You could just kill the guard by leaving them in the bag
I would immediately shift your alignment to chaotic evil for it because you're literally making them suffocate to death over a period of about ten minutes, but it's still RAW.
Except if the guard manages to rip a hole in the bag from the inside, they can destroy the bag and everything inside it will get scattered across the Astral Plane. Pretty bad for the guard, but better than a slow death being suffocated. Plus you don't need to eat or breathe on the Astral, so they could live there indefinitely.
Not if they have a blade. Sticking anything sharp inside the bag tears it.
Also, I would much rather suffocate over 10 minutes(which would suck horribly) than live out the rest of my natural life floating alone in the astral plane.
And that's only if they recognize what's going on. If you're just minding your business and suddenly it's dark and hard to breathe, there are a bunch of monsters, spells, and magical phenomena that are possible culprits.
You're right, and the rules (both 3.5 and 5) even explicitly state that after ten minutes the creature suffocates. I was hoping that the RAW was simply "holds enough air for a Medium creature to breathe for ten minutes" which I could try to argue was merely a statement about the inner volume of the bag.
I get that it can be painful. it just seems like it would be less painful than an eternity on the lower planes. And I wouldn't want to play a character that does that sort of thing, but that basically means I can't play D&D without homebrewing a less dark cosmology. If you are playing it with the cosmology they give you, and you're not careful to keep your enemies alive, then you're doing stuff worse than this constantly.
You could just kill the guard by leaving them in the bag
I would immediately shift your alignment to chaotic evil for it because you're literally making them suffocate to death over a period of about ten minutes, but it's still RAW.
Except if the guard manages to rip a hole in the bag from the inside, they can destroy the bag and everything inside it will get scattered across the Astral Plane. Pretty bad for the guard, but better than a slow death being suffocated. Plus you don't need to eat or breathe on the Astral, so they could live there indefinitely.
Tearing the bag from the inside seems like an easier said than done proposition.
Not if they have a blade. Sticking anything sharp inside the bag tears it.
Also, I would much rather suffocate over 10 minutes(which would suck horribly) than live out the rest of my natural life floating alone in the astral plane.
And that's only if they recognize what's going on. If you're just minding your business and suddenly it's dark and hard to breathe, there are a bunch of monsters, spells, and magical phenomena that are possible culprits.
I'm still going to wildly swing my scimitar in the dark
Do things inside float? Wouldn't that make them unreachable if they float away from the opening?
Bag of holding around the head. Tear it.
Faster in theory but I'd be incredibly tempted to have it create an astral plane flavored headless horseman enemy
Oh damn that’s good
Bodyless floater in this case, as the body is on the Prime Material plane.
Would a person die in a bag of holding or is it like the Astral plane and bodily needs are paused?
Yes. It's specifies there's ten minutes of air. But the bag woodt need to be closed to not have air exchange.
You're right, and the rules (both 3.5 and 5) even explicitly state that after ten minutes the creature suffocates. I was hoping that the RAW was simply "holds enough air for a Medium creature to breathe for ten minutes" which I could try to argue was merely a statement about the inner volume of the bag.
I've always imagined a bag of holding to be like some kind of stasis.
This sort of thing always seem silly to me. Most of the people you kill go to the lower planes. What is ten minutes of suffocation compared to that?
Bro if you don't get how painful suffocation can be just sympathetically I'm not sure I can explain why doing that to someone on purpose is so heinous
I get that it can be painful. it just seems like it would be less painful than an eternity on the lower planes. And I wouldn't want to play a character that does that sort of thing, but that basically means I can't play D&D without homebrewing a less dark cosmology. If you are playing it with the cosmology they give you, and you're not careful to keep your enemies alive, then you're doing stuff worse than this constantly.