What's with Leomund's Secret Chest?

[Flashkannon]

Seems a little hard to employ in a reasonable fashion - from the fail-deadly design, to the limit of one, to the small volume, to the time limit, it quite frankly seems like an easy way to irrevocably lose a 5,000gp chest and everything inside of it.

Personally, I'd rather eschew the miniature replica as a specific object - you obviously need to have some way of recalling that specific chest in particular, but it seems rather cruel to have the chest explode on the ethereal plane if it's ever destroyed. The time limit, too, seems needlessly cruel.

I really wish it was better; as a huge fan of Bags of Holding, it saddens me to know their predecessor spell is rather lackluster.:smallfrown:

What the heck is with Leomund's Secret Chest being this way?

The 3.5 version, at least, let you hide living things in there, and had a potentially larger storage limit.

[Callak_Remier]

Honestly it's just a spell you take to make portable holes and bags of holding now.

It's not the only spell to be weakened in 5e.

[Galithar]

The size restriction is bad, but as for losing the cheat it's not really an issue as long as you are alive and haven't lost the replica.

Everytime you are about to take a rest and have a 4+ level slot left you simply recall the chest, end the spell, and cast the spell again.

For this reason I ignore the restriction. If you don't have a 4th level slot available at least once in 60 days then you have the most action packed campaign I've ever heard of.

[Pex]

Insert DM who has bad guys take or destroy the replica not necessarily because they know what it is but because it's treasure, and they captured the PC or steal it.

Insert player saying something about that negatively.

Insert someone saying the player is whining. Stuff like that just happens, no different than taking a wizard's spellbook or fighter's weapon.

[Galithar]

Insert DM who has bad guys take or destroy the replica not necessarily because they know what it is but because it's treasure, and they captured the PC or steal it.

Insert player saying something about that negatively.

Insert someone saying the player is whining. Stuff like that just happens, no different than taking a wizard's spellbook or fighter's weapon.

Insert someone saying it would be more like taking the rogues bag of holding! :P

[JoeJ]

It's still a lot better than it was in AD&D. It used to be a 5th level spell instead of 4th, with a chance that some creature in the Ethereal plane would find the chest, and a separate chance that bringing the chest back would bring something else back too. Technically you could store living beings in the chest, but if you did there was a flat 75% chance of the chest being lost, so nobody in their right mind would ever do that.

[sithlordnergal]

Its really not that great of a spell to be honest...for what it does I'd make it a third level spell, with the ability to increase the amount it can hold and the length of time it can exist based on the spell level used. As it is, its basically just a poor man's Bag of Holding...provided they have 5,050 gp to spend on it. I'm guessing its there to give players an option if they're playing a game where either you don't have magic items, or your DM hasn't given you a Bag of Holding by level 7. Which I suppose there are some DMs that do that...but I've yet to run into one.

[ezekielraiden]

It always seemed to me that the purpose of Leomund's secret chest was to create a spellbook storage unit that couldn't be stolen, destroyed, or even located without your permission. You were never intended to put anything you couldn't afford to lose into it--instead, it's insurance against having your spellbook taken away, lost, damaged, or whatever else. That's what makes it worth the (frankly ridiculous) investment and stupid hoops. You stick a backup spellbook stocked with all the spells you can't afford to lose, and probably a handful of useful-but-not-critical items. Maybe you put backup ioun stones in there if you've snagged multiple copies or something. Probably a focus or component pouch. Etc.

It's not meant to be a super-powerful utility spell with versatile uses, which is why it's only 4th level. You can't get the security it offers as a lower-level Wizard because that wasn't the intent waaaaay back when. And even though in practice it's an incredibly inefficient and impractical tool for doing what it does, it continues to exist because it's Traditional™ and everyone knows how Vitally Important® it is to preserve every Traditional™ element of Dungeons and Dragons.

[Flashkannon]

It always seemed to me that the purpose of Leomund's secret chest was to create a spellbook storage unit that couldn't be stolen, destroyed, or even located without your permission. You were never intended to put anything you couldn't afford to lose into it--instead, it's insurance against having your spellbook taken away, lost, damaged, or whatever else. That's what makes it worth the (frankly ridiculous) investment and stupid hoops. You stick a backup spellbook stocked with all the spells you can't afford to lose, and probably a handful of useful-but-not-critical items. Maybe you put backup ioun stones in there if you've snagged multiple copies or something. Probably a focus or component pouch. Etc.

It's not meant to be a super-powerful utility spell with versatile uses, which is why it's only 4th level. You can't get the security it offers as a lower-level Wizard because that wasn't the intent waaaaay back when. And even though in practice it's an incredibly inefficient and impractical tool for doing what it does, it continues to exist because it's Traditional™ and everyone knows how Vitally Important® it is to preserve every Traditional™ element of Dungeons and Dragons.

