Are These Adventurer's Bags Unbalanced?

Question

Okay, so when a regular Class holder (like a Rogue or Warrior, perhaps even a Dancer) is Chosen as an adventurer, they gain the mysterious Respawn ability (gaining two additional lives) and an Adventurer's Bag, a regular (but very durable) hiking pack with a piece of the Abyss (These Bags generally aren't owned by non-Adventurers, unless they are granted to such a person by an Adventurer's Will, sold, or found by a non-adventurer after its will-less Adventurer owner died.) When this Bag is equipped on one's person, they have the following actions:

1. Equip

Someone can teleport an item (only one) from their Bag to their hand by simply thinking of an object in said Bag and pantomiming reaching for and grabbing that object. Putting on armor or clothing is similar, but one must pantomime putting on the armor or clothing instead of reaching for and grabbing an object.

If someone were to pour lava or acid into their Bag (more on that later), they couldn't take it out, because it cannot be Equipped or taken out without special equipment. It would have to be sacrificed to the Abyss (again, more on that later) or dumped out.

2. Collect

If an object is within reach, one can teleport it to their bag by concentrating on that object and vividly imagining putting it inside the Bag. This requires mental focus and a lot of attention to detail (specifically on the feel of the bag, the experience of taking it off, opening it, and putting an object inside) so you can't do it when you're too tired, sleepy, or distracted.

This object must be something small enough for someone to grab it and put in the Bag and must be something that can be grabbed (nothing too spiky or sharp, acidic, caustic, or so forth). Collecting a boulder, in other words, is virtually impossible. So is a puddle (of water or acid) or a bit of lava. If one must use tongs to grab the object (like a blacksmith does for red-hot iron), one must put it in the Bag manually.

You also cannot Collect something affixed to something else, like a railroad track or a note nailed to a door (for the latter, it will need to be torn off before it can be Collected). You can, however, Collect a living, sentient creature (like a human) but it requires so much exertion (physical and mental, if they're struggling) that it just isn't feasible and you should just do it manually.

What Can These Bags Hold?

Just about anything. Food, weapons, armor, miscellaneous objects, even a bucket of lava or acid. Time essentially stops (and momentum is canceled) inside the Bag, so food inside stays as fresh as it was when it came in, flaming objects stop combusting inside it (but resume as soon as they are taken out), and frozen objects inside stop thawing.

Furthermore, every item inside a Bag, if one could see inside it, floats in a separate place, never moving unless they've been taken out or another item came in. So if someone were to pour a bucket of lava or acid into their Bag, a bucket's worth of that substance would just float around in there, causing no harm but doing no good.

Living things do not age or require food, air, water-their biological processes essentially freeze, but they don't die; they can still move, think, and perceive what's around them. Think of an astronaut in space. However, unlike items, living creatures can break free from the Bag, namely by pushing the Bag open (Adventurer's Bags are typically of the drawstring or flap bag variety).
That also requires the Bag to be legally passed on to someone else, because only the Bag's legal owner can use or access it, unless someone else has permission to use or access the Bag.

Bag Upgrading:

These Bags are upgraded by sacrificing items to the Abyss (a void, a great dark nothingness) connected to this world since part of the Abyss dwells inside each Adventurer's Bag. Sacrificing an item means losing it forever (and that's difficult to do, see #4 below), you receive no reward except for getting closer to an upgrade.

It's expensive and gets even more expensive as you gain Bag upgrades. Fully upgraded (at Lvl. 14), a Bag can hold a castle's worth of items, but few ever get to that point.

Putting a regular Adventurer's Bag inside another Adventurer's Bag causes them to fuse into one Better Bag, but this forces the two Bag owners to share custody of the one, allowing each one to Equip or de-Equip items from said Bag even when they're in the other person's hotbar or hands! Even if the Bag owner is killed, Adventurer's Wills pretty much ensure that you'll always end up sharing a bag upgraded this way, so you might as well arrange something with a friend if you want to go that route.

Hotbar:

Some items are more often used than others, so an Adventurer can set up a hotbar (of nine items max) by lucid dreaming about their Bag, specifically a rectangle split into nine squares, with the desired Bag-held items each resting on a separate square. One's hotbar can hold nine items total, regardless of whether their Bag is at Lvl. 1 or 14.

This creates a sort of pocket dimension connected to the adventurer that acts almost exactly like the Bag, except it can't be upgraded and one just has to focus and exert will (think "My trusty ax, come to my hand") to Equip or de-Equip items in their hotbar.

