How fast can a miner dig out a 5' square of stone?

[NimrodvanHall]

IN 3.0 there was a half-fiend in our party with an adamantide maul, who assulted a castle wall, with power attack, improved and greater sunder, and divine might he went true objects with a " speed of about 1000 hp per round......
however this was a lvl 21 char.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

So, it seems as though there is a pretty big difference between 1st Ed and 3rd. Which is more realistic, though?

Well, consider:

How many miners actually make one swing at hard stone every 6 seconds for several hours straight?

I think most of them would drop dead within the first half an hour.

Accordingly, though I gave the "Swing, Break, Swing, Break" number above, I think, in reality, it would be more like one effectual swing every 4 or 5 rounds. And, I figure they'd end up taking breaks every 10 minutes or so. It still ends up shorter than 1E, though.

Of course, as to whether 1E's rates are, in and of themselves, "realistic" time periods is completely unknown to me. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the mining rates by race were pulled completely out of someone's posterior - but then, I also wouldn't be surprised to learn some research was actually done. Sounds like a question for Col_Pladoh!

 

[Turhan]

I've pounded on rock with picks and such before, but never mined. It is very hard and slow work. Soft rock would be entirely different- think of sandstone or limestone for soft.

Without cracks in the rock you need to find ways to fracture it, and that took me a chisel and hammer and a lot of sweat. It also matters if you are under ground, or up close to obstructions. An open area with lots of room to swing is easier. Once you get 3 feet back (Never been here myself) I expect you will find it even harder to make progress-- you may be down to using just a hammer and chisel.

You also need to sharpen tools from time to time- maybe every day or half day.

From what I know, and not using dnd rules, I'd say the 1E rate of 20 hours doesn't seem too bad. Cut it in half for soft rock, maybe. Maybe longer for solid granite.

I'd give a definite racial bonus to dwarves, and maybe even goblins (if you consider them underground dwellers).

 

[Krelios]

Stone has hardness 8 and 15 hit points per inch of thickness.

A 5'x5'x5' piece of wall, therefore, has 900 hit points.

Your average human miner is a 10 Strength commoner wielding a miner's pick (which is *not* the same thing as the military pick in the equipment / weapon section).

For purposes of this exercise, I've always assumed it to be a two-handed, 1d12 20/x2 improvised weapon (for medium characters; a small one would do 1d10 damage).

Under these assumptions, it would take our normal human miner 1.8 hours of constant swinging to cut a 5'x5'x5' hole in solid rock. If you assume he swings one round, rests the next, etc., it'd take him 3.6 hours to complete this task.

Make him a half-orc (Str 12), and his time drops to 1.2 and 2.4 hours, respectively.

I've attached my spreadsheet, so you can play with the assumptions yourself.

Consider that granite weighs about 168 pounds per cubic foot, so you're looking at 21000 lbs (just over 10 tons) of rock in a 5x5x5' space. I seriously doubt any person can obliterate 10 tons of rock in an hour, even if he is a half orc. The first edition numbers look much more realistic by far.

 

[Raven Crowking]

So what is the fix here?

If we are using 3.X as a standard, how would we make mining rates seem more reasonable? I am thinking either that the hardness of stone and metal is not high enough, or that the hit points have to be increased. Or some combination of the two.

Hardness could be a general thing for stone, perhaps, with softer stone having fewer hit points? Of course, houseruling this would have ramifications for the CRs of constructs and and animated objects.....

Any thoughts?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Using the Patryn's spreadsheet, I note that if you increase the stone's hardness to 10 and hit points/inch to 20, while assuming only a one swing/five rounds average, it would take an average human 20 hours to clear out a 5-foot cube, in accordance with 1st Edition.

If you allowed a small miner to ignore 3 points of hardness, they would clear the same area in 1/2 the time.

A dwarf (medium) would have to ignore only 1 point of hardness to bring his time down to 12 hours, or two points of hardness for 9 hours.


I am thinking that this might be a fix, at least for my purposes!


RC

 

[dcollins]

I suppose a narrower way to fix it is to invoke the "Ineffective Weapons" clause, and/or start destroying things like swords & axes used against stone repeatedly. Reduce the mining pick "damage", but give it the special property of holding up under long-term mining operations.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Consider that granite weighs about 168 pounds per cubic foot, so you're looking at 21000 lbs (just over 10 tons) of rock in a 5x5x5' space. I seriously doubt any person can obliterate 10 tons of rock in an hour, even if he is a half orc. The first edition numbers look much more realistic by far.

Obliterate? Probably not.

Break into pieces small enough to be carted away? Maybe.

It'd also be undressed stone - so it's a pretty ragged ~5'x5'x5' hole. If you wanted dressed stone, you'd need to spend more time.

EDIT:

I also consider that Hardness 8 and 15 HP / Inch to be pretty much average rock. Granite might have more hardness, sandstone less, etc.

RC, I'm glad my spreadsheet helped!

 

[Scion]

Stone has hardness 8 and 15 hit points per inch of thickness.

A 5'x5'x5' piece of wall, therefore, has 900 hit points.

Your average human miner is a 10 Strength commoner wielding a miner's pick (which is *not* the same thing as the military pick in the equipment / weapon section).

For purposes of this exercise, I've always assumed it to be a two-handed, 1d12 20/x2 improvised weapon (for medium characters; a small one would do 1d10 damage).

Under these assumptions, it would take our normal human miner 1.8 hours of constant swinging to cut a 5'x5'x5' hole in solid rock. If you assume he swings one round, rests the next, etc., it'd take him 3.6 hours to complete this task.

Make him a half-orc (Str 12), and his time drops to 1.2 and 2.4 hours, respectively.

I've attached my spreadsheet, so you can play with the assumptions yourself.

Maybe the d12 is part of the problem then? If it was a d10 then it would take a str 10 person 5 hours to get through.

still though, I think that it does come down to d&d combat rules simply not applying to very long and strenuous work.

We have rules for walking, hustling and running, but there are seperate rules for overland travel.

We have combat rules for swinging weapons to deal damage to objects over short periods of time, but none over long periods of time.


Likely we need something along those lines.

I think that something like for every ten minutes of work the person takes 1 point of nonlethal damage and extra damage for each extra minute (1 nonlethal after 10 minutes, 2 more after 10 more minutes, 3 more after 10 more minutes.. etc..) Every ten minutes of break reduces the effective time worked by one minute.


So, with a d10 pick and a str 14 miner who paces himself (10 minutes on, 10 minutes of rest) and 5 hp. He could work for 40 minutes, then take a 4 hour break, then work for another 40 minutes.

During this time he would break through the 5'x5'x5' area and 12% of the next one.

Basically all day of work.

yeah, it isnt exactly the best solution out there, but at least it is closer to the rules for overland vs round by round use.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I suppose a narrower way to fix it is to invoke the "Ineffective Weapons" clause, and/or start destroying things like swords & axes used against stone repeatedly. Reduce the mining pick "damage", but give it the special property of holding up under long-term mining operations.

The problem with that is that stone has a hardness of 8, so you need a "weapon" that does at least 9 points of damage in an average creature's hands to even bother. If you want small miners to be able to do this, they need 1d10 damage, minimum.

The other alternative is to just rule that no one gets to be a miner without a strength bonus, so you can lower the damage dice of the weapons a bit more.