How to prevent portable hole from being picked up?

[Skullruss]

i want to set up shop in a portable hole, keep stuff in there and hop in when i need it, how do i keep anyone from just picking me up?

[Venger]

set guards outside. look into a maelephant. they're good guys, and like to guard stuff.

[Skullruss]

set guards outside. look into a maelephant. they're good guys, and like to guard stuff.

perhaps a bit less conspicuous? Like a spell i can cast, or item i can use?

[InterstellarPro]

Lead blocks some divinations. How about Fabricate on a block of lead to turn it into a 7 foot diameter dome of lead (with enough thickness to block divinations)? Lead has a density of 11.34 g/cm^3. So, figure 10th caster level = 10 cu feet of lead = about 7000 pounds of lead. Then use Shrink Item to make it weigh about 2 pounds. When you are ready to use it to protect your work, say the command word and you have a fairly immovable dome protecting you. Also, that is a foot thick of lead, so it should protect you fairly well if your dome comes under attack.

[Nifft]

Can you put an illusion over it, so it doesn't look like there is a hole in the wall / floor / whatever?

[Gullintanni]

Can you put an illusion over it, so it doesn't look like there is a hole in the wall / floor / whatever?

So...you put your hole in the bottom of a barrel and then use permanent image to place the bottom of the barrel back in the barrel?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Toss it in a bag of holding.

Hey, nobody's gonna get it after that.

[InterstellarPro]

Grab a bottle of air. The description of the portable hole seems to imply you can grab the fabric from inside the portable hole. So, while standing in the portable hole (with your supplies), fold it up from inside. Now, you have the entrance to your portable hole inside the hole with you.


This hole can be picked up from inside or out by simply taking hold of the edges of the cloth and folding it up. Either way, the entrance disappears, but anything inside the hole remains.

So, that would probably be the easiest method. But, a 6 foot diameter hole that is 10 feet deep is really not very wide. I don't know how you will get any work done in there.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Suppress its magic with suppress magic then sovereign glue it to the surface to which you want it attached. It will be basically impossible to move, period.

If that's a little too permanent, just nail it down. You still can't get it up without removing the nails and, when the magic resumes, the heads of the nails aren't reachable without suppressing the hole again.

[Elkad]

Put plaster on the inside walls, and smear some mud around the edges whenever you unfold it, so it looks like a natural hole.

Safety through obscurity.

[Psyren]

Toss it in a bag of holding.

Hey, nobody's gonna get it after that.

I think this is actually the bigger problem with running a shop out of a portable hole; the kinds of clients you'd want to attract are probably the kind of people that use extradimensional storage to lug all their possessions around.

[Thurbane]

Antipathy (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/antipathy.htm), but only against a certain creature or alignment type.

[Nifft]

Antipathy (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/antipathy.htm), but only against a certain creature or alignment type.

So antipathy vs. Chaotic-aligned, and then have a sign outside your door to the effect that by entering your shop they agree to not mess with the portable hole.

[TallerSpine]

The OP said "set up shop" which is a figure of speech for "get situated" or "nested". Several answers have taken it to mean "set up a shop" as in sell things from the hole. Before we go any further, I think it would behoove us to find out which one the OP meant.

To InterstellarPro's point, does that work? Can you fold up the portable hole from inside the portable hole? And if you did, how would you ever get out? I agree that the wording seems to imply that was the intent, but I'm not sure I comprehend how that would work. When you unfold it, would the entrance appear where you last were before you folded it up? And if so, is the folded portable hole still on the Material Plane where you left it? If the folded portable hole is inside the portable hole with you (some rather mind bending physics right there, but possible if you had enough spacial dimensions--maybe 4 dimensions would be enough), what would happen if something was blocking the place where the hole originally was?

[Skullruss]

I think this is actually the bigger problem with running a shop out of a portable hole; the kinds of clients you'd want to attract are probably the kind of people that use extradimensional storage to lug all their possessions around.

When I said set up shop, I should've been more specific. I meant I wanted to build a lair inside. My fault entirely.

[daremetoidareyo]

Cast rope trick right in front of it?

[unseenmage]

Make it an Int Magic Item, they can natively activate their own superpowers. Ask your GM if this includes opening/closing.

Build it into a Warforged as an embedded magic item so only a Warforged can use it.

[Mordaedil]

Cast Planar binding to contract an outsider to defend your portable hole and cast magic circle of protection from evil/chaos focused outwardly around the hole, preventing particularly tricky outsiders from meddling with your shop, cast a sculpted antimagic field outside of that, only an inch thick to prevent invisible creatures from going in and grabbing everything, cast greater anticipate teleportation early on in the day and cast Mirage Arcana to make it seem like a proper shop, integrating the portable hole into the illusion to make it appear as a basement, and finish up with a seeming spell to make your guardian look like a regular inhabitant and yourself like a very respectable merchant.

