How much ore can a half elemental mine...

[Ferrum]

... if a half elemental could mine ore?

I'm playing in a campaign set in Najoban, which is an Africa flavored setting. The DM has mandated that the only PC race is Wakyambi (African Elf) but has allowed for half breeds with local orisha (magical humanoids of varying characteristics). Hence my character is a half dongo (earth elemental) and strongly resembles a dwarf in most respects.

Last session, the party followed a mithral vein along a mountainside as part of directions to meet an NPC. The session ended with the party's druid planning to spend a month or so creating items, so my PC, a barbarian/fighter mix, decided it might be fun to give a go at a mining excursion.

At level 14 with a strength of 23, wielding an adamantine greate axe, it seems pretty reasonable to me that he can move alot of rock. That combined with ranks in Profession: Smith and his stonecunning and burrowing racial abilities, it seems reasonable that he could move a seriously ridiculous amount of rock.

The DM is trying to be fair, and follow sourcebooks as best he can, but there isn't much on mining, so after coming up with some house rules we found ourselves butting heads on what seems realistic vs what seems commensurate with RAW (I'm on a "gold rush" mindset, he's trying to make sense of it from a mechanics perspective).

The real question is... How much mithral would it be reasonable to believe a character like the one I described could pull out of a mithral vein in 20-30 days?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

More than you could possibly carry, I believe.

It really depends on how your DM wants to run this, though. There are two ways to handle "excavation."

One is to do straight up Profession (Miner) checks against a set DC for each 5' cube of ore you want to mine.

The other is to handle this as combat against inanimate objects, dealing with each 5' by 5' by 5' block individually.

 

[Grogtar]

A few things to keep in mind :

1 - Size of the Vein. How deep is it ? How accessable are the deeper deposites ? Its HIGHLY likely that you will need to build shafts and tunnels to access more than just a tiny amount of Mithril. Building a *STABLE* shaft complex can take weeks, and quite a lot of raw materials. Do you have 100 lbs of 4x4's ?

2 - Refinement. Just because you found a Mithril vein doesnt mean you have X amouint of Mithril. It will need to be refined and pureified into a workable purity. I find it highly likely that you need a Magical Forge to accomplish this. You'd have to heat the Mithril to a temp where the "Crap" metals melt to the top so you can skim them, while the Mithril still stays at the bottom. This is NOT an easy process and its likely that 20 lbs of ore will yield only 1 pound of pure workable Mithril.

3 - Whose ore is it anyway ? Chances are if you just found it walking by someone else has found it and claimed it. How do land rights work in your setting ? Does the local Baron already have a team on its way to excavate it ? Is he going to be upset at your thievery ?

4 - Time. Frankly you probably dont have enough of it. 30 days is a tidy amount of time for an adventurer, but its nothing to a horde of level 2 professionals. They will spend a year or two digging the place out, building a mining complex and ferreting out all the ore. Thirty days is nothing.

5 - Risk - specifily how much your willing to do. Dig 40 feet into it to follow the mithril and have it collapse on you if your not careful. I cant fathom the dmg from 600 tons of mountianside falling on you. Likely DC 50 or Die. Rock is heavy.


Now dont get me wrong - you have quite a find there. If I were the DM I would probably arbitrarily rule that without digging at unsafe speeds or digging unsafe distances you can get, oh, enough mithril for 1 suit of heavy armor, 2 suits of light or medium armor OR 6 weapons. Plus a random smattering of Gemstones depending on your wealth level. Then you'd have to lug 400+ pounds of unrefined mithril (Also known as ROCKS) - but it would be worth it if the party was willing to put the effort in.

If they got it all the way back to town I would rule there was enough Adamantine to made a weapon as well.

 

[Ferrum]

1 - Size of the Vein. How deep is it ? How accessable are the deeper deposites ?

I'm not sure the size as far as volume of mithral per cubic foot, but the vein is several miles long, running very near the surface, and sometimes protruding from the surface of a mountain wall.

2 - Refinement. Just because you found a Mithril vein doesnt mean you have X amouint of Mithril. It will need to be refined and pureified into a workable purity. I find it highly likely that you need a Magical Forge to accomplish this. You'd have to heat the Mithril to a temp where the "Crap" metals melt to the top so you can skim them, while the Mithril still stays at the bottom. This is NOT an easy process and its likely that 20 lbs of ore will yield only 1 pound of pure workable Mithril.

I agree with you here, but I think the DM was leaning towards hand waving this under Profession: Miner. As for the refining process, remember mithral is a supernaturally light metal. Unlike iron, gold and adamantine for instance, the "crap metals" would sink to the bottom. Likely you'd have to skim the mithral from the top, or use chemical processes similar to aluminum refining.

3 - Whose ore is it anyway ?

The vein was found in fairly deep wilderness, and from the storyline, significantly out of the way. It may belong to a giant with whom the party is on good terms, but he is very old, seemingly uninterested with material possesions, and we will be asking permission first.

4 - Time. Frankly you probably dont have enough of it.

Building shafts and such are probably not necessary, considering the surface level of the vein. for sake of ease and simplicity, most of the mining wil go no deeper than 10 feet from the current surface of the rock, I imagine.

5 - Risk - specifily how much your willing to do.

I see the risk as fairly minimal. A small avalanche might be a concern, but with a burrow speed of 10, no delving deeper than 10 feet, and a pretty rediculous amount of hps, I should be fine.

