What happens if you put a Bag of Holding inside another Bag of Holding in Barovia?

Question

The description of the bag of holding (DMG, p. 152-153) says:

Placing a bag of holding inside an extradimensional space created by a handy haversack, portable hole, or similar item instantly destroys both items and opens a gate to the Astral Plane. The gate originates where the one item was placed inside the other. Any creature within 10 feet of the gate is sucked through it to a random location on the Astral Plane. The gate then closes. The gate is one-way only and can't be reopened.

However, the section on alterations to magic in Curse of Strahd (p. 24) says:

No spell—not even wish—allows one to escape from Strahd's domain. Astral projection, teleport, plane shift, and similar spells cast for the purpose of leaving Barovia simply fail, [...]

What happens if you put a Bag of Holding inside another Bag of Holding (or Handy Haversack, etc.) while in Barovia? Even if the portal fails, what might happen instead?

Answer 1

Item breaks, but nobody leaves because Barovia has already considered that option.

Curse of Strahd explains the "you can't leave" aspect of Barovia:

No spell-not even wish-allows one to escape from Strahd's domain. ... spells cast for the purpose of leaving Barovia simply fail, as do effects that banish a creature to another plane of existence. These restrictions apply to magic items and artifacts that have properties that transport or banish creatures to other planes.

(emphasis mine)

5e's Bag of Holding includes the warnings:

If the bag is overloaded, pierced, or torn, it ruptures and is destroyed, and its contents are scattered in the Astral Plane.

and

Placing a bag of holding inside an extradimensional space created by a Handy Haversack, Portable Hole, or similar item instantly destroys both items and opens a gate to the Astral Plane.

One of the meta-rules of D&D is "specific beats general" - that is, a more-specific rule can override a more general rule. The Barovia rule is more specific than the Bag of Holding's rule - it applies only in one place (where the Bag's rule applies "everywhere"), and it explicitly states that it overrules other, more general rules.

Thus, within Barovia, Bags of Holding cannot spill creatures into the Astral Plane, nor can a Bag of Holding and a Portable Hole create a portal which allows creatures to enter the Astral Plane. They can be destroyed, of course.

It's unclear whether the non-creature contents of an exploding bag would be ejected to the Astral Plane, however. FWIW, this GM would probably allow Strahd to choose, much like he can make himself the target "spells that allow contact with beings from other planes".

Answer 2

You sort of cut off the rules text, there. If you keep going, it is actually very specific and covers this question:

No spell -- not even wish -- allows one to escape from Strahd's domain. Astral projection, teleport, plane shift, and similar spells cast for the purpose of leaving Barovia simply fail, as do effects that banish a creature to another plane of existence. These restrictions apply to magic items and artifacts that have properties that transport or banish creatures to other planes.

A Bag of Holding rift is pretty clearly transportation or banishment, so "these restrictions apply", and the effect fails. The items are still destroyed, of course, because there's nothing in the rules that would stop that from occurring.

Now, as a DM, I'd probably not have the rift simply fizzle; instead I'd have it suck up all the nearby creatures and scatter them across Barovia. Ending up deep in the forest might not be the astral plane, but it's not exactly "nothing happens", either.

That ruling also gives a handy answer to the question of what happens to a punctured Bag of Holding -- rather than spilling the contents across the astral plane, they wind up scattered across Barovia.

Answer 3

Items break, but nobody leaves.

The interaction between Bags of Holding and other space-funny effects is considered a Spell by RAW, despite the somewhat odd wording of what a Spell can be defined as (D&D Beyond):

A spell is a discrete magical effect, a single shaping of the magical energies that suffuse the multiverse into a specific, limited expression.

Having said that, crashing a Bag of Holding into another Bag of Holding isn't cast for the purpose of leaving Barovia, in fact it's not cast at all. Barovia's effect doesn't explicitly say "portals cannot be created", it simply states:

No spell allows one to escape from Strahd's domain.

From that, lacking a more specific ruling, the items break, the portal blinks into existence, no creatures can be moved from Barovia, and the portal is gone.

Answer 4

spells cast for the purpose of leaving Barovia simply fail

How would a bag of holding spell/effect fail? Usually, a spell or effect that "simply fails" just doesn't happen. Answers are mainly in two camps. The first is that merely the part of the bag's effect that would create a portal fails and all items are still destroyed. The second is that it fails spectacularly. Other answers detail these quite well. A third possibility is that the bags are unmade, and items that were placed in them go back to the location where they were put inside the bag of holding.

But going back to the wording that it "simply fails" suggests to me that all other effects of putting a bag of holding inside another bag of holding still occurs, while the portal to the astral plain "simply fails."

Strahd worded his curse in a specific manner, and because it says "simply fail" and not "fail spectacularly" or "unmake an item if it's the effect of an item," there doesn't seem to be any way to get around it because the portal is being cast as an effect from an item.