Filling a portable hole

[Alleine]

So the dimensions for a portable hole are 6' diameter and 10' deep. Here's a question for you: How many greatswords can you fit in it?

Greatswords are listed as being 8 lbs. and I looked for a length on google, and got roughly 8' tall. Unfortunatley I don't know how thick or wide one is, and if I knew, I'm much too lazy to do the math required to see how many would fit, its summer vacation, so sue me.

The help would be appreciated.

[Dawgas]

I'm wondering why you don't just put a Bag of Holding full of Greatswords in the Portable Hole.

Are you ever going to try to use this information to your advantage in a game? I fail to see what this could be used for, besides laughs all around.

Also, with the information you have, it is impossible to answer your question. I also, am too lazy to look up this stuff.

[Alleine]

I'm wondering why you don't just put a Bag of Holding full of Greatswords in the Portable Hole.

I'm going to assume thats a joke, even though I can't tell, in which case, HAHAHAHA!!(no sarcasm) That would be funny, if I actually managed to not ruin the bag before it got in the hole. Then most of us would end up in a world of hurt.

If you must know, I'm a psion and telekinetic thrust is one of my potentially abusable powers. If I filled the hole with greatswords, I could open it at any time, manifest the power, and fling somewhere around 30(31 is the weight limit for greatswords for the power, unaugmented) greatswords at an enemy. Now I ask, what about that isn't made of win? I'm bound to roll a nat'l 20 eventually, which is what I'll need due to a crappy BAB.

[Inyssius Tor]

EDIT: Oh. Bwahahaha!

[Townopolis]

My completely uneducated rough estimate says 288. That may be the best you get with a question like this.

[Yiel]

I'm wondering why you don't just put a Bag of Holding full of Greatswords in the Portable Hole.

Hehehehehe KABOOM!

Pity the greatswords would be the least thing to worry about then.

[CASTLEMIKE]

Consider using Orc Shot Put instead of swords.

[bairen]

A portable hole has a diameter of 6 feet and depth 10 feet. This gives a total volume of pi*3^2*10 cubic feet, or about 283 cubic feet.

Steel has a density of around 490 pounds per cubic foot. A portable hole filled completely with steel would contain 490*283 pounds of steel, or about 138,544 pounds.

Approximating a greatsword as a big chunk of steel at 8 pounds per sword, this gives us 138,544/8 swords in the hole, or about 17,318 swords.

Now the swords won't fit together perfectly, so let's guess they'll pack with about 75 percent efficiency. That leaves us with about 12,989 swords.

So you can fit about thirteen thousand swords in that hole of yours. Assuming no economies of scale, at 50 gp per sword, this is going to run you 650,000 gp. From wealth by level, you're going to need to be at least level 20 to pull this off.

If rather than flinging swords at an opponent, you get the hole above them and open it, your enemy now has 13,000 swords hurtling toward their head. Assuming one in twenty hits, doing average damage each, and one in twenty of those are critical hits doing double damage, you can deal nearly 4800 damage in one round.

Now if instead of falling on a single target, the swords are dispersed over the whole of the six foot diameter area, you're still dealing nearly 850 damage to anyone unlucky enough to be underneath.

As kindly pointed out to me by CockroachTeaParty, this is worthless against anything with DR, but still a fun endeavor.

[Townopolis]

Wow, I was so far off... I might as well be the Interceptor missile shield.

[Tack122]

A portable hole has a diameter of 6 feet and depth 10 feet. This gives a total volume of pi*3^2*10 cubic feet, or about 283 cubic feet.

Steel has a density of around 490 pounds per cubic foot. A portable hole filled completely with steel would contain 490*283 pounds of steel, or about 138,544 pounds.

Approximating a greatsword as a big chunk of steel at 8 pounds per sword, this gives us 138,544/8 swords in the hole, or about 17,318 swords.

Now the swords won't fit together perfectly, so let's guess they'll pack with about 75 percent efficiency. That leaves us with about 12,989 swords.

So you can fit about thirteen thousand swords in that hole of yours. Assuming no economies of scale, at 50 gp per sword, this is going to run you 650,000 gp. From wealth by level, you're going to need to be at least level 20 to pull this off.