Keep mislead and shadowwalk for a quick getaway.

[Venger]

solid thinking. you can get a maelephant with sm8

[Nizaris]

Before laying it down, apply sovereign glue to the underside. Somehow figure out how to attach the sides to a immovable rod kept in the bottom where you are.

[InterstellarPro]

The OP said "set up shop" which is a figure of speech for "get situated" or "nested". Several answers have taken it to mean "set up a shop" as in sell things from the hole. Before we go any further, I think it would behoove us to find out which one the OP meant.

To InterstellarPro's point, does that work? Can you fold up the portable hole from inside the portable hole? And if you did, how would you ever get out? I agree that the wording seems to imply that was the intent, but I'm not sure I comprehend how that would work. When you unfold it, would the entrance appear where you last were before you folded it up? And if so, is the folded portable hole still on the Material Plane where you left it? If the folded portable hole is inside the portable hole with you (some rather mind bending physics right there, but possible if you had enough spacial dimensions--maybe 4 dimensions would be enough), what would happen if something was blocking the place where the hole originally was?

Lol, I was joking. It says you can fold it inside out or outside in. It doesn't matter which way you fold it, but you are outside the hole as you are folding. You cannot fold it up while inside so that the opening winds up inside the portable hole with you. That doesn't make any sense. Even if it is mathematically possible in higher dimensions, D&D characters are at most three dimensional, and frequently not even that.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Protip: use a sanctified (BoED) enveloping pit. MUCH larger on the inside, and it costs a lot less. And since it's sanctified, Good characters can use it.

[Telonius]

Place a giant blinking sign next to it: "Plot Hook this way!"

[Uncle Pine]

When I said set up shop, I should've been more specific. I meant I wanted to build a lair inside. My fault entirely.

If you want to build a whole lair inside, the 10 feet depth you get from a portable hole will probably not cut it. That's not a lair, it's a closet. If you meet the alignment restriction (if you don't, look 2 posts up), an enveloping pit is going to serve you much better at a depth of 50 feet. Still, you might wish you had more space.

Enter glove of the master strategist, from Ghostwalk. As both a glove of storing's better cousin and an enveloping pit cost 3,600 gp, according to MIC's rules on stacking magic items a "glove of the enveloping strategist" should go for about 9,000 gp (but as with all the custom magic items, check your DM; using a glove of storing would give a base price of 15,400 gp). Anyway, if you go by shrink item's rules the resulting item would still give you a depth of 50 feet... but also shrink everything put inside it to 1/16 of its normal size. Effectively, that'll give you 800 feet to work with for your lair.

[Falontani]

From Pathfinder we get the Feat: Inscribe Magical Tattoo. This feat works exactly like Craft Wondrous Items, except they are all tattoos. Create a Tattoo of a Portable Hole.

[Psyren]

When I said set up shop, I should've been more specific. I meant I wanted to build a lair inside. My fault entirely.

Gotcha.

Honestly, I think your best bet is to avoid all the issues that come with cheaping out and just get you a demiplane.

[Jack_Simth]

i want to set up shop in a portable hole, keep stuff in there and hop in when i need it, how do i keep anyone from just picking me up?
Build a frame with a lockable edge to fill the hole. You've got basically an oversized barrel inside the hole, and the top of the barrel folds up and out to land in the material plane space outside the hole - anchoring it open. You set the folding bits to lock in place (with real locks if you like). In order to pick up the portable hole, an attacker would need to do one or more of the following:

1) Unlock the pieces and close it up. This should take several rounds, giving you time to react.
2) Pick the entire contraption up out of the portable hole. This would obviously bring you (and all your stuff) with it. Requires a very high strength score, and leaves you free to act.
3) Smash or blast the contraption to smithereens. This risks destroying the portable hole, but is a very serious attack that you can react to.

[BowStreetRunner]

From Pathfinder we get the Feat: Inscribe Magical Tattoo. This feat works exactly like Craft Wondrous Items, except they are all tattoos. Create a Tattoo of a Portable Hole.zOMG! I used to play with a PC who regularly threw prisoners and corpses into Bags of Holding. If I ever play with him again, I am so going to introduce an NPC with one of these tattoos!

[MaxiDuRaritry]

zOMG! I used to play with a PC who regularly threw prisoners and corpses into Bags of Holding. If I ever play with him again, I am so going to introduce an NPC with one of these tattoos!Suggest he place the tattoo around his mouth.

[Rijan_Sai]

Suggest he place the tattoo around his mouth.

Only if it's a construct, undead, or some other type that does not need to eat or breath!
Otherwise that idea is full of awesome!

[BowStreetRunner]

Suggest he place the tattoo around his mouth.
While that might be fun too, I was actually thinking of letting him capture someone with this tattoo and try throwing them into his bag of holding. Much FUN! :smallbiggrin: