What do you see when you look into a bag of holding (etc)

[PhoenixPhyre]

The (etc) means that this question applies to all similar "bigger on the inside" storage items.

Do you see an empty bag? If so, how do you know what such an item already has in it if you just find one?

Do you see all the items in it? Does this cause psychic damage from your brain trying to process how it all fits, like clowns from a clown car?

Something else?

[TaiLiu]

I visualize it as an opening to a bigger space. I see all the items in the same way I see a room from a doorway.

There's no textual support for this, but: Since it's extradimensional and all, I imagine that the items are still, floating in the middle of space. The space is evenly lit and grey.

[Quietus]

In 5e, retrieving an item costs an action.

I believe in 3.5, you had to name the item you wanted and then reach in to get it.

To my mind, it could look like anything - it would depend on who made it, primarily. My breaking-through-planes artificer? Almost certainly has a brain-breaking scattered mirror effect looking into the top of his bag. I could also see an argument for looking in and seeing endless blackness, or even just seeing the vaguely-shimmering inside of an empty bag.

[Jerrykhor]

I imagine its like looking into Doraemon's pocket.

[stoutstien]

In my mind you only see the object you wish to retrieve otherwise it appears empty.

If you find one then the only real way to know what's in it is to flip it inside out.

It would be like if anyone else looked in Mary Poppins carpet bag.

[Amnestic]

I've always imagined it as appearing entirely empty, a black void of nothingness. You can't look inside to spot your object to grab, you have to mentally call it and feel around blindly, at which point it pops up into the hand. There's a sympathetic magic in the bag that reads your intent when you go to grab something.

Personally I like the idea that you don't know what's inside from just a glance. If you don't have an item in mind it'll give you a random one when you go to grab something, until it runs out of things to give.

[Mastikator]

He who loots monsters should look to it that he does not become looted. When you gaze into the bag of holding, the bag of holding gazes back.

[Chronos]

The inside can't be a total enigma, or you wouldn't be able to retrieve items. And if it just puts the specific item you want into your hand, then you're giving the bag not just storage powers, but mental powers, which feels like too much to me. I picture it as just being bigger on the inside, but otherwise looking like a normal (but much larger) bag.

[Arkhios]

I'd imagine the view to be like as if you were looking through a glass that diminishes your view, so everything inside appear to be smaller than they are.

[InvisibleBison]

I think looking into a bag of holding would look just like looking into a normal bag with dimensions equal to the bag of holding's interior dimensions and an opening equal in size to the bag of holding's opening.

[Unoriginal]

The (etc) means that this question applies to all similar "bigger on the inside" storage items.

Do you see an empty bag? If so, how do you know what such an item already has in it if you just find one?

Do you see all the items in it? Does this cause psychic damage from your brain trying to process how it all fits, like clowns from a clown car?

Something else?

My understanding is that you see an empty bag's insides, not even looking bigger than the outside dimensions would suggest. It's when you put your hand in that you can percieve the magic.

Same for a Bag of Devouring, but for a pretty different kind of magic.

[Quietus]

Alphabet soup, except instead of letters it's all the random gold, potions, troll dongs and other nonsense loot you've picked up along the way!

[Blatant Beast]

The Abyss, and it also is staring back into you.

[NichG]

I visualize it as an opening to a bigger space. I see all the items in the same way I see a room from a doorway.

There's no textual support for this, but: Since it's extradimensional and all, I imagine that the items are still, floating in the middle of space. The space is evenly lit and grey.

This, but with a sort of fish-eye lens effect or 'reaching through a water surface' distortion effect such that when you look at yourself reaching into one of the far corners of the bag, your hand on the inside doesn't quite move correctly.

[OldTrees1]

You see the insides of the bag and everything inside it that is within your cone of vision but not provided cover by the outside of the bag. Your eyes capture a 2D image of what is in front of them. This means you won't be looking at the inside bottom and the outside bottom of the bag of holding at the same time. So you simply see the bag is bigger when you look into it than when you look at its outside. This same effect is how movie magic can create a "it's bigger on the inside" TARDIS for the Dr Who series. They just show the fraction of the larger inside that can be seen from the doorway. Conveniently there is no visible overlap since you can't see both the overlapping inside and outside at the same time with the same eye.

[TaiLiu]

This, but with a sort of fish-eye lens effect or 'reaching through a water surface' distortion effect such that when you look at yourself reaching into one of the far corners of the bag, your hand on the inside doesn't quite move correctly.
Oo, that's neat. And it'd explain how you can get items so quickly despite the size of the bag.