Although I think a mere 300 greatswords would work for what the OP is using them for.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Do you hear that? That's the sound of hundreds of catgirls bursting into flame.

[Solo]

The answer is 42.

[Xuincherguixe]

Over 9000?

[Kurald Galain]

A portable hole has a diameter of 6 feet and depth 10 feet. This gives a total volume of pi*3^2*10 cubic feet, or about 283 cubic feet.

MeoowwwAaaaaaargh!!!

[Solo]

Over 9000?

In America.

[Jayabalard]

I'm not sure why you'd bother throwing greatswords... they really wouldn't make that good of an improvised thrown weapon.

As far as how many you can fit in the hole, sword are not shaped for anything near perfect stacking. there's going to be alot of wasted space, probably 50% or more, especially if you want to be able to get at them quickly.

[DaMullet]

MeoowwwAaaaaaargh!!!

I fail to see why mathematics are causing catgirl implosion.

Catgirls die when you attempt to apply Earthly science principles to DnD. Not math. 2 + 2 still equals 3.999999999999999999999999999etc.

The calculation regarding the density of steel, that might do it.

[lukelightning]

"Guess how many greatswords are in this portable hole, and you win an prize!"

[Keld Denar]

I like the idea of dropping them, although add a slight twist to it. Get an epic monk with the epic infinite return missile fire feats and drop it on him. The graphic that comes into my head is throwing a log into a chipper-shredder, and thousands of splinters come out the end and shred a small army. Heh.

[Dausuul]

I'm not sure why you'd bother throwing greatswords... they really wouldn't make that good of an improvised thrown weapon.

Because when telekinesis is used to throw a weapon, it does normal damage for that weapon and isn't considered improvised. It's not technically an attack at all, you just have to make an attack roll to see if you hit.

I don't know how it works with psionics, but with the telekinesis spell you have an attack bonus equal to your BAB plus casting stat modifier and do normal damage unmodified by Strength; and you're capped at 1 object per level and 25 pounds total per level. So a 9th-level wizard with an Int of 22 could throw nine greatswords with an attack bonus of +11, inflicting 2d6 points of damage per hit with no save and no spell resistance.

Of course, what you really want are Colossal sianghams. Assuming the weapon weight rules follow the same progression past Large, a Colossal siangham weighs 16 pounds, costs 48 gp, and does 4d6 damage. If you hit 50% of the time, that 9th-level wizard will deal 18d6 damage... fighting stuff with DR sucks, though.

Or, if you can afford it and want to squeeze out every scrap of damage, use Gargantuan mithral greatswords. At 6d6 damage and 32 pounds, it offers slightly better performance than the sianghams, even after you consider that you won't be able to throw the full 1 per level due to the weight cap. Plus your odds of beating DR improve. But at 16,800 gp apiece, it gets awfully pricey awfully fast.th

As far as how many you can fit in the hole, sword are not shaped for anything near perfect stacking. there's going to be alot of wasted space, probably 50% or more, especially if you want to be able to get at them quickly.

Agreed, but you can certainly put in enough to power a whole lot of telekinetic attacks. Especially since you can just collect them all at the end of the battle and put them back in.

[Alleine]

yeow! I wasn't expecting THAT many. And anyways there is a weight restriction. At level 20 It'll be 625, so I won't need nearly that many swords. Thanks! This'll probably make my DM cry....

My other idea was to buy enough candles to make a 15' diameter sphere, telekinetic thrust them and ask our friendly neighborhood wizard to fireball it. That would be double-plus un-fun to anyone I hit. This power makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. So many possibilities! Thanks again!

[Neek]

A portable hole has a diameter of 6 feet and depth 10 feet. This gives a total volume of pi*3^2*10 cubic feet, or about 283 cubic feet.

Steel has a density of around 490 pounds per cubic foot. A portable hole filled completely with steel would contain 490*283 pounds of steel, or about 138,544 pounds.

