Skeletons in the closet? Or Portable Hole?

[Tyger]

Considering the volume of a portable hole (about 282^3 feet), how many humanoid skeletons could one store in there?

On a related note, can the skeletons collapse upon themselves on command? A pile of bones takes up a lot less space than a unright humanoid!

Any thoughts?

[AtomicKitKat]

Well, you don't really need them to collapse. Just have them all grappling each other. The lack of skin+muscle+internal organs makes for some interesting contortions. Just off the top of my head, the stomach area is a lot emptier, you can fit stuff in the ribcage, and even stick a fist into the skull by way of the lower mandible.

[Tyger]

Exactly. Apparently a "normal" ie. living human body is about 2.8-2.0 cubit feet. So you could, in theory, pack about 100 humans into the hole. Granted, you'd be packing them down to the point where they would all be dead, but they would fit.

So the volume of the skeleton is significantly less... 150? 200 even?

[DaMullet]

Well, with a very strict accordance to Raw, you could fit "sideways 8" in there, because no matter how many people are in the grapple, it's only one 5-foot square.

I forget if portable holes have a weight limit, and if they do that would determine it.

[AtomicKitKat]

I would say a skeleton can fit into a space roughly 1 foot by 1/2-3/4 foot by 2-3 feet.

Roughly 125 skeletons minimum, 282 maximum, using my figures above. You could theoretically fit up to 9 skeletons(8 grappling 1) in a single 5/5/5 cube, but that would result in roughly 20 skeletons only.

[Porter]

Wow, how interesting...

But, just out of *morbid* curiosity, whas there a specific scenario you had in mind that brough up this question?

[ocato]

Necromancer, probably.

As you can see, there is nothing up my sleeve, but my army of skeletons is in my pocket.

[DaMullet]

That would be interesting. Or even better, get them in there, and then stick the hole to the ceiling (closed, of course) and then use Mage Hand to dump them on the adventurers while you make your escape.

[AtomicKitKat]

Ok, let's look at the limitations on skeletons.

The longest single bone in the body is the Femur(Thighbone), which is generally about 1 foot long in a 5'8" body(my own, in case you're wondering), or about 1 foot 2" in a 6' body. The longest section of inflexible spine would be the thoracic vertebrae, which number about 12, and reach about 9 inches-1 foot in length. Couple that with the skull, which is another 7-8 inches in height, and the pelvis, which is around another 4 inches(after accounting for bending the lumbar section of the spine)and you'll realise that in the fetal position, the body would be 9+7
+4=20-24 inches in the longest dimension. Given that the ribcage+legs would be about 1 foot in the front-back dimension, and the shoulder/pelvic girdle being another 1 foot wide, and you'll see that the skeleton is roughly 0.83 to 2 cubic feet.

[Porter]

What if you had magically animated skeletons? like animate object or a similar spell just on a larger scale. Then, you could pile all the bones in there seperately, and cast the spell when you dump them out, and they will all come together.

[Tyger]

Yeah the question arises out of a Dread Necromancer wanting to be able to haul around the bodies of the slain for later, just in case. Just trying to figure out how much it can reasonably be expected to hold.

[PlatinumJester]

If they collapse then you would have to use glue to stick them together.

[Porter]

are they just dead beings? or have they been animated already? cause if they have not yet been animated you could cram a whole lot more in there.

[ocato]

Yeah, if you're just saving them, you can hammer them in there pretty right probably

[Tyger]

Yup, these are unanimated corpses. A few skeletons, a few corpses suitable for zombifying.

[Porter]

In that case, play it safe, get two Portable Holes, Fill hole A, then put hole A inside of B fill remaining space of B.

[DArva]

I think that would go *boom*

[the_tick_rules]

what are the rules for when that happens. I know it like tears a hole in space-time but what are the rules on radius and what happens to stuff caught in it. me and a friend were talking about making two bag of holding bombs.

[Generic PC]

Yup. putting a Bag of Holding into a Portable hole (or Vice versa, or a Bag into a Bag/ hole into hole) creates an implosion, doing 6d6 damage or something... our partys wizard tried something similar, but used small dead animals... hilarity ensued and we ended up with a knee deep pile of dead, rotting squirrels, badgers, cats and basically anything that you could get out of a bag of tricks (the 900gp one...) within a 40 ft radius... unfortunately, we also had a dead wizard ( which became a bugbear...) and a dead rogue (which became a kobold...)

[Wehrkind]

I recall reading somewhere that the determining factor in what space you can cram a body in is the femur.
In general though, I would default to Atomic Kitkat's evaluation, as he has obviously thought more about it than most humans I would like to talk to. :)

[Jalil]

You know, there are rules for bags plus holes(Iand vice versa) but I've seen nothing about stacking holes... meh, probably a rule 0

[Jack Mann]

Portable holes presumably stack, just as bags of holding stack. It's only when you combine the two that you have problems.

[Turcano]

If you're still pressed for space, remove the ribs first. A rib cage is just empty space for a dead (or undead) skeleton.

[AtomicKitKat]

I recall reading somewhere that the determining factor in what space you can cram a body in is the femur.
In general though, I would default to Atomic Kitkat's evaluation, as he has obviously thought more about it than most humans I would like to talk to. :)

I only bothered to start calculating for my last post in this thread.

Edit: Besides, who said I was human?

[Yahzi]

Well, you don't really need them to collapse. Just have them all grappling each other.

Sure, you could pack a lot in that way.

But can you imagine trying to get them out?

Just one big old tangled knot of skeleton parts...