[KorvinStarmast]

This, but with a sort of fish-eye lens effect or 'reaching through a water surface' distortion effect such that when you look at yourself reaching into one of the far corners of the bag, your hand on the inside doesn't quite move correctly.
That's how we've described it, roughly, in our group for many years. (But how you described it is more elegantly phrased, so well done!).

[Psyren]

I imagine it's somewhat like looking into the TARDIS from outside. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHHTw-chJ64) You can tell the inner space is larger than its aperture, and you might need to turn your head to see the walls. But the focal point for your vision is right in front of you - the console in the case of the TARDIS, and the contents in the case of the bag.

[Imbalance]

My understanding is that you see an empty bag's insides, not even looking bigger than the outside dimensions would suggest. It's when you put your hand in that you can percieve the magic.

Same for a Bag of Devouring, but for a pretty different kind of magic.

Almost this, and that'd be why. There should be no immediate visual distinction between a BoH and BoD. I've described the open bag as revealing a void plane, lightless, though clearly magical. Only the act of reaching beyond that breech exposes the bag's true nature. If it's safe, you see your own hand pass through and the contents become visible, and the fullness of its depth becomes apparent to you alone. If it's not safe, the only sensation is that of being forcefully tugged through the opening. You won't see what's eating you.

[Dr.Samurai]

You're not supposed to look inside...

https://www.textures4photoshop.com/tex/thumbs/matrix-code-animation-gif-free-animated-background-716.gif

[Samayu]

It's like when a dragon in in the guise of a human, and inside a small room. When you view it with True Sight, you its dragon form, even though the room is smaller than the dragon.

That wasn't much help, was it?

OK, you somehow see the whole thing, and your brain is just able to make sense of it. You see all the items in the bag, and they're all within reach. Even if having them all that close is physically impossible, you can still see them. Maybe they're all ghostly images floating around as if seen through a prism or kaleidoscope, and you bring one of them into focus when you think about it.

I'm not a fan of the idea that you can't see what's in it.

[Arkhios]

It's like when a dragon in in the guise of a human, and inside a small room. When you view it with True Sight, you its dragon form, even though the room is smaller than the dragon.

That wasn't much help, was it?

OK, you somehow see the whole thing, and your brain is just able to make sense of it. You see all the items in the bag, and they're all within reach. Even if having them all that close is physically impossible, you can still see them. Maybe they're all ghostly images floating around as if seen through a prism or kaleidoscope, and you bring one of them into focus when you think about it.

I'm not a fan of the idea that you can't see what's in it.

This explanation is beginning to look like it could be Erwin Schrödinger's quantum physics experiment (which, if you think about it, isn't far from truth, relatively speaking).

[sithlordnergal]

I've always pictured it as just an empty bag. You don't realize its a Bag of Holding until you put something in it and it disappears, or you have it identified. It also means you do not automatically know what is in a Bag of Holding when you find it, and you won't know until you turn it inside out.

This actually tracks with a thing I remember being in one of the pre-written adventures. It may have been Tales of the Yawning Portal, Tomb of Annihilation, or one of the other ones. But I distinctly remember a Bag of Holding with a Magic Sword in it that you cannot get unless you turn the bag inside out. Though maybe I'm misremembering.

[Bohandas]

There's a few ways the bag could work;

*portal to a larger space or pocket dimension
*hyperbolic space, likely with increasingly negative curvature the further in you go
*everything superimposed over eahg other
*4d space, possibly with the 3d items stacked in it like a deck of cards
*Items somehow turned into abstractions or the idea of items
*broken down like an item in the pattern buffer of a Star Trek transporter; possibly in combination with the above

pocket dimension, hyperbolic space, or 4d space (in that order) are the most in line with the flavor text.

The portal option would look different depending on whether it was a wormhole, a flat portal, or a 2d portal following the contours of the interior of the bag. You can get a feel for hyperbolic space by playing the free trial version of Hyperrogue. 4d would could look different ways depending on if they were turned sideways in the 4th dimension; if they uniformly were they could be stacked like a deck of cards since they have no 4d depth.

What it explicitly DOESN'T do is shrink the items down; that's a seperate item, Leomund's Labile Locker

[rel]

The inside looks like a normal bag, it's just larger than it should be.

[Monster Manuel]

You're not supposed to look inside...

That's how I've always played it, actually. If you saw the interior dimensions of the bag based its' total storage capacity, even if distorted, it would be hard to actually retrieve any particular item. You'd have to visualize your weirdly warped arm reaching into some corner of a 4x4' box and pulling out a potion or whatever.