Approximating a greatsword as a big chunk of steel at 8 pounds per sword, this gives us 138,544/8 swords in the hole, or about 17,318 swords.

Now the swords won't fit together perfectly, so let's guess they'll pack with about 75 percent efficiency. That leaves us with about 12,989 swords.

Wait. What? I want you to fill a 6 foot wide in diameter, 10 foot deep container with 12,000 swords. You're maximizing the potential of 2 extra feet which will not be used, as well as overestimating the efficiency of storage; these swords will in most certainty have cross-guards that will make tight packing a bit of a problem. You also assume that the density of the steel will be uniform across a crafted blade.

While I trust your math, I don't believe you went about the right way of determining how many swords you could fit in that space.

[Dausuul]

Wait. What? I want you to fill a 6 foot wide in diameter, 10 foot deep container with 12,000 swords. You're maximizing the potential of 2 extra feet which will not be used, as well as overestimating the efficiency of storage; these swords will in most certainty have cross-guards that will make tight packing a bit of a problem. You also assume that the density of the steel will be uniform across a crafted blade.

While I trust your math, I don't believe you went about the right way of determining how many swords you could fit in that space.

Okay, let's tackle this another way.

Discounting the cross-piece for reasons I will enumerate below, I estimate the sword's maximum dimensions at 3 inches wide by 1 inch thick by 6 feet long. (Greatswords are not 8 feet long unless you're a frickin' ogre. I have no idea where the OP got that figure, but it's way off.) This means that each sword is taking up 3 square inches of area.

The reason I feel I can discount the cross-piece in this estimate is that swords can be "layered," so to speak; you put them in vertically but then rest one above another so that the cross-pieces do not hit each other. We'll say the cross-pieces are 8 inches long.

Now, the portable hole has a radius of 3 feet, or 36 inches. However, due to those 8-inch cross-pieces, I'd say we lose about 2.5 inches off the radius. So that's 33.5 inches radius, which means an area of about 3500 square inches. Divide that by 3 and you can fit in 1,175 swords if you pack them very, very carefully.

What about the remaining 4 feet? Well, we lose a foot or so to the aforementioned "layering." For the other 3, laying swords down horizontally doesn't do much--the hole is barely big enough to accommodate one sword from tip to pommel, so we'd only be able to fit in 36 swords or so. But given how tightly we packed the lower layer, it's unlikely there's any room to slip more swords in vertically.

So I'd say you could get a total of maybe 1,200 swords into there, if you were really thorough.

[horseboy]

If you're buying 12,000 greatswords, couldn't you just have them made without cross guards? And you're really not going to need a "true" handle. Just some really big blades to shoot out of your Cheese gratermagic hole. Does the hole allow air? Can you set them on fire before they go in there and then hold the fire in suspended animation while in the hole?

[Neek]

Okay, let's tackle this another way.

Discounting the cross-piece for reasons I will enumerate below, I estimate the sword's maximum dimensions at 3 inches wide by 1 inch thick by 6 feet long. (Greatswords are not 8 feet long unless you're a frickin' ogre. I have no idea where the OP got that figure, but it's way off.) This means that each sword is taking up 3 square inches of area.

The reason I feel I can discount the cross-piece in this estimate is that swords can be "layered," so to speak; you put them in vertically but then rest one above another so that the cross-pieces do not hit each other. We'll say the cross-pieces are 8 inches long.

Now, the portable hole has a radius of 3 feet, or 36 inches. However, due to those 8-inch cross-pieces, I'd say we lose about 2.5 inches off the radius. So that's 33.5 inches radius, which means an area of about 3500 square inches. Divide that by 3 and you can fit in 1,175 swords if you pack them very, very carefully.

What about the remaining 4 feet? Well, we lose a foot or so to the aforementioned "layering." For the other 3, laying swords down horizontally doesn't do much--the hole is barely big enough to accommodate one sword from tip to pommel, so we'd only be able to fit in 36 swords or so. But given how tightly we packed the lower layer, it's unlikely there's any room to slip more swords in vertically.

So I'd say you could get a total of maybe 1,200 swords into there, if you were really thorough.

