, you should have just under +20 to your Knowledge checks at level 10. That's high enough that you can start pulling out information on the Elder Evils. You know, things that almost no one in history have ever heard of and that the Gods don't even know about.

Optimystik
2010-01-14, 11:53 AM
This is not the sort of thing a character will forget, even if the player does.

This is the part proponents of "your gear asplode!" keep overlooking.

subject42
2010-01-14, 01:06 PM
This has always struck me as, if not the most annoying rule, at least the most pointless rule they carried over from previous editions.

If this rule weren't in place, we never would have heard SilverClawShift's epic tale of the Reduced Kobold Lich Sorcerer.

Anyway, it's good when STUFF HAPPENS (to quote); otherwise, we would never get a chance to do something unexpected and fun.

Optimystik
2010-01-14, 01:15 PM
Anyway, it's good when STUFF HAPPENS (to quote); otherwise, we would never get a chance to do something unexpected and fun.

This notion that magic being unreliable and character knowledge being irrelevant is somehow arbitrarily more "fun" never ceases to boggle my mind.

Penitent
2010-01-14, 01:27 PM
I have an excellent game. It's exactly like D&D, except every time someone casts a spell, you roll a d100. If you get a 100, you roll a d1000.

The d1000 table involves 1000 different hilarious mishaps that kill the caster and frequently everyone nearby.

It's so much more fun than knowing the results of my actions.

subject42
2010-01-14, 01:59 PM
The d1000 table involves 1000 different hilarious mishaps that kill the caster and frequently everyone nearby.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but our group does use the Net Libram of Magical Effects (http://www.traykon.com/pdf/The_Net_Libram_of_Random_Magical_Effects.pdf) for natural 1s and epically failed concentration checks.

Maybe we're unique in the mindset of magic being, well, magical.

Kantolin
2010-01-14, 02:11 PM
My first post was simply the result of me remembering my first game when none of us knew what magic items did except through trial and error.

Mrr. I've played a game that was a lot like this. The trouble I ran into was when one of the players sighed, put his head in his hands, turned to the rest of the party, and said,

"We need to get to the top of this building. My past <i>three</i> characters all discovered that using a ladder to do so was a terrible idea, but it doesn't make the slightest sense for this character to not, which will mean yet another all of a sudden TPK. Can you guys help me come up with some silly convoluted reason why we try to climb the featureless wall instead of use a ladder?"

I think that was the moment that I really stopped enjoying it. Or well, I wasn't enjoying it terribly up to that point, but that was when I realized the game was going to have a lot of discovering what didn't work (usually to incredibly grisly ends), making a list of it, then coming up with reasons as to why Tom III doesn't get the party blown up, when the only reason he wouldn't is because Tom Jr. died miserably attempting the same.

This doesn't quite hold in scenarios where you ICly and OOCly know about it (For example, the portable hole <-> Bag of Holding thing is probably more common knowledge than that), but I've dealt with enough of that in general.

And that's without going into cursed items, or parties walking through the countryside in five foot increments to ensure that they're not hit by any more violent death traps.

Edit: If you're curious, we had a lengthy discussion which resulted in that ladder being made of shoddy workmanship to the point where one character stubbornly refused to pay attention to it, and since he was going to climb the wall and send a rope down, the rest of us just waited for him. Increasingly illogical (Why didn't he just let someone else ladder up and give him a rope?) but sure. Of course, we then died in the next room due to lightning bolt interacting with an invisible wall and geometry, which caused additional 'Okay, let's brainstorm why Frank isn't going to shoot a lightning bolt down this 5ft wide hallway...'

Slayn82
2010-01-14, 02:14 PM
Those occurrences like the BoH and PH were also due to the roguish and farsesque aspects of the old games, that now are out of fashion. It was just like going to the Jail on Monopoly.

Im not anyone to tell people how they should play their games.

But i actually dislike the way 3.5 handle magic items. Or magic in general. I can play it fine, but it never had the same flavor of other games. This utilitarian magic, (kinda like what Gurps had all along, and still handles better anyway), well...

By making magic too reliable, it has turned those without proper acess to the mystical forces too reduced and somewhat dispensable. So, players choose their equips, fine, but the main fact is that instead of doing heroic things, you just do things apropriated to your characther level, and obssess with equips even more than in the old games were looting was more important. This seems to have encumbered D&D games too much, compared with adventures in other game systems.