400lbs of rocks would not pose much of a problem to my character... thats about his medium encumbrace, but for the sake of simplicity, he has a convenient portable hole.

 

[Sputnick]

re:mine

I think you should go with the DM and figure he will give you a moderate amount of mitheral for your work. Trying to correct a GM, or as you put it "butting heads," with justifications like my Str is 23 and i have an adamatitie axe are really beside the point. Pull yourself out of the game and realize you are getting mitheral for FREE! If a GM gave me 15lbs of mitheral out of the situation or less I would be happy cause it is FREE MITHERAL! Worring about getting screwed out of mitheral is, quite frankly, a little greedy.

 

[MerakSpielman]

There's also some room for questioning how much actual mithril ore you get from a ton or so of solid rock. This is a DM thing. Perhaps a "rich mithril vein" simply means that, with a month of effort, you'll get enough mithril for a smith to make one suit of armor. Or maybe he'll rule you get enough mithril for 5, 10, or even more suits of armor.

As a DM, I'd rather just hand wave it like this (say you work for a month and get enough for x suits of armor or x weapons) than role-play the whole thing out.

 

[Ferrum]

Pull yourself out of the game and realize you are getting mitheral for FREE! If a GM gave me 15lbs of mitheral out of the situation or less I would be happy cause it is FREE MITHERAL! Worring about getting screwed out of mitheral is, quite frankly, a little greedy.

Its not free. I'm paying a decent chunk of change for extraneous mining equipment as well as material to build a forge nearby.

Yes, there is an amount of greed involved. If I had no greed, I wouldn't be interested in mining the mithral in the first place, would I? After the butting of heads, and a mutual apology for getting fired up for no good reason, the DM asked me to post here and let the local geniuses be our guides. So I'm doing just that.

He'll read, make a ruling, and I will follow. Until then, any information will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Pielorinho]

A few peanut-gallery suggestions:
1) One way to view this is as a character trying to single-handedly do what it normally takes an industry to do. With this approach, it should probably take several years for the character in question to develop the requisite skill and extract the necessary metal; and without certain highly-guarded texts explaining how it's done, it'll be effectively impossible.
2) Another view is that the DM is providing treasure for the adventure. With this view, the DM can sandwich the gathering of this treasure into our other activities. In this view, mithral is valuable primarily for its rareness, not for the difficulty with which it is extracted.

I think the DM's view would be the deciding factor.

As an aside: Kom, my character Goroshko isn't opposed categorically to mining. If Kom decides to wait until Goroshko can participate, he's got some expertise in mining that doesn't violate his oaths, and he can help out with the process. He's just not onboard with chopping it out in the traditional method.

Daniel

 

[Sputnick]

I agree

I think the idea of x suit(s) of armour and/or x suits of weapons works really well in this instance. But if I were the DM then I would make you earn it a llittle, maybe while your mining or hauling a shipment of mitheral have a small group of goblins or orcs depending on level and make you role play out how you deal with these ore grubing monsters.

 

[Grogtar]

If realism in mining is what you are going for the out and out of it is that dense veins of metal do not occur near the surface.

Barring any insanly abnormal tectonic activity very little ore will be available on the surface.


When you say you have "Invested" heavily into mining equipment what do you mean ? How much infastructure do you have on site ? Do you have a on site blacksmith expert to smelt and refine it ? If not you are going to have 100 pounds of of raw ore to 5 pounds of useable ore. An expert miner is going to have about a 20 in mining, what does your character have ? Was he raised by miners, or did he live in a mining community all his life ? Chances are your character as a fighter has NO IDEA how to get all this ore out, whats required or the process involved.

Also dont count on using a burrowing speed to help. Burrowing does NOT equal mining. Mining has to be slow, methodical and carefull. Burrowing is like a dog digging a hole. Moving earth and Mining are totally different. Just digging a hole is easy - to mine you are going to need tools, infrastructure and labor.

I hate to rain on your parade but if you want to make a fortune on mining become a mining magnate and reture your adventurers boots. To mine this is going to take time, lots and lots of time. Mining is a slow going process, you can easily ruin the better ore deposites by hasty action and bad digging. You need to carefully excavate delicate ore deposits and mithril veins.

Mining even a rich vein that is on the surface will collapse over and over again if you do not build a proper mining latice. You need to take time and dig away the garbage rock and move it away from the site. Once you have exposed the vein you begin the slow process of extracting the ore.

Then, once you are done with that spot, you can move on to the next area.

I do have a hard time beliving that you can have a rich mithril vein so close to the surface. Mineral deposits just dont happen that way. What is it, a 5 mile long cliff face ? Its really stretching the believeability.

Even if the Giant is old now, he wasnt allways. This is like finding a gigantic diamond mine in the middle of the california wild lands and nobody has ever seen it, and those that did dont want it.

If you do this realise you will destroy the economy for Mithril for a very long time. Dumping that much "Rare" metal into the economy even on a global scale its going to annihilate it. You will probably make many enemies and drive the price of Mithril down for decades, if not permanently. With what you have described its MILLIONS of GP worth of rare and valuable materials.

I'd just comment on how nifty it is and pass on by. Maybe sell the information to an actual Mining Mogul.

But really, if you want to be a miner, roll up a level 10 expert and be done with it. If you want to RPG a campaign about bieng economic giants, go wild. But if you want to be an adventurer, then this is really too far out. Just beyond the scope of adventuring.