I feel like any time someone would be taking your spellbook, and you don't immediately blast them into ash, they would have the opportunity to take all of your gold and the very treasury-looking 50gp replica of a 5,000gp chest, to sell it if nothing else. Honestly, even with the tiny chest, it'd be much more reasonable if it just didn't have a time limit. Could be a fun way to have loot chests, even.

[Segev]

In older editions, the chest's storage space went up with level. I suspect that the writers don't really appreciate just how little space that is, and should have just made it something you could adjust by spending more gold.

The "unreliability" is not really a problem, though. The secret is to prepare it every 50 days or so, call up your chest, end the spell, and recast it.

In 5e, it's actually more useful than you might think, too: magic items are not assumed to be available, and creating them can take forever and all the moneys. 5,050 gp for material components that aren't consumed on a spell you can guarantee you have access to is actually not that bad.

I personally also like it for storing permanent major images. Since the chest isn't "moving" when you send it away or summon it back, the illusions just go with it and don't "slide out" the side because they're stationary when it isn't. If you're an illusionist, turn them into small coins or the like and you can fill a chest with them, then use Malleable Illusions to change them to other things when you call the chest to you.

Edit: In fact, 5e has made the spell a LOT more usable. In 3e and PF, the spell's duration was "60 days or until discharged," and the text specifying how you call it back didn't say you could send it away again. The spell ended when you called it back, so you had to cast another 5th level spell (it was 5th level in 3e) to send it away again. Unless you're devoting several 5th level pearls of power to this, you're probably not sending it away more than once per day. You're therefore not calling it to you, rummaging around, and sending it back with the casualness of a college student going through his backpack, because while you can recover it at any time after casting it, you then are stuck with it where you summoned it unless you cast the spell again!

In 5e, the text explicitly allows you to call and banish the chest more or less at will during the duration. You only need to re-cast it once every 60 days to ensure that it doesn't get lost.

Notably, the "eventually it gets lost" thing makes more sense with the older version: the spell only LASTS for 60+ days if you leave the chest banished for that long without ever retrieving it.

[MagneticKitty]

I like to think of it more as leomunds way to get rid of things forever for the low, low price of 5000 gold.
Have a lich you never want to see again? Chest his body to nowhere town
Have a cursed artifact that needs not ever see the light of day again? Now it's lost forever.
Accidentillly murder someone and you need to hide the body? Gone!
So many uses!

[Sigreid]

I mostly use it for extra supplies, just in case.

[Talakeal]

This spell has always been a running joke in my gaming group.

Especially the 3.5 edition, with a half page or more of needlessly complex and specific restrictions and the repeated insistence that not even a wish can get around them.

[Fable Wright]

Have you never played a rogue before? Because this is the ultimate smuggling kit. Load it up with thieves tools, explosives, contraband, whatever you need. Get frisked? They can prove you've got a tiny chest that might be a smuggling kit, but Secret Chest is instantaneous, so it doesn't ping as magic, and if you're in a pinch, it's the perfect evidence disposal tool. Gets through patdowns, magic scans, metal detectors, the works, and it's big enough to smuggle a pretty decent number of weapons and tools around. Really good spell for modern/Eberron games.

[Willie the Duck]

In 5e, it's actually more useful than you might think, too: magic items are not assumed to be available, and creating them can take forever and all the moneys. 5,050 gp for material components that aren't consumed on a spell you can guarantee you have access to is actually not that bad.

And that's really to what it boils down. If you're DM gives out/grants access to bags of holding at the point when you would need them (and doesn't do things like having bags tear in situations but other items, like the chest focus, not routinely get destroyed), then the spell isn't that useful. If, because of your campaign specifics (DM), you can't get a bag of holding (or can't keep one functional), then the chest becomes invaluable, limitations and all.

[VonKaiserstein]

It's also an easy way to get your party to the Ethereal plane, if you need to. True, the chest can't take living matter, but you're already able to cast 4th level spells- so cast Feign Death on the person to be transported. they're now, for all intents and purposes, nonliving material. Cram them into the chest, preferably in an embarrassing pose, and 1 hour later they wake up in a chest, on the Ethereal plane. Just make sure your exquisite chest is designed to be opened from the inside. And of course- do not lose either chest, or send the wizard over, or you won't be able to return.

I can't immediately think of a good reason you'd want to do this, but it does make the option available much earlier than by conventional magical means.

[Willie the Duck]

so cast Feign Death on the person to be transported. they're now, for all intents and purposes, nonliving material.

Feign Death's wording is 'spells used to determine the target’s status,' so it's a little ambiguous, but definitely would require a DM call for this. As a DM, I would certainly reward that kind of ingenuity.