Bag of Holding
This appears to be a common cloth sack about 2 feet by 4 feet in size. The bag of holding opens into a nondimensional space: Its inside is larger than its outside dimensions. Regardless of what is put into the bag, it weighs a fixed amount. This weight, and the limits in weight and volume of the bag’s contents, depend on the bag’s type, as shown on the table below.
[snip]
If the bag is overloaded, or if sharp objects pierce it (from inside or outside), the bag ruptures and is ruined. All contents are lost forever. If a bag of holding is turned inside out, its contents spill out, unharmed, but the bag must be put right before it can be used again. If living creatures are placed within the bag, they can survive for up to 10 minutes, after which time they suffocate. Retrieving a specific item from a bag of holding is a move action—unless the bag contains more than an ordinary backpack would hold, in which case retrieving a specific item is a full-round action.
If a bag of holding is placed within a portable hole a rift to the Astral Plane is torn in the space: Bag and hole alike are sucked into the void and forever lost. If a portable hole is placed within a bag of holding, it opens a gate to the Astral Plane: The hole, the bag, and any creatures within a 10-foot radius are drawn there, destroying the portable hole and bag of holding in the process.
Moderate conjuration; CL 9th; Craft Wondrous Item, secret chest.
"All contents are lost forever." Not destroyed, but lost.
As a point of interest, in earlier editions it specified that "the contents will be lost forever in the vortices of nilspace."
What happens if there is a person in the bag?
Can the contents be located via Discern Location?
This is potentially pressing, as I have a foe that captured one of the PC's, knocked him unconscious, and stuffed him, naked, into a bag of holding (with a bottle of air sovereign glued to his mouth) to take him back and collect a bounty. I had errantly recalled the items being lost onto the Astral Plane, and was planning for the PC to "rescue" himself by tearing through the interior of the bag (he is permanently polymorphed into a War Troll, so he has natural weapons).
Granted, I'll rule in a way that makes the game continue to work, but I'm curious what should actually happen, according to the rules.
The Manual of the Planes also has these two items:
Many individuals pass through the Astral Plane without realizing it when they cast certain spells or use interplanar portals. They find themselves on the Astral Plane only when something goes wrong, such as a badly cast dimension doorspell or a bag of holding stuffed inside a portable hole. When something has to go somewhere else but has no other direction to go, it usually ends up on the Astral Plane.
...
About 10% of found debris may be valuable (the equivalent of a 10th-level treasure; see Chapter 7 of the DUNGEON MASTER’s Guide). Such treasure may be in the form of a locked chest, a dead body, or a bag of holding that met an ugly fate when it was put inside a portable hole and cast onto the Astral Plane. Valuable treasures found in this manner often have powerful owners who want their valuables back.
Also, as an interesting aside... due to the way events played out, and the cosmological arrangement of my campaign world, for the foreseeable future the bag with the PC inside will be on a Plane of Shadow that does NOT have access to the Astral Plane... So I might have to have him flung to a random location on that Plane of Shadow (random much like a plane shift spell).