In 2nd Edition, casters could employ BC tactics quite well already, but with less magic items to play around or increase stats, and given that in a day you could very well play 12 encounters and not automatically gain a level (something quite common on old adventure modules i played), things were more interesting, and some rules were around specifically to allow for melee classes to have their parts, like the way spell resistance worked or specific imunities of monsters. So, it was easier to let the fighter chop it to bits with his +3 sword of speed.

I guess the Medieval Settings were greatly improved after the founding of Magic Items Associated Users (MIAU) with their battles for safer magic items and their obsession for catgirls.:smalltongue:

tyckspoon
2010-01-14, 02:25 PM
l (something quite common on old adventure modules i played...


Old adventure modules also tended to have notably higher concentrations of magic items than the core rules would suggest. If you had to get your magic-user through a 12-fight day, chances are you had a wand of Fireball or a backpack full of scrolls or something to help you do it. Not all that different from 3.x, except it was less likely that you had chosen the exact wand/scrolls you wanted to carry.

kamikasei
2010-01-14, 02:27 PM
Maybe we're unique in the mindset of magic being, well, magical.

If you think others disagree about what it takes for something to be "magical", maybe you should describe your idea of it in other terms. It would help avoid misunderstandings.

For example, I could say that I like my magic to be capable of things not really possible. You could say that you (apparently) like your magic to be dangerous and unpredictable. If either of us says "well, I like it to be magical, you know" the other is a) left guessing and b) probably justifiably feeling insulted ("it's not that you have different tastes, it's that you have no magic in your soul!").

Milskidasith
2010-01-14, 02:27 PM
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but our group does use the Net Libram of Magical Effects (http://www.traykon.com/pdf/The_Net_Libram_of_Random_Magical_Effects.pdf) for natural 1s and epically failed concentration checks.

Maybe we're unique in the mindset of magic being, well, magical.

I really don't think having a chance of a level 1 spell permanently altering your personality, causing huge physical deformities, ruining all of your stats and making them immune to being fixed, or blowing up the sun makes sense, nor is it reversible as the book claims. There's a difference between "Magical" and "nonsensical," and this is firmly on that level (there's a good chance to blow up the sun over a few years with a few casters casting in combat, for example. It's lower of a chance than winning the lottery, for god's sakes, and that happens weekly.)

Slayn82
2010-01-14, 03:03 PM
Old adventure modules also tended to have notably higher concentrations of magic items than the core rules would suggest. If you had to get your magic-user through a 12-fight day, chances are you had a wand of Fireball or a backpack full of scrolls or something to help you do it.

Well, failing saves with 1 was painfull for your magic items, i have to say that. Been there a few times. And the magic items were usually over 60% healing potions, but yeah, occasionally a wand would appear, with a few charges. The best items were the x uses per day ones. And scrolls were way better to add to your spellbook, anyway.

In a cyberpunk scenario, you can do things without a brawler, without a mystic or without a hacker fine, as long as your characther can walk and talk, and maybe shoot. In 3.5, you have some trouble to do an published adventure over lvl 9 without magic users, even if you max UMD. Overall, magic should be lessened a little, without becoming more escasse.

Removing Metamagic has been suggested in some scenarios, along with pinpoint banishing of some spells. On old editions, this role was played by the unreliable features of magic.

On modern games, we want cool powers. Fine, but so give them equally, humpft. People impose so much "realism' when it comes to melee classes, because "awesome things should simply not be done without magic". Well, if someone is using a +6 gloves of dexterity and wishes to an inherent +5, he is somewhat as much inhuman as someone that uses cybernetics for the same effect on a futuristic game. But if the guy has Dex 24, combat reflexes and 7 AoOs per round, guess what people will call overpowered? Even if its very situational?

So, in the end: its just a dated way of ensuing game balance and some kinds of fun. Dont seem to work that well nowadays, as general public refuse to play under it. Fine.

Lysander
2010-01-14, 03:03 PM
I like the idea of magical mishaps, I just think they should be in line with the spell's power level and usually related to the school if not the spell's precise effect. What would probably work best is thinking up 10 or so common mishaps for each spell a wizard learns.

For example invisibility mishaps could include only becoming transparent so the spell is less effective, becoming blind as long as you remain invisible (it doesn't account for the fact your eyes can't intercept light), only making part of your body invisible, fluctuating invisibility that turns on and off every few seconds, accidentally making some other nearby object or creature invisible instead, causing a stationary optic distortion, etc.

Dragero
2010-01-14, 03:57 PM
Via a knowledge: arcana (or knowledge: the planes) check, exactly as taltamir said in the post you're quoting?

A level 9 wizard can make a bag of holding, so he should surely know enough about how it functions for the DC of such a check to be within his reach.

