D&D 5E - Bag of Tricks duration?

April 2024 ยท 2 minute read
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You should upgrade or use an alternative browser. MarkB I recently handed out a Grey Bag of Tricks to one of the characters in my group's second-level party. I've always liked Bags of Tricks in previous editions, and their implementation here seemed simple enough, though I hadn't quite appreciated their alpha-strike capability. When running a reasonably-challenging pirate encounter for them this evening, the character spent his first three rounds popping out little fluff-balls from the bag, and wound up with a dire wolf, giant badger and boar to assist him, turning the encounter into a steamroller - a rather fun, comedic steamroller to be fair. :)

That's fine, but all three beasts survived the encounter - only the giant badger took any significant injury - and I can't find anything in either the Bag's description or the general magic item rules which gives a duration on these critters' presence. Do they stay for the rest of the day? Are they there until they die, and can more be added to the menagerie next dawn?

I'm tending towards making them last for about an hour - that way they'd be good for a few encounters in a dungeon, but wouldn't last through a short rest. I just wondered whether I'd missed a definitive answer.


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There's technically no time limit on them, but for the sake of balance I'd rule that you can't summon a new creature until an old one is dead (or it runs away, or otherwise stops helping the party). Although they still have to feed their summoned animals, which can be hard if they have too many.


Not a problem for me. My player that has one invariably tours bombs to then and send them in. But 3 items max sounds good.



MarkB

Thanks Paraxis - that's definitely an improvement.


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