If you look into the bag when you're retrieving your item, you see a distorted 4x4' box full of stuff, you get a headache and probably can't reach what you're looking for. If you just reach in without looking and spend an action thinking about the thing you want, you pull it out. Like magic.

[Bohandas]

That's consistent with everything being superimposed and/or pattern buffered. Which in retrospect seems more consistent with the bag being described as "nondimensional" whatever that means

[Psyren]

That's how I've always played it, actually. If you saw the interior dimensions of the bag based its' total storage capacity, even if distorted, it would be hard to actually retrieve any particular item. You'd have to visualize your weirdly warped arm reaching into some corner of a 4x4' box and pulling out a potion or whatever.

If you look into the bag when you're retrieving your item, you see a distorted 4x4' box full of stuff, you get a headache and probably can't reach what you're looking for. If you just reach in without looking and spend an action thinking about the thing you want, you pull it out. Like magic.

I'm fine with this except it leaves one question unanswered - what happens when you encounter a bag of holding with unknown contents? Do you have to dump it out in order to know what it contains? After all, you can't think of an item that you don't know about, unless you randomly guess or something.

[Chronos]

It slightly bothers me that turning a bag of holding inside out is something you would want to do. In the Olden Days, it was kept deliberately mysterious what would happen when you turned one inside out, and it was generally assumed it would be dangerous. Of course, then some players did it anyway just to find out, and whatever consequence the DM decided it had, players figured out a way to weaponize it. So they neutered it by saying that it was just the most boring outcome possible, that it dumped out all the items. This does (mostly) prevent weaponizing it, but at the cost of the risk... but you could at least still have folks who, in character, don't know what it'll do and don't want to find out.

But if turning it inside out is the only way to find out what's in a newly-acquired Bag, then word of that is going to spread, and anyone who's heard of the bags will know that, and it'll just become standard operating procedure. And now the mystique is lost completely.

[Scots Dragon]

It's like a TARDIS. You see a considerably larger version of a bag's typical interior than can exist in the physical space.

A much more interesting question is what the inside of a rope trick looks like.

[Segev]

I am with the others likening it to a TARDIS. It is just bigger on the inside.

Turn it inside-out, and it now is like some sort of novelty bag whose lining is much smaller than its exterior for some reason: much bigger outside than in.

Alternatively, on turning it inside-out, it's still bigger on the new inside. The new inside is the same size as the old lnside and the new outside is he same size as the old outside. The magic just keeps the extradimensional space on the interior.

[Monster Manuel]

I'm fine with this except it leaves one question unanswered - what happens when you encounter a bag of holding with unknown contents?

You still CAN look inside, and see what you see. Maybe there are only a couple of items in there and it's pretty obvious. If you can clearly see a crown at the bottom of the bag, you could grab it. If there's a lot of stuff piled in there, you could poke around with a stick before you reach in to see what you can dig out. I'll generally ask for an investigation check with a dc scaling with the fullness of the bag.

But yeah, the best way to inventory the contents of an unfamiliar bag of holding is to dump it out and see what you've got.

[Segev]

The TARDIS-like "it's just bigger on the inside" dodges the question of what items you can see by saying, "You can see whatever is visible from the mouth, just like with any bag. This one just has more space inside than it takes up outside."

[Damon_Tor]

Of course, then some players did it anyway just to find out, and whatever consequence the DM decided it had, players figured out a way to weaponize it.

One of my favorite inventions as a DM in recent years is a skeleton bomb. You put 20 animated skeletons into a bag of holding (I did the math, they fit if you fold them up real good) and mount the bag of holding into a mechanism that automatically inverts it on impact. You launch the projectile (using mundane siege weapons is fine) and the skeletons spill out behind enemy lines causing havoc.

If the bombs are prepared ahead of time the skeletons can be allowed to go feral and just attack indiscriminately. Or you can prepare the bonus that morning using fresh castings of animate dead so that the skeletons can be given a particular mission. Mixing the fresh, purposeful skeleton bombs with several pre-made feral bombs helps to confuse the enemy, forcing them to guess which skeletons have missions and which are just there to sew chaos.

This was in a "trench warfare" campaign I came up with.

[Tanarii]

Swirling nothingness. You reach into it and the item you're thinking of is grabbed. That's the real reason you don't put pointy objects in it.

The only way to know everything currently in the bag is to turn it inside out and dump it on the ground.