This pocket dimension is separate from one's Bag, so even if the Bag is destroyed or taken away, one can still use their Hotbar, they just can't add or take away items from their hotbar. Instead, they can only take their chosen nine items out of their Hotbar and put them back. This may seem game-breaking, but remember, if your hands are tied behind your back, being able to summon your battleax into said hands isn't exactly useful. In fact, doing so would be dangerous, if not downright stupid, depending on the handle length.

Considering all of the above, I have one question:

Are Adventurer's Bag's Balanced?

Clarification: As pointed out by Punintended, my question was not clear. I'm specifically looking for "abusable/hackable loopholes" within the boundaries above. If there are ways to game the system, but nothing huge or game-changing, then I'm good. However, if there's potential for something huge or game-changing due to an unforeseen loophole, I want to know. Thank you.

Additional Clarification:

1. Isn't forgetting items a potential problem?

Forgetting items is not a problem, because magic is symbolic. When you get something out of a bag, you're looking inside it right? Similarly, when an Adventurer chooses to Equip something from their Bag, they can see it's contents in their mind's eye.

2. Is the Abyss Sentient?

No, the Abyss is not sentient. It is a place and a force, a shadow of Alendyias, specifically the void formed as worlds are sucked into (and subsequently destroyed and reformed by) the Fracture in Reality.

3. Thievery

Thanks to the Enforcer Class, thieves stowing items in their bag is not so much a problem as you'd think. Such individuals have literal power derived from the law, so with a warrant they can track down whoever stole an item and magically take it from their Bag to their own. The Bag must be within reach, however, in order for the stolen item to be 'claimed by the law,' so to speak.

4. Bag Upgrading

After much thought, I've decided any item you sacrifice to the Abyss must A) be something you do not want to lose and B) have either sentimental or monetary value. A good example of a valuable item would be a huge diamond, one you believe will allow you to finally escape your dirt-poor past and fulfill your dreams of glory.

Sacrificing that gets you at least a house's worth of Bag capacity, if not a castle's worth. However, sacrificing a rock you're fond of but would definitely leave behind if needed does basically nothing for upgrading your Bag. A treasured memento, however, will generally get you 1/4 to 2/3 of the way to the Upgrade you seek, up until you reach a two-story house's worth of Bag capacity.

5. Balancing Equipping

It's very simple; like for regular Bags, the deeper something is placed in your Bag, the longer it takes to get it out. It also takes concentration to enter the meditative state necessary to shift an item's position in the Bag.

Something similar happens for Hotbars; for them, placement is key. The closer an item is to the Bag owner's dominant side (ie. the side of their dominant hand), the faster it is to Equip, and vice versa. Once again, it takes concentration to enter the meditative state necessary to shift an item's position in one's hotbar.

6. Inheriting Bags

When a Bag owner dies, the Bag goes to their eldest child by default. However, if a Bag owner stipulates in their will that a specific person gets their Bag when or if they die, that person gets it instead.

7. Can Items Return From the Abyss?

Not exactly. A powerful Mage can, through sheer force of will, summon an object or creature from the Abyss. However, it's usually impossible to do that unless you know how, since this kind of magic only works if you honestly believe you can do it.

It's also possible for a powerful magical creature to summon an item back from the Abyss for you, and since magic is symbolic (and the past has a way of returning to you), adventurers have randomly discovered items they sacrificed throughout their careers, generally in the hands of less experienced adventurers or as knickknacks in a business or home.

8. Do Things Live In The Abyss?

Yes, and for various reasons. Many an adventurer has put a monster in their bag and sacrificed it to the Abyss as a quick, relatively hassle-free way to deal with it. Plenty of people have sacrificed soil, water, and even living things to the Abyss, so unbeknownst to most, there is a growing ecosystem in there!

Thanks everyone, I think I have Bags figured out now!

Answer 1

Lets explore the limits.. Must be something you can grab? I can grab (and put in a bag, a bit at a time), the one end of a 10km spool of heavy cable. Is this allowed?

How about a railroad rail?

An Armed Warrior(am i allowed to put living stuff in? sentient stuff?).

What exactly happens if I put myself in the bag?

Classic question: what happens if I put a Bag in a Bag in a Bag?

