I am looking for an alternative to bag of holding that is simpler and provides the weight reduction benefit without all the extra baggage from creating extradimensional spaces.

> 
> **Sack of Carrying**   
> 
> *Wonderous Item, Uncommon*
> 
> 
> This item appears like a normal, large sack that weighs 5 pounds. It can hold 12 cubic feet or 360 pounds, without changing its total weight. Creatures in the sack can breathe normally. You can put objects or creatures into the sack or take them out with a normal object interaction.
> 
> 
> 

Are there any balance, mechanics or wording issues this item would have?

---

**Background**:

The [bag of holding](https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/4581-bag-of-holding) creates a permanent, extradimensional space and a portal effect to access it, quite the exotic effect for an item that is merely *uncommon*, too exotic for my tastes. It also has lots of additional clauses about bad stuff that happens if you put it into another extradimensional space (or vice versa), which for me makes it [unneccesarily complicated](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22bag%20of%20holding%22%20%5Bdnd-5e%5D).

While characters mostly use it to lug around equipment and loot, they can also can use it to hide items from divination spells that are limited to the same plane, which is an unrelated effect to providing carrying capacity. I am looking for a simpler item to add to the game.

I have no problems with bag of holding *per se*. Its a cool item I love like the next guy. I also have no issue with it being used with all its features, when the characters have one. But for tier one play, I feel a simpler item would be a better fit, and am looking to create one. Think of it like I'd like the option of a +1 sword, rather than just having a flametongue.
['https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/201308', 'https://rpg.stackexchange.com', 'https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/75095/']
### I want a clear way to determine what fits into the bag and what doesn't.

You've touched on some of the problems with the Bag of Holding, but you have missed my single greatest pet peeve about the item: *I have no consistent method of ruling what fits through the mouth of the bag and what doesn't.* Does it stretch to accommodate oddly proportioned objects or creatures that meet the weight and volume requirements? I'm just tired of not having a good answer to "will X fit through the mouth of the bag?" I don't really have a good idea for a solution here, if I did I would have implemented it already. "Magically accommodates anything that meets the weight/volume limit" seems like the easiest thing to work with.

### I don't know the volume of a horse, or anything that isn't an elementary solid.

Related to the last point, *I don't know the volume of stuff*. Sure, I can convert gallons to cubic feet and tell you how much water the bag will hold. But what's the volume of a 359 pound pony? I don't know, *and I shouldn't have to know to tell you what a magic item can do*. I would do away with the interior volume limit and just use weight, because I am much better at knowing the weights of things.
Your wording will be confusing to anyone used to D&D's ubiquitous 'bag of holding' and similar items.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Instead something like this will make it clearer to your players what you are aiming for.

> 
> **Sack of Lightness**
> 
> 
> *Wondrous Item, Uncommon*
> 
> 
> This item appears as a normal, large sack with a weight of 5 pounds. It can hold an amount of goods typical for a large sack, 12 cubic feet or so. Items placed entirely inside the sack no longer have weight, allowing the wielder to carry the sack without adding the weight of the items inside it to their carrying capacity. Although the weight is not added, the sack if filled with its full allowance of space is still quite large, so an adventurer carrying multiple of these sacks may look quite comical, or run into problems squeezing through tight spaces.
> 
> 
> Although used for a similar purpose to a bag of holding, the sack of lightness does not make use of extradimensional spaces and retrieving or adding an item to the sack functions as it would with any nonmagical sack of non-lightness.
> 
> 
> 

Wording is a bit colloquial/chatty there, but it should provide a guide. Provided you make it clear that this isn't a sack of holding or carrying or whatever, it's just a sack that makes items inside not weigh anything in the title and spell it out a few times in the text, your players should get the message. If you don't, they might just assume based on similarity of purpose to another, extremely well known item.