Secret Chest: A Box of Sucking

Spell Level: 4

School: Conjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: Touch

Duration: Instantaneous

Components: V, S, M (An exquisite chest, 3 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet, constructed from rare materials worth at least 5,000 gp, and a Tiny replica made from the same materials worth at least 50 gp)

You hide a chest, and all its contents, on the Ethereal Plane. You must touch the chest and the miniature replica that serves as a material component for the spell. The chest can contain up to 12 cubic feet of nonliving material (3 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet).

While the chest remains on the Ethereal Plane, you can use an action and touch the replica to recall the chest. It appears in an unoccupied space on the ground within 5 feet of you. You can send the chest back to the Ethereal Plane by using an action and touching both the chest and the replica.

After 60 days, there is a cumulative 5 percent chance per day that the spell’s effect ends. This effect ends if you cast this spell again, if the smaller replica chest is destroyed, or if you choose to end the spell as an action. If the spell ends and the larger chest is on the Ethereal Plane, it is irretrievably lost.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

On today’s episode of “Sam Rants About Spells That Aren’t Really Spells” we have Secret Chest; a five-thousand gold password protected tiny Bag of Holding.

If you’ve never had a Bag of Holding or some other form of extra-dimensional storage, you’ll find Secret Chest is pretty cool. Having access to a place you can stick stuff without worrying about theft or carrying capacity is a great little quality of life upgrade for you and your friends. For a 4th level spell though, it doesn’t really DO all that much. You can hide away stuff that can’t really be stolen from you, but most times that stuff isn’t getting stolen anyway making it more of a convenience than actual protection for your stuff.

However: Secret Chest isn’t competing with your other spells because fundamentally it isn’t a spell. It's a magic item in disguise! As mentioned prior, a Bag of Holding is an uncommon magic item that directly competes with the utility Secret Chest has. As an uncommon magic item, according to the Dungeon Master’s Guide, it should cost between 100 and 500 gold. Literally a 10th (at max) the price of Secret Chest. Granted, Bags of Holding won’t always be available for purchase, but neither will the components to create a masterwork chest worth ten times the price of a literally magical bag. Pricing this at literally ten to fifty times the cost of a better item is profoundly stupid.

A Bag of Holding can hold up to 64 cubic feet of materials and up to five hundred pounds of stuff, all in a small indistinct pouch. Sure, anyone can open it, but when both predominantly exist as a form of convenience, a Bag of Holding is leagues better than Secret Chest. Plus, with a bit of ingenuity and a portable hole you can fashion a blackhole grenade!

Secret Chest doesn’t really solve any problems needing to be solved. You can stash away some important secrets I guess, but you know what also can do that? A box, a shovel, and some dirt. The fact that the box will eventually be destroyed as well makes the spell lack a lot of cool world building options. You can’t stumble across a 10,000 year old Secret Chest, figure out some password or touch it to a long dead skeleton, and bask in the richness of ancient treasures. It eventually just breaks and dumps everything onto the Ethereal plane. Again, if you’ve never played with extra-dimensional storage before and have a spare five grand to throw around, you might get some fun out of Secret Chest. If you want super security, consider getting both a Bag of Holding AND Secret Chest (assuming there’s no black hole). Otherwise, consider hunting for a Bag of Holding or some other tool to make way better use of your money.

5e Spells

Secret Chest: A Box of Sucking