Can I take two things out at same time?
Subquestion:Can I store two barely sub-critical chunks of Plutonium in the bag?
Sub-Subquestion: Must I take the stuff out, or can my disposable sidekick do it for me?

If I put a bomb with its timer at t-2seconds in the bag, call the bomb "lunch", and then gift the bag to my enemy.. Will his lunch give him indigestion?

Answer 2

You've used the terminology "put it in manually", "tip a bucket in", and "dump out", implying the bag can be filled and emptied in usual ways like normal bags can. Anything I can use a normal plastic bag for, i can also use this bag for. Because of this, i have some exploits:

Portable compressed carbon monoxide dispenser

• There are a few ways to make pure carbon monoxide, but theres no real need. Smoke will do.
• Use bellows to pump smoke from a fire (or chimney) into the bag.
• One closet full at the pressure coming out of the bellows is several tonnes of smoke, so you'll need a long time to fill the bag up. Many fires.
• While in there, all processes stop, so it's completely inert, stationary compressed smoke.
• Climb up onto the roof of your enemies massive lair, find an open skylight, hold the bag closed and upside down, and then release the clasp, dumping the contents.
• all the enemy henchmen will collapse and die.

Portable moat / well / lake drainer.

• lower a level14 bag into the water.
• water will flow into the bag like if you put a normal rigid bag into water.
• Since it can hold a full castles worth, it will drain the entire body of water.
• if you can lower this down into your enemy's well, it could conceivably drain the entire aquifer, ensuring they all die of thirst.
• You can then withdraw your bag of holding from the well using a rope, and then you have a bag with several gigalitres of water.
• Find an enemy village in a valley, climb up on one side of their settlement, and open your bag.

pressure and temperature differences can be abused.

• Set up (using magic or tech, same same) a pressure and temperature chamber. It only needs to hit 4 atmospheres at about -60 degrees. This is basic metal working and a few freeze spells. Put the bag at the bottom of the chamber.
• At this temperature and pressure carbon dioxide will become dry ice.
• Create some dry ice. Dry ice is a solid and will fall into the bag like snow.
• put more co2 into the chamber (eg - exchange the air), and turn the co2 into more snow-like dry ice. Repeat until you have a closet full of powdered dry ice at 4atm and -60 degrees C.
• Close the bag up, and transport it to your enemy.
• Like the first exploit, but the items are solid when they were put in so bypasses any "no fluids" restriction that may exist. When removed at 1 atmosphere, dry ice at -60 is no longer solid, and will rapidly convert to a gas.
• You can now make it snow death on your enemies as their hideout fills with carbon dioxide.

Army in a bag.

• A level 14 bag can hold an entire castles worth of living things. An army can fit in a castle.
• You need one guy (a merchant carrying goods, for example) to get into a city. Merchants with lots of goods (especially one selling several bags) are likely to be allowed through a city wall to sell their wares.
• If searched, the army wont be found, because one needs to know the army is in there to retrieve it.
• The army can be extracted at night by the merchant.
• ... or just call your army "gold", put a note on the bag saying "don't steal my gold", give everyone permission (ie put your bag into the creative commons), and then leave it on the route into a town. Someone will take you in trojan horse style and then want to extract the gold. With any luck you'll be inside the city walls.

Ever scatter virus-laden USB keys in a companies car park? Do something similar...

• give everyone in your army a bag.
• Everyone grants access to their bag to their entire unit and commander.
• Everyone also grants access to a specific enemy by name "commander John Smith of the enemy nation also has access to my bag.
• if the bag tech is well known; give all your solider names that sound like concubines. Or strippers. Label the bag something lkme "Contains 'Candy', as promised, the concubine for commander John Smith. Sorry she's so compliant and submissive.".
• if the bag tech isnt well known give your soldiers names like "rare artifact", or "lost documents", and label the bags in a similar way.
• One soldier per bag, enters their own bag, armed to the teeth with quiet but deadly weapons.
• Leave the bags scattered around the road into your enemy kingdom.

Cryogenic eternal life

• As I'm laying dying on the ground, my last thought will be to gift the bag to my family and friends, and to try to crawl into it.
• Its like freezing yourself cryogenic hoping that one day we'll have the tech to give you eternal life.

Answer 3

Subjugation

This sounds like something from a video game, but the potential to include living organisms greatly unbalances it. A prisoner thrown into this container faces an eternity of boredom unless released. How many generations will pass before someone decides to let him go? Or, perhaps his captor will "hotbar" him and eight other slaves, before selling the bag. By your description they remain bound to their master, whether in or out of mental custody, and can be returned to the "hotbar" at any time. They have many things to fear should their master suffer an accident while they are in the "hotbar", the least of which is death.