That's a bit more believable (the math seems to make more sense--you're not worried about density of the material, but the volume of the hole versus the volume of the actual weapon). Of course, getting them out is the problem...

[Curmudgeon]

Because when telekinesis is used to throw a weapon, it does normal damage for that weapon and isn't considered improvised. It's not technically an attack at all, you just have to make an attack roll to see if you hit.

I don't know how it works with psionics, but with the telekinesis spell you have an attack bonus equal to your BAB plus casting stat modifier and do normal damage unmodified by Strength; and you're capped at 1 object per level and 25 pounds total per level.

Telekinesis does what you think of as "normal damage" if the weapon is a missile. Normal damage for thrown greatswords assumes improvised weapon penalties. The spell description doesn't say that it makes non-ranged weapons have better aerodynamics.

[Jack_Simth]

Ammunition deals damage as a dagger of it's size.

What's the cost of 20 Colossal arrows (or Crossbow Bolts, or Sling Bullets, or...), and what's the damage on a Colossal dagger?

Sure, you can't reuse them (except for 50% of the misses), and it's probably a lower base damage, But Hey!

Oh, and don't forget - when using ammo, you've got the added bonus that your Friendly Party Cleric can GMW 50 at a time with a single spell slot, for more damage, DR/Magic penetration, and a better chance to hit.

[RandomNPC]

i'd say just go for crossbow bolts. have them poisoned with a few varieties of poison and just toss them randomly.

[bairen]

...you're not worried about density of the material, but the volume of the hole versus the volume of the actual weapon...

And that's just it. You're relating the volume of the weapons to the volume of the hole. But you don't know anything about the volume of the weapon. What you do know is the weight. And that's where density comes into play. That's exactly the use of density, relating weight and volume.

Is the density of the swords exactly 490? Of course not. Is it a reasonable guess? I think so. Notice my use of "about", "approximate" and "guess". I'm not claiming exact numbers, but I'm willing to bet they're pretty close.

[Dausuul]

Telekinesis does what you think of as "normal damage" if the weapon is a missile. Normal damage for thrown greatswords assumes improvised weapon penalties. The spell description doesn't say that it makes non-ranged weapons have better aerodynamics.

Alternatively, the spell energy can be spent in a single round. You can hurl one object or creature per caster level (maximum 15) that are within range and all within 10 feet of each other toward any target within 10 feet per level of all the objects. You can hurl up to a total weight of 25 pounds per caster level (maximum 375 pounds at 15th level).

You must succeed on attack rolls (one per creature or object thrown) to hit the target with the items, using your base attack bonus + your Intelligence modifier (if a wizard) or Charisma modifier (if a sorcerer). Weapons cause standard damage (with no Strength bonus; note that arrows or bolts deal damage as daggers of their size when used in this manner). Other objects cause damage ranging from 1 point per 25 pounds (for less dangerous objects) to 1d6 points of damage per 25 pounds (for hard, dense objects).

Nothing in there says you only inflict normal damage with ranged weapons--in fact, it specifically says arrows and bolts deal damage as daggers. Nor does it say anything about improvised weapons, or about melee weapons suffering a penalty. You're using very different rules from the ones you'd use if you were actually wielding the weapons in question. You add your casting stat to your BAB instead of your Dex, you don't apply your Strength bonus to the damage, your range is fixed by the spell rather than being determined by the weapon's range increment, and you can throw up to 15 weapons at once. I see no reason to suppose that improvised weapon penalties would apply.

And that's just it. You're relating the volume of the weapons to the volume of the hole. But you don't know anything about the volume of the weapon. What you do know is the weight. And that's where density comes into play. That's exactly the use of density, relating weight and volume.

Is the density of the swords exactly 490? Of course not. Is it a reasonable guess? I think so. Notice my use of "about", "approximate" and "guess". I'm not claiming exact numbers, but I'm willing to bet they're pretty close.

You're acting as if a sword is a solid rectangular block of metal. It isn't. It doesn't liquefy to fill up the space available. Most of the space in the portable hole is going to be empty air, because swords don't pack perfectly, nor anything anywhere close to perfectly.