How would you make a Bag of Holding?

[Mirikon]

So, one of the classic items in any setting with extraordinary abilities, whether it is fantasy, sci-fi, or superheroes, is a bag of holding. An extradimensional pocket where you can put stuff, and it is either weightless, or has a drastically reduced weight, and the inside of the bag is far bigger than the outside. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any power in HERO that lets you do something like that. So, I'm asking the hivemind, how would you make a bag of holding?

[Hugh Neilson]

"How to build" questions should be posted in discussion boards (Rules Questions or Fantasy Hero would be good choices).  This has been discussed there in the past.  This Board is for rules questions specifically, and has a limited pool of members who can reply.  @Simon, would you like to move the thread (not sure who else can)?

[Ndreare]

While not official I have built them as follows. 

 

Extra Dimensional Movement (a single pocket dimension,  OAF bag -1, objects must through 1' wide opening -1/4)

[Christopher R Taylor]

The usual way this is answered is to use Extradimensional Space from the Advanced Player Guide II but there are other tricks that can be used.

[Killer Shrike]

There's various ways, all w/ pros and cons. 

 

Most people would naturally go for an obvious and literal translation, fixating on the idea of "how do you make or interact with an extradim space in the Hero System" and thus go down the path of using EDM. This can be made to work, and I have also done it that way, but I think it is a somewhat naïve approach and focuses on using mechanics to model the SFX rather than reasoning from effects which is the more correct way to do things.

 

For me, the "bag of holding / handy haversack / portable hole / extradimensional object of holding more than you think it could" idea is mostly about carrying stuff. Bluntly, the BoH type of magic item in D&D is about allowing D&D characters to opt out of the encumbrance rules while carrying around  the ridiculous amounts of loot they have acquired. In campaigns where the GM doesn't bother to enforce encumbrance, you rarely see such items because the problem they overcome isn't affecting the players and thus they are not needed.

 

Fantasy Hero also has its version of encumbrance rules, but not all GM's enforce them at all or enforce them only partially. In a campaign w/ encumbrance being tracked, how much stuff you can carry without taking encumbrance penalties is a function of STR, and thus a bag of holding type item can be handled as nothing more than SFX for extra STR (0 END, IIF, Only to Offset Encumbrance Penalty For Things Carried Within It).

 

YMMV.

 

There are also other variant notions such as Newt Scamander's suitcase, which could be treated as a cool SFX for a Summon. Another approach for these sorts of things is as a fantasy SFX for a gadgeteer VPP (ala Batman's Utility Belt but with the justification of "magic xdim storage" instead of "Cuz I'm Batman"). And so on. At the end of the day, focus on what the desired outcome is, ask what mechanic most directly delivers that outcome, and the chrome / cosmetics is just SFX.

[Killer Shrike]

Actually, here are a couple of Fantasy Hero characters who are loose conversions from Pathfinder who have variant Handy Haversacks, defined as extra STR to carry stuff:

Ilusia (FH6e) Ilusia (PF1e)

 

Reyals (FH6e) Reyals (PF1e)
 

[Ndreare]

11 hours ago, Killer Shrike said:

Actually, here are a couple of Fantasy Hero characters who are loose conversions from Pathfinder who have variant Handy Haversacks, defined as extra STR to carry stuff:

Ilusia (FH6e) Ilusia (PF1e)

 

Reyals (FH6e) Reyals (PF1e)
 

 

Strength only for encumbrance makes sense, but then wouldn't you want to make it persistent and possibly add invisible power effects?

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah just using STR means you're carrying it out in the open as usual, it just doesn't bother you in terms of encumbrance.  But, I mean its a quick and easy method of handling the issue.

[Jhamin]

16 hours ago, Killer Shrike said:

For me, the "bag of holding / handy haversack / portable hole / extradimensional object of holding more than you think it could" idea is mostly about carrying stuff. Bluntly, the BoH type of magic item in D&D is about allowing D&D characters to opt out of the encumbrance rules while carrying around  the ridiculous amounts of loot they have acquired. In campaigns where the GM doesn't bother to enforce encumbrance, you rarely see such items because the problem they overcome isn't affecting the players and thus they are not needed.

 

This is the same thing I always think about with the various extra dimensional storage items in most Fantasy Games.

I feel like when they (rarely) show up in fiction the "cool part" about a Portable hole is how they give you access to spaces where you need them, no matter how weird.  Heroes often hide inside them.  The hero is being chased, jumps in his portable hole, the villain misses them & runs right by.

 

When they show up in the old Rodger Rabbit Movie, Portable Holes let people make a hole in a restraint, letting them escape.

 

In RPG games, people always put up shelving and use them as portable store-rooms.  Which fills a need I suppose, but I am always kinda disappointed by the lack of imagination.

 

In Hero Terms, how they are used will be the big factor in deciding how you write them up.

[Ockham's Spoon]

I know a lot of people hate Transform to represent a wide array of abilities, but another method would be that anything put in the Bag of Holding is transformed to the same object 1/10 the size.  The reverse Transform condition is when you pull it back out.  You wouldn't need a lot of Transform dice because most things that will fit in the Bag of Holding are going to be relatively small so they won't have lots of BODY.

[Steve]

As Christopher mentioned earlier, there is a power called Extradimensional Space in the Advanced Players Guide that could be used for this.

 

There was a discussion on this exact same topic in the Champions forum just a few months ago.

[Killer Shrike]

7 hours ago, Ndreare said:

 

Strength only for encumbrance makes sense, but then wouldn't you want to make it persistent and possibly add invisible power effects?

 

 

Sure, if you felt the need to. Technically, Characteristics are Persistent already, though obviously STR is odd in that it also costs END to use w/o 0 END applied to it.

 

As far as "invisible", it's really the _items_ in the bag that are not "visible" in the sense that the bag is opaque and blocks line of sight. The item itself is still visible if you can establish line of sight, as is the magical container it is stored within.

 

Do you make a vehicle with a trunk or other storage compartment take "invisible" on its strength because people can't normally see what's in them? What about a normal mundane backpack?

 

For me it's a "meh", especially given I use Equipment Pools for fantasy. For some mundane items I don't even bother w/ a write up...like "Rope" or whatever and just assess some nominal point cost because the discrepancy of all the things they can be used for and the point cost of simulating all of that via detailed modeling using the Powers mechanics is simply out of line with their importance to the narrative and / or their purpose from a purely gamist perspective and it's much easier to simply rely on shared understanding of what they are capable of and a hand waved resource cost based upon relative considerations. 

 

But I wouldn't be put out playing in some other GM's campaign that wanted to go the other way. YMMV, of course.

 

 

[Killer Shrike]

2 hours ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

I know a lot of people hate Transform to represent a wide array of abilities, but another method would be that anything put in the Bag of Holding is transformed to the same object 1/10 the size.  The reverse Transform condition is when you pull it back out.  You wouldn't need a lot of Transform dice because most things that will fit in the Bag of Holding are going to be relatively small so they won't have lots of BODY.

There was a time in Marvel Comics where Hank Pym ran around in a red jumpsuit acting as a pure gadgeteer, via the shtick of carrying lots of shrunk down gadgets / stuff in his pockets that he could make big at need, which was fun. Older Hank Pym in the Ant-Man movies reinterprets this pretty effectively.