So far, fortunately, our own world has had no concept of a dictator with that sort of power, outside of some of the more unpleasant formulations of religion. Some gullible folks who believe in mind uploading could be in such a position sooner than one would like to see, but I tend to lump that in with the preceding.

Answer 4

Sounds like Minecraft

Except w more lore. The lava piece sounds like Minecraft because one does carry about buckets of lava, and the hammerspace piece sounds like Minecraft and every other video game where your character is somehow carrying bazookas and chainsaws and potions and other stuff but appears to have nothing on her person but shorts and a tanktop.

Having loads of food and weapons and other truck on you is fine for a game where players do not want to worry about stuff like that. The bag seems like a fine mechanism for use in a game one desires to be more D&D than Minecraft.

It makes sense for there to be some limit and not have the load be infinite. Sacrificing to the abyss is fine but if it can just be any kind of stuff sacrificed I don't need to sacrifice my +2 Codpiece of Coddling. I can find all the sacrificial items I need out in the yard. The dog, you know. It produces many sacrifice-ready items.

Answer 5

Some Caveats:

Some conditions to prevent OPness:

1. Only small (ie handheld) things can be stowed.

2. Stowing cancels momentum. So you can stow a moving arrow. But when you remove it from your inventory it drops to the ground rather than flying off into the baddie's face.

3. Can only stow things you can physically reach.

4. Can only stow things that could physically fit through the bag mouth.

5. Cannot stow living creatures.

Another one (fun, optional):

6. Items can only be removed in the order they were stowed. So if you equip a sandwich, crowbar, and macademia nut, you cannot access the sandwich without first removing the nut and then the crowbar. This prevents you carrying 10 weapons at once and suddenly equipping the best one for the job.

With all these in mind, the main exploit is:

Stealth

There are a million logistic advantages of having one of these bags in a standard medieval fantasy setting. For example preserving large amounts of food, transporting ice from the mountains, or carrying enough water to travel through a desert. These are all next to impossible with the technology of the time, and next to trivial with the bag.

Some of these powers are beneficial to a travelling adventurer. They can travel faster and longer without resupplying. No need to hunt for food or waste time starting a fire when you can just stow a burning torch in your inventory. Over long distances a bag makes you (a) impossible to catch and (b) impossible to run from.

However I presume you have in mind combat exploits. When you get to the dragon's lair 2 weeks early, then what's the bag good for? Will it help you kill the dragon? I'd argue no. In a pitched battle the bag is of little immediate use. It's handy yes -- you always have a spare weapon handy and can carry dozens of throwing spears if that's any help. But it's hardly OP.

The value of the bag is it lets you smuggle anything in anywhere. You an smuggle an armored knight into the king's inner chambers by simply smuggling a regular man and then equipping the plate armor + halberd from your inventory.

The hotbar is especially good for this as it makes "stop and search" impossible. You don't even need to carry the bag. You can simply summon the jar of poison, poison the king's wine, and then disappear it.

Answer 6

Okay, here are some common plotholes you'd have with a gamey bag like yours.

Upgrading capacity

You're not enough descriptive about this, it's sooo easy to breach straight through your rules. Here's the ways I'd do to upgrade the bag as quickly as possible, depending on the premise :

• What you told is that it's dependent on the number of items. I doubt that's what you meant, because otherwise it's trivial to upgrade ^^ : pick one single tuff of grass after another and you're done to lvl 14 in a day or two.
• This presumes the bag's upgradability is based on the volume of items. It's not much harder : Gather anything lying around and upgrade your bag. And I mean litterally anything : rocks, weeds. Peck, as your first adventurer job, you could take out others' trashes just to upgrade your bag. A simple quest with a very good reward.
• Alternatively, if the bag upgrade cost is dependent on the mass, just fill in jugs after jugs of water and put them in to upgrade. Making jugs is not that hard to make or expensive, so you could make a good amount of them.
• You can't really value the upgrade cost using the money, since it's relative to country and people. I'm going up to the extreme : Let's say my wish is to solely upgrade the bag, then I can tell myself anything is worth a million gold for that task. Therefore the upgrade to max lvl is done as soon as I sacrifice the first pebble in it.

