Have given my players a bag of devouring but they dont know yet. Before they figure it out I want to change it since I generally prefer cursed items that give a disadvantage as opposed to "get rid of it as soon as possible". So I was looking for ideas. The one I will go with at the moment is that the bag casts hold person when ever its opened (Bag of Hold Person) but otherwise functions as a bag of holding.
But open to the DM wisdom of the ages!
I suggest sticking with the bag of devouring. Only make it enticing: A bag of devouring leads to the feeding orifice of an extradimensional creature, right? Make it an adventure. These strange creatures digest organic stuff and excrete the inorganic stuff - like gold, gems, and some magic items - into another plane of existence. I'd suggest it be a weightless demiplane where a gigantic cloud of equipment devoured by these bags for centuries circles a sphere of annihilation like star stuff around a black hole. A rare few that manged to survive the extradimensional belly of the beast have been known to make it into this place and return with priceless relics and ancient, powerful magic. Somehow, the characters are made aware of this legend about the bag of devouring.
Now do you throw that bag away or do you think about ways to get at that sweet, sweet treasure and come back with a story to tell?
A suggestion I have that makes using cursed items a lot more rewarding (both to the players and the DM) in my opinion:
Instead of removing a curse meaning you can end attunement to it the cursed item and dispose of it, make it so that removing the curse actually removes the curse so that the item becomes an uncursed item of the type it appeared to be (bag of devouring becomes a bag of holding, a cursed sword that appeared to be a flame tongue becomes an actual flame tongue, et cetera).
It's the way it worked in BECMI D&D, and I have no idea why only there.
And if you think that makes cursed items a bit too much easier to benefit from, you can have it require dispel evil and good instead of just remove curse, or a combo of one of those spells and dispel magic.
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
What's BECMI? Good idea actually!
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
Instead of it being a traditional bag of devouring that is a portal to the gut of some critter, have it lead to somewhere instead. Everything drops into a dragon's trove, a bandit's lair, or a vault.
Gotta throw this one out there, just because it popped into my head, (I must be watching too many movies) The fake bag of holding is one of many created by some enterprising students at the nearest school for magic in your setting. These kids are collecting the stuff and selling it on the black market for cash. XD
But it could make for a fun side adventure of Get Our **** Back with Benefits, AND the chance to use it as a jumping point to other adventures. If there were multiple of these bags of thievery, as it were, then there could be something there that leads to questions. Might even be that they go through and find the culprits panicking over an object that came through. Instead of out-right killing them, maybe they join up to take care of a larger problem.
What a fun springing point!
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
After the PCs figure out the bag is not what it first seemed:
From time to time the extradimensional creature inside the bag gets an upset stomach / gas, and the bag kicks out a handful of GP. Or maybe a few thousand cp (Bag of Change-Making?).
Now entice the PCs into feeding it something (ipecac syrup?) that makes the creature nauseated. 
They get most of their stuff back.
From what I was reading a bag of devouring sends the items to a random plane of existence? Where is this extra bit about it teleporting you to some baddies gut? In my game my stealth player (after falling victim to the bag and escaping yay) decided to use the bag to kidnap more powerful people by sneaking up on them and putting the bag suddenly over there head or on there hand. Most things just sucked in and never come back out. Tis a great stealth weapon so long as you never ever put your hand in it. Group members have used it as temp storage as well. Since it works but once every 24 hours devours everything In it, so use tongs to get stuff out of the bag. Also it is a great anti-pickpocket purse to wear in a big city or any shady area. Just have the bag hanging on your belt as bait. That is what my pcs are doing with there's anyway
My players are assuming its a bag of devouring but havent confirmed yet and are already talking about sticking bad guys into it for disposal.
solomani wrote:
If the bag of devouring counts as an intelligent creatue perhaps they can contact the creature and make a deal to use the storage in exchange for regular feedings of valuables or a cetain kind of 'food stuffs' it has a craving for.
solomani wrote:
You could also make the bag alive, and move on its own at night, to devour more items.
Bag of Belching: acts like a normal bag of holding, but from time to time it makes belching or farting noises as if the items the players put into it gave it some nasty tummytrouble. Can be regarded as just a funny side-effect until the bag does it at the king's banquet or other place where it can lead to serious awkward situations. Or when it does it in dungeons while the party tries to be silent.
Bag of Pickpocketing: extra items just mysterieusly appear in this otherwise normal bag of holding. The bag belonged to a thief and picked up on some of his back habits. It steals items from his direct environment. This can lead to the party being accused of theft, when stolen wallets are found in their bag. Or can lead to minor problems when a player finds out his healing potion is missing in the mid of combat. Also serves as a nice tool for the DM to start a quest, a map that marks an area in a nearby forest just appeared in the bag (treasuremap? warnings of a monster?).
