Leomund’s Secret Chest in GURPS Magic - how?

[Calliban]

We are playing a Fantasy campaign using GURPS Magic as our base system, and one of the players want a “Item Box” kind of spell, which is much like the old Leomund’s Secret Chest from D&D. The Caster can store some items in a subspace container, and recover them as needed; while in storage, items can optionally remain timeless. The storage space is overall pretty safe and can only be accessed through magical means. Ideally the caster should have to pay a small energy cost to keep items there, or possibly to recover them.

I haven’t found any spell similar to this in Magic, not even something like a Bag of Holding.

I’ve seen someone doing it with sorcery by using Payload/Cosmic, but we are not using this magic system in our campaign.

Is there a spell like this, even if more limited? If now, what would be some good guidelines to create our own?

[mlangsdorf]

Hideaway (Magic p 61) lets you create a storage container that holds more volume than its physical size, and optional lets anything inside the Hideaway not count as encumbrance.

Hide Object (Magic p 86) lets you move a non-living subject into an extra-dimensional space, and only you can retrieve it.

In theory, for 200 energy per pound of storage, you could enchant a container with Hideaway and Hide Object and have a Bag of Holding that disappears and reappears on command.

Hideaway might be redundant with Hide Object, because it's not clear if an item under Hide Object counts as encumbrance. But it's also unclear if casting Hide Object on a bag full of stuff disappears the entire collection or just the bag - and I'd personally rule that it just disappears the bag and the stuff spills out. But casting Hide Object on a bag full of 0 encumbrance stuff due to Hideaway seems like should disappear the bag and the contents, whatever they are.

[Fred Brackin]

Hideaway is the G:Magic Spell for this though at listed prices (50/lb if it counts as Encumbrance and 100/lb if it doesn't. it's more likely to be a "Pouch of Holding" than a full size "Bag".

Hide Object is also priced by poundage and might only phase out the container (but not its' contents) if that's all the weight you paid for. At the least you would have to pay the full Enchantment Energy cost for the container plus contents.

There are examples of "Bag" type containers in one of the DF Magic Item pdfs and some of them have anomalous costs implying that if your "outside" container is large enough you get a price break on how much you have to pay for how much it can hold.

You can't do either Hideaway or Hide Object as a long term maintained Spell. Hideaway is an Enchantment Spell and even though Hide Object is Gate College you can't maintain it while you sleep.

[Dalin]

The prolific Enranged Eggplant also created a version of Leomund's Secret Chest on his blog. It's a very close match to the D&D version.

To stick closer to GURPS Magic norms, you could also create a more expensive version of Hide Object that has a longer duration.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Hideaway might be redundant with Hide Object, because it's not clear if an item under Hide Object counts as encumbrance. But it's also unclear if casting Hide Object on a bag full of stuff disappears the entire collection or just the bag - and I'd personally rule that it just disappears the bag and the stuff spills out. But casting Hide Object on a bag full of 0 encumbrance stuff due to Hideaway seems like should disappear the bag and the contents, whatever they are.

Of course, even if Hide Object alone is sufficient*, it's a lot more convenient to only have to summon a small-ish bag rather than a full-size locker (or something larger, some items like this in fiction can have pretty ridiculous storage capacities) whenever you need to pull something out, so the volume reduction would be necessary.

The stasis functionality I think would be another enchantment; a bit of online searching suggests the Suspend Time spell.


*How does the cost of enchantment scale with object size? If it's just an SM scaling, charging as much as how large the bag is at full capacity would justify vanishing its contents - after all, a folded up empty bag would be a lot smaller (and thus cheaper to enchant). If enchantment scales with weight instead, then you'd again charge as much as the bag and its contents would weight at full capacity. I suspect Hideaway+Hide Object would ultimately be cheaper for a given capacity than Hide Object alone, simply because you can use them on a smaller container.

[Fred Brackin]

[QUOTE=Varyon;2515719

*How does the cost of enchantment scale with object size? .[/QUOTE]

It scales by the pound.

I also don't see why Hideaway and Hide Object should work together. One creates a space hidden from the rest of the universe outside the container and the other just moves an object into another universe. Letting "an object" become "a container and its' contents" is already pretty generous IMHO. Enchanting only the container from Hideaway but having its' contents go away too without extra cost would be a non-starter for me as a GM.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I also don't see why Hideaway and Hide Object should work together. One creates a space hidden from the rest of the universe outside the container and the other just moves an object into another universe. Letting "an object" become "a container and its' contents" is already pretty generous IMHO. Enchanting only the container from Hideaway but having its' contents go away too without extra cost would be a non-starter for me as a GM.

I could certainly see justification to charge for the full capacity of the enchanted container, even if it has a secondary enchantment that makes the objects it contains massless (in which case you charge based on what the contents should weigh). That's potentially a pretty significant cost you're basically paying twice (once for Hideaway so it doesn't rip your arm off when you summon it into your hand, once for Hide Object so you summon and unsummon it without issue), so I'd imagine most will go for one or the other (a large chest enchanted with Hide Object that you only ever summon onto a sturdy surface or a small bag enchanted with Hideaway to have similar capacity and that you keep hidden on your person).

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Hideaway might be redundant with Hide Object, because it's not clear if an item under Hide Object counts as encumbrance.

It is, the simplest way is to enchant the container at full carry capacity and just allow it to Hide Object with all it's contents. If you want eh chest to have more space inside than it should... then maybe also cast Hideaway...

If you want a "Hide Object but only the contents", just write a new enchantment spell using Hideaway as the baseline and up the cost to 100 per pound.

Or, just, you know, be a little flexible and allow the enchanter to decide the container they are enchanting with Hide Object doesn't disappear, only the contents. I mean, it's not like we GMs can't be flexible, and this is a very simple solution.


One thing I did a long time ago was I made Hideaway a Gate spell, cost was 1 per 20 pounds, or 1 per five pounds if not counted, and based the rest of the spell as per Hide Object and made it prereq for Hide Object. Hideaway slipped only a portion of the contained objects into another dimension, not the whole object... what I should have done was just make them one spell.

It's not like Hideaway at 100 per pound is objectively better or worse than Hide Object at 100 per pound, they do similar but just different enough things to make them slightly different and both have equal value given different situational requirements.

The only catch is how they interact with the metaplay for spells like Lighten Burden.