Definitely, you should work on the scales used to avoid any trickeries like the ones above. I doubt you can do it with a single scale, or even two, as it's easy to minimize the cost and maximize the profits that way. Instead, it might be much safer to put a list of materials and their raw value per kg. It would severely hinder any "perfectly balanced" exploits, though you will still have a tendancy to have the birth of specialized economies, depending on what thing rewards the most upgrades points.

What to take?

The main exploits would certainly be its time stop and no-weight-no-size abilities. You can do so much with this, and here are my best things to take with me and that hugely profits from this.

Items? No no no! People!

Let your bag be a bus and carry people! Given your conditions and even without telling it explicitly, you could do that :

• You think it's not an item? Make a slave contract for the duration of the transportation, put them inside a box so you put it inside the bag, not the person itself, etc..
• You told the bag can put living things such as apples. Then, knowing someone is a living thing, then I can put them inside the bag.
• Regarding size and weight, if you can take out an armor, 'specially something like a knight would wear (full plate armor), you can definitely take a person in and out. At worse, it will be limited to dwarves-like people, but hey! They'll become the latest trends in adventuring parties, then. After all, who wouldn't want to have their own pocket dwarf?

Here's some tricks you can make with it :

• You can transport people without them losing time of their life. Indeed, time's stopped inside the bag, so they don't grow older. And it's a lot less boring, since you don't see time pass. Only downside is that it might be frightening, not seeing you reach your destination, or not...
• You can ambush anyone safely by taking out a good amount of allies out of the bag. It's even worse if the pocket people who get out have their own adventuring bag, since they could then take out their own allies and weapons quickly. In other words, you can make a reenactement of the Trojan war with a single bag.
• Slowing diseases through time stopping. To a greater extent to give time to find a cure to a disease like companies nowadays offer through cryofreezing you, or just to a lesser extent to get someone to a doctor without them suffering from the travel. You now have really efficient ambulances.
• Prisons and prisoner carriages. Yes, forcefully put criminals into the bag, and you don't need to feed them anymore, nor look from time to time to see if they don't try to escape¹. If a bandit tries to free their friend, just drop the people into the abyss, effectively making them "unrecoverable".

You really want no people? Oh...

But let's say you don't allow persons, then know you can take other items into hostages. Let's say that the legendary amulet of Karzadrak, a key artifact in the prophecy to elect the future king gets in your hand. Put it inside the container, and if anyone won't comply to your demands, then send the amulet into the abyss to upgrade your bag. In the end, that's a very good trash and you can make anything disappear, including dead bodies, incriminating proof against you, and so on.

Without going evil, one thing that will get attention is that food, plants, anything that spoils or die would be fine inside it, without having to worry it's taking place and for very, very long... Not something you see often in medieval ages. People would need a lot less carriages, as you can just put them in the bag. Due to that point, your adventurer guild would become the biggest merchant guild in the world, so much more than your average "dungeon explorer" you're probably thinking of. But it all boils down to your intents in the end...

Pocket-sized conclusion

Unless you spend so much time describing the rules, there will always be way to dig a breach into them and find a way out. But I think what you need to worry more is how you present it than how far the rules encompasses. Unless the weaknesses in the laws you made are obvious, it's not quite often to see someone exploiting their way out, and if they did, then they certainly have hooked onto your universe and want to play with its rule as far as it can, which might not be a bad thing, depending on the setting and intentions you wish to set }i{.

---

¹ : However, you need to carry out the sentence one time or another and kill or free them. Otherwise, you will stockpile humongous amount of people and therefore bags.

Answer 7

Laws

There are several times in your description that you mention "the law" or "legally" or similar terms. This can easily be exploited by taking a bag to another country, where the laws are different. Or take a bag far enough away to be outside of any legal authority.

Momentum

If momentum is cancelled within the bag, then catching things like arrows, ballista bolts, even a falling person, becomes possible. This means a bag can be used as the ultimate anti-arrow shield. A person could put themselves into the bag to save themselves from a long fall (provided there is some way they can then get back out of the bag).

Reading

Items in the bag are perfectly preserved, and the owner can view the items inside. Does this mean they can put a book inside, and read it, without actually removing the book from the bag? This would allow for secret messages to be passed back and forth, sensitive documents taken and read, even copied, then replaced without leaving any evidence, and ancient books could be preserved forever. These seem like fairly meh "exploits" until you connect two bags...