There was a recent session in one of the games I'm in where one PC attacked another during a heated moment by throwing his attuned Dwarven Thrower at the other PC, leaving the character at 1 hp by luck of the dice. My character was already at very low hp, and so didn't step in. But I've been thinking about what, in RAW, I could have done other than 'taking the hit' for the targeted PC, and it occurred to me to try using a BoH to catch the hammer.
Mechanically no, nothing about a bag of holding says you can use a reaction to catch something etc. Doubly no with a dwarven thrower specifically which says it flies back to your hand.
Whether or not a given DM would rule to allow this for fun/cool factor would depend on your table.
That's pretty much what I thought the rules would have to say about it. Thanks for the input.
I just pictured in my mind, a character with a BoH readying their action, the dwarf throws their hammer, the readied action gets used to jump in the way as if to "take the hit, but they hold the BoH open to "catch" the hammer with, the hammer flys in, and now it's in a pocket dimension, so it can't nessicarily fly back to the throwers hand directly, and the character with the BoH just closes the Bag to keep it inside.
It's the game mechanics that keep it from being so simple though. lol
Note that the Bag of Holding doesn't necessarily remove momentum from items hurled into it, and if ruptured - by, say, a magical dwarven huckin' mallet being hurled into its contents at skull-smashing speeds - everything in it is scattered on the Astral Plane.
At the very least, I'd expect a lot of stuff in that bag to get broke, and at the (more common) worst, the bag itself ruptures and scatters the thrower and everything else unrecoverably on the Astral. So...y'know, pros and cons.
As a DM, if the character is willing to sacrifice their action to accomplish what amounts to the optional disarm special attack, I'd be okay with it.
I think this is the right answer, with the caveat of course that each table is different.
If the bag is overloaded, pierced, or torn, it ruptures and is destroyed, and its Contents are scattered in the Astral Plane. If the bag is turned inside out, its Contents spill forth, unharmed, but the bag must be put right before it can be used again. Breathing Creatures inside the bag can survive up to a number of minutes equal to 10 divided by the number of Creatures (minimum 1 minute), after which time they begin to suffocate.
In my personal head canon, the player attempting this would have to use their Action to Ready an Action that if the Thrower comes into range, they'd attempt to catch it with their bag of holding. Assuming this happens, I as the DM would roll a flat D20 to see what would happen because the Thrower is a pretty hefty magic item. +3 to attacks and damage, very rare? I'm not going to just say the thing stops.
This isn't RAW, but Crawford has said that things can get out of a bag of holding unless it was locked:
I like this interpretation because in my head, it makes sense. A bag of holding is essentially a pocket plane that if the bag is destroyed, then gets emptied into the Astral Plane at large, and there are spells and effects that talk about how the Astral Plane is layered on top of the Material Plane. So Thrower gets in, and now tries to get out. Depending on DM roll, it could very well break the bag which causes all items(including the thrower as it hasn't escaped or maybe it was the only thing to escape?) into the astral plane.
There was a recent session in one of the games I'm in where one PC attacked another during a heated moment by throwing his attuned Dwarven Thrower at the other PC, leaving the character at 1 hp by luck of the dice. My character was already at very low hp, and so didn't step in. But I've been thinking about what, in RAW, I could have done other than 'taking the hit' for the targeted PC, and it occurred to me to try using a BoH to catch the hammer.
Would this even work, or am I reaching?
Mechanically no, nothing about a bag of holding says you can use a reaction to catch something etc. Doubly no with a dwarven thrower specifically which says it flies back to your hand.
Whether or not a given DM would rule to allow this for fun/cool factor would depend on your table.
That's pretty much what I thought the rules would have to say about it. Thanks for the input.
I just pictured in my mind, a character with a BoH readying their action, the dwarf throws their hammer, the readied action gets used to jump in the way as if to "take the hit, but they hold the BoH open to "catch" the hammer with, the hammer flys in, and now it's in a pocket dimension, so it can't nessicarily fly back to the throwers hand directly, and the character with the BoH just closes the Bag to keep it inside.
It's the game mechanics that keep it from being so simple though. lol
As a DM, if the character is willing to sacrifice their action to accomplish what amounts to the optional disarm special attack, I'd be okay with it.
Note that the Bag of Holding doesn't necessarily remove momentum from items hurled into it, and if ruptured - by, say, a magical dwarven huckin' mallet being hurled into its contents at skull-smashing speeds - everything in it is scattered on the Astral Plane.
At the very least, I'd expect a lot of stuff in that bag to get broke, and at the (more common) worst, the bag itself ruptures and scatters the thrower and everything else unrecoverably on the Astral. So...y'know, pros and cons.
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I think this is the right answer, with the caveat of course that each table is different.
In my personal head canon, the player attempting this would have to use their Action to Ready an Action that if the Thrower comes into range, they'd attempt to catch it with their bag of holding. Assuming this happens, I as the DM would roll a flat D20 to see what would happen because the Thrower is a pretty hefty magic item. +3 to attacks and damage, very rare? I'm not going to just say the thing stops.
This isn't RAW, but Crawford has said that things can get out of a bag of holding unless it was locked:
https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1034580941383954433
I like this interpretation because in my head, it makes sense. A bag of holding is essentially a pocket plane that if the bag is destroyed, then gets emptied into the Astral Plane at large, and there are spells and effects that talk about how the Astral Plane is layered on top of the Material Plane. So Thrower gets in, and now tries to get out. Depending on DM roll, it could very well break the bag which causes all items(including the thrower as it hasn't escaped or maybe it was the only thing to escape?) into the astral plane.