Bag of Charity: Opposite of the bag of pickpocketing. This bag takes some of the coins deposited in it, and sneaks them into the pockets of orphans and the cups of beggars. The bag is very gullible. A crafty thief could be given the fighters vorpal sword if he has a sobbing story about his grandma needing the sword to cure her aching bones.
Shared Bags of Holding: These two to five bags share the same dimensional pocket to store items. Not intended as a cursed item, but as a convenient way for each member of an adventuring party to have easy access to shared items (like the party gold and the stash of healing potions). But the bags got seperated and now one of those bags is in the possession of the players, and one of the others is in the possession of someone that has figured out he now has access to someone elses stash.
Inhabited Bag of Holding: The extra-dimensional space the bag leads to is inhabited. A previous owner saved a bunch of brownies or leprechauns when their home was destroyed, and offered the bag as a replacement home. The inhabitants store and organise the content of the bag and in addition to that also make repairs to items. The brownies/leprechauns need to be fed on a regular basis, and expect to be treated with respect. Failure to provide ends up in stuff getting broken, or taken hostage "you get your sword when we get our muffins, laddie".
LOL
In regards to the bag of pickpocketing: When you go to pull out items from the bag of holding don't you need to know what you're trying to grab? I thought you couldn't grab things from the bag that you didn't know were inside.
Noctaem wrote:
Razintarr wrote:
Leave it as a Bag of Devouring. Give the players a commode seat and lid as part of an unrelated looting. Let them eventually realize how putting the two items together will create one of the most useful dungeoneering items ever!
DemoMonkey wrote:
Bladewulf wrote:
I really like all of these ideas.
My 2 cents are thus: Have the cursed bag be an intelligent item. Perhaps one that is a conduit to a higher demonic/patron kind of power. If the characters wish to retreive an item placed into the bag the bag requires a toll. Something small at first, and then increasing in potency/sacrifice. Hell, allow the bag to manifest things the characters didn't put in themselves, but that they need in a pinch. You know, sort of a seedy or evil pawnbroker bag. It has hoarded items for centuries or thousands of years and it has a nearly infinite stock of items that the characters can bargain for.
A black market they can carry with them.
Razintarr wrote:
The Bag is supposed to be a portal to an extradimenstional creature, a feeding orifice of sorts, right?
Make the creature intelligent. Have it contact the players - perhaps by additionally disgorging a note when a player gets a specific item out. Have the 'note' be formed from individual words and letters torn from various parchments and stuck onto a single sheet, like the stereotypical 'ransom note'. Have it indicate that it knows humanoids always discard the Bags once they realize what they are, but it's accumulated various non-organic items through the years and is interested in trading - exchanging things it can't digest for specific foods. Perhaps even the meats of monstrous foes - or not-so monstrous foes.
Let it be profitable. Let it be useful, perhaps helping to identify certain kinds of gems or metals, or determining whether something is magical. Let them get used to the Bag, and used to fulfilling its totally reasonable requests. After all, that brigand they killed in self-defense doesn't need his body, and his former compatriots aren't going to bother burying him. Why not let the Bag chow down? That goblin won't talk, and it has information about the mines that could save many miners' lives - why not force his arm into the Bag and see how much he's willing to have nibbled off before he'll give in?
Corruption of the spirit is best when it is slow, and subtle, and steady - offering no disruptions or shocks to make the sojourner stop and take notice.
The Bag is hungry. And it has a plan.
my players once found a bag of holding that was perfectly normal, but it was filled to the brim with rotting maggot infested food so to use it they had to shift through a few hundred pounds of stuff people wouldn't want to touch. in the end instead they used the bag of holding as a bribe to get past a wall.
Bladewulf wrote:
How about the prior owner put in a small living creature, like a sprite or something, into the bag. Over time, the sprite either a) became an undead beastie like a poltergeist, or b) was changed by the magical properties of the bag into something nefarious. It could totally be a bag of holding, but also come with a horrible tenant. A mind-leach sprite with psionic powers!
I really liked this bit from the older playtests.
Rumors persist that a hidden network of planar tunnels connects a great number of bags of holding, and that the archdevil Baalzebul sometimes uses these passages to replace valuable or powerful items with fakes.
I like the idea of the bag as a "reward" from an evil NPC quest giver, where everything they put in the bag is available through a twin bag that the villain owns. That way the Big Bag can steal the Mighty Artifact of Evil that the heroes retrieve, or just steal their gold. Trigger Revenge Quest!