I'm pretty sure my character would ahve know about that, if it wheren't for the "ring of drunkenness" i mentioned earlyer.

Our dm makes the DMG off limits, we ask a question, he will look it up, not us :(.

Coidzor
2010-01-14, 04:10 PM
I'm pretty sure my character would ahve know about that, if it wheren't for the "ring of drunkenness" i mentioned earlyer.

Our dm makes the DMG off limits, we ask a question, he will look it up, not us :(.

www.d20srd.org

Penitent
2010-01-14, 05:01 PM
Maybe we're unique in the mindset of magic being, well, magical.

If those this was already very well covered.

I like my magic to be magical. When my character teleports from one side of the earth to the other, that is magical, regardless of whether I have a 100% or 0% chance of accidentally appearing inside a wall and dying no save.

It's still magical to call forth a tornado to wreck the town even if there isn't a 1% chance of the tornado becoming a teleporting eternal intelligent tornado who's sole motivation is to chase down and murder the caster who gave life to it.

Starbuck_II
2010-01-14, 05:03 PM
I'm pretty sure my character would ahve know about that, if it wheren't for the "ring of drunkenness" i mentioned earlyer.

Our dm makes the DMG off limits, we ask a question, he will look it up, not us :(.

Shh, don't let your DM know the DMG is online for free by the D20 SRD web site.

kamikasei
2010-01-14, 05:07 PM
I'm pretty sure my character would ahve know about that, if it wheren't for the "ring of drunkenness" i mentioned earlyer.

Our dm makes the DMG off limits, we ask a question, he will look it up, not us :(.

And more power to you if that works for your group, but I read Narazil's question as applying more generally.

Lysander
2010-01-14, 05:25 PM
Personally, I think a secondary side effect of a common magical item should be a DC15 knowledge check. Not super easy, not super hard.

Mikeavelli
2010-01-14, 05:45 PM
I've played an awful lot of games, with an awful lot of DM's, and DM'ed a fair amount myself, my chief concern with all this magic and IC vs OOC games is how it works out in character.

1. When you confront PC's with a situation they blatantly already know about OOC but would have no idea about IC, and expect them to pretend they don't know anything

(Examples: Confronting seasoned players with any monster from the MM1, well known NPC's from established settings, the aforementioned example where the players knew using a ladder was a deathtrap while the characters didn't, etc)

It ends badly. Players come up with a convoluted reason why their characters would have the information in question, DM's get upset because the players know something they're not supposed to know, and dice get thrown.

Don't do it! - You should never face the exact same ladder\wall dilemma three seperate times. Sure, it's a DC 15 Knowledge: Nature check to know that bears live in caves, don't pretend the players don't already know it anyways.

Admit players are going to mix\match OOC and IC knowledge, work with it, and work around it. Surprises should be entertaining and challenging, not ******* over insta-deaths.

[hr]

2. Magic being Magical: If you're going to change the magic system, deny stuff to your players the designers intended they would have access to, etc. - You need to change your game accordingly.

I had a DM who believed in the 2nd edition "Magic is special, dangerous, and hard to get ahold of" philosophy. Our party was severely below WBL, the wizard buying access to new spells simply wasn't allowed for about half of the campaign, etc. When we were slaughtered by "CR-Appropriate encounters" - he insisted they were, well, CR appropriate.

Failing to take into account that the party was considerably inferior to a normal party of our level, because we didn't have all the magic goodies we were supposed to.

In this most extreme example we were routinely facing the deaths of one or two party members each encounter - every instance of a DM following the "magic is rare and precious" mindset using D&D 3.5 has consistently failed to adjust the game challenge accordingly.

Unless your players enjoy dying horribly every game.

3. Dying should be a result of player choice, not random chance.

Too all of you DM's who, with glee, have house rules where rolling a single critical failure on an otherwise unremarkable roll results in messy death, I hate you.

Chances are your players aren't too fond of it either.

Bag of holding into a Portable hole should only result in instant irreversible death if the players have been warned about it beforehand. Even a simple, "That's not a good idea, nobody really knows why, because nobody who has done it has ever come back to tell what happened." is okay.

taltamir
2010-01-14, 06:00 PM
since we "established" (/sarcasm) that magic should be "magical" (dangerous, unpredictable, insta TPK from random things that you would not know or think) then why not go all the way?

We don't even need to go to the extreme of that huge 10,000 item list of "mishaps" (which are pretty extreme actually)... we can just continue with things in the line of bag of holding + portable hole = boom.

so... wearing bracers of armor and boots of haste together petrifies you.

hitting a person who is under the effect of stoneskin with a vorpal sword automatically disintegrates (to death) both the attacker and the person hit with no save.

