five foot cube ?= two foxholes
argo said:
I need some rules for how fast a character can dig [....] Note that I am talking about mundane means of digging (pick and shovel) not magical.
If there is no official rule then what would you folk suggest? I am thinking that, assuming the use of apropriate tools, a medium character could move a 5ft cube of earth in 1hr. Half the time if the earth is soft or loose and double the time if it is hard or rocky. Meanwhile a medium character could move a 5ft cube of rock in 4 hours. Treat the effort of digging as a forced march (8 hours labor then Con checks).
Too generous. A five foot cube is basically equal to two foxholes, each for two soldiers. It's been too long since I left the military, but I'd guess that with good soil, and not caring about getting the sides even, two people could do it in one hour by taking turns.
Rock, unless it's soft, crumbly sandstone or something similar, is going to take MUCH longer, and specialized tools. For soft stone, a pick will work fine, but for something like granite, you want to hammer in a 'drill' (actually a specialized spike).
There's a reason large-scale digging into granite was very rare before modern explosives. And remember all those cathedrals that took 100+ years to build?
I'd probably allow two people, taking turns, to remove a five foot cube of sandstone, shale, slate, etc in four hours. Two hours for sandstone. But granite? I'd say that's a ten hour work day with the proper tools.
I hope the PCs have a 3rd level Druid. (Soften Earth and Stone?)
Some of the worst digging I ever did in the US army was ordinary dirt ... with LOTS of hard round rocks ranging up to the size of my head. (This was barely south of the DMZ in Korea.) Because the rocks were rounded, the tools I was using wouldn't catch under the rocks very well to lift them out.
BTW, if two diggers are sharing one hole, unless it's a big hole they'll be able to dig much faster if they take turns, first one guy frantically working himself to exhaution, then resting and standing guard while the second guy takes over. With two guys switching, it's much faster NOT to pace yourself.
(IMC, a group that dug several underground storage rooms, greenhouses (variant continual flame works like 1st ed. continual light if enough in one area) and shelters over a two hundred year period has two 'stone cutter' daggers -- earth bane weapons, +2d6 damage vs. creatures with earth subtype, stone/clay/earth constructs, ignore hardness of stone, ignore DR of stone or earth constructs. To this group, these two daggers are more valuable as construction equipment than they ever could be as weapons.)