A chime of opening placed in any extra/non dimensional space such as a portable hole results in both items being destroyed and a stable gate (as the spell) opening to a random plane of one of the alignment planes (abyss, celestia, etc), the alignment is determined by a d4 roll with 1 being LG, 2=CG, 3=LE, and 4=CE

A character who is granted more than 5 temp HP while wearing a belt of strength gains a +20 bonus to str and takes 1d6 damage per turn until his temp HP drops down below 5 again, every round that he has more than 5 temp HP he must make a DC20 fort save or have his biceps explode, leaving the arms ruined (require a regenerate spell or better to restore).

etc... oh, and make sure that when you make those rules, PCs are not allowed to have any method of finding it out except randomly dying.

Starbuck_II
2010-01-14, 06:03 PM
Wait, 5 temp is too easy. It should be 2/level minimum even if we are joking.

taltamir
2010-01-14, 06:06 PM
ok, 2 per HD...

lets make a few more, these are fun... if you wear a headband of intelligence and it is supressed by a dispell magic, you are affected by a feeblemind spell.

if you cast dispel magic while hasted or during a time stop, you and everyone in 30 foot radius from you is affected by a disjunction.

Slayn82
2010-01-14, 07:19 PM
Please, i went to play Nethack and other roguelikes for my fix on this kind of fun.

And there are enought cursed items around, anyway. Great to give as loot to NPCs murdered unjustly (their death "haunting" the item).

So that periapt of intelect will become an periapt of the feeblemind. Remove Curse, then Penitence could reverse the effects, and restore the item to normal.

Enought?

Demented
2010-01-14, 07:21 PM
Attempting to cast a Power word spell while under the effect of a Chime of Interruption has a 5% chance of calling Kanye West.

subject42
2010-01-14, 07:51 PM
3. Dying should be a result of player choice, not random chance.


If that's the case, why have randomization at all?

jmbrown
2010-01-14, 08:21 PM
Something I just realized


We Where having trouble carrying our stuff, near full encumbermence. Our Bag of holding was full, as was our Portable hole. I, wanting to reduce the load even more, Tell the DM I`m gonna put the PH in the BoH.


Why was a portable hole placed in the bag in the first place? It weighs absolutely nothing.


This notion that magic being unreliable and character knowledge being irrelevant is somehow arbitrarily more "fun" never ceases to boggle my mind.

The notion of magic, a force that can tear the fabric of the universe apart, can be controlled by humans perfectly and with absolutely no chance of failure under normal conditions is equally mind boggling. I'd be suspect of any system that had world-bending powers with absolutely no side effects or drawbacks.


I have an excellent game. It's exactly like D&D, except every time someone casts a spell, you roll a d100. If you get a 100, you roll a d1000.

The d1000 table involves 1000 different hilarious mishaps that kill the caster and frequently everyone nearby.

It's so much more fun than knowing the results of my actions.

This doesn't even have anything to do with the system on hand. This isn't a random effect here. Every time you open the bag there's not a 1% chance a balor pops out. You put two items together, something happens. It's a constant effect and there are no random or changing factors about it.


Mrr. I've played a game that was a lot like this. The trouble I ran into was when one of the players sighed, put his head in his hands, turned to the rest of the party, and said... etc... etc...

I don't know why a ladder couldn't get you to the top of a wall but in a case like that I'd either A) forget about the wall or B) find a different way up. I know before I use a ladder I check its sturdiness, make sure it's actually tall enough, and test the ground to ensure it's stable.

Kantolin
2010-01-14, 08:58 PM
I don't know why a ladder couldn't get you to the top of a wall but in a case like that I'd [...] B) find a different way up.

Why? Because a group of five that you've never met or heard about died to putting a ladder here?


I know before I use a ladder I check its sturdiness, make sure it's actually tall enough, and test the ground to ensure it's stable.

Oh, we did that too, but it took someone adamantly refusing to touch the ladder to not... um, TPK.

I suppose it's similar to what Mikeavelli was suggesting, but somewhat worse in this case - it became a case of 'Metagame or die!' Thus, well... we metagamed.

Which had the drawback that the DM loathes metagaming and whines about it, but that's neither here nor there.

2xMachina
2010-01-15, 12:22 AM
You know... what we should do is buy a Bag of Holding and Portable Hole from the local magic shop.

And proceed to stuff one inside the other in front of the wizard. See if the Wizard (DM) stops you before you ruin his shop. If he doesn't, the wizard is an idiot. If he does, Hey, it proves that Wizards DO know about this things.