Mining metals in 3.5

[Michael Silverbane]

In general, to keep it fairly simple, I'd say that two pounds of ore will net you one pound of metal... Using that, and the Craft (metallurgy) skill would mean that one pound of ore would be worth one sixth of the amount that one pound of the metal was worth (you provide one third the price of the finished product when doing crafting).

We also know that one pound of iron is worth 1 sp, one pound of silver is worth 5 gp, and so on (from the trade goods table in the PHB). So... that'll give you the value of the more common ores. It does not really help you when you get to the special materials, since you don't know precisely what a pound of mithral or adamantine costs...

Later
silver

 

[Azgulor]

did a google search on medieval yeilds from raw iron mining


So anyone got a conversion rate from pounds stirling to DnD gp standard?


Personally I'd have given a fixed yeild value to each successful identified mine and then determined a DC from that

eg you've used a base of 3d6 x 500 permonth so max yeild would be 9000gp
I'd then work yeild/investment to determine the DC eg 9000/2000 = 4

(ie by spending 2000gp a month the mine has a good chance of yeilding 9000gp in finished imetal - thats until you add modifiers)
...

While not an exact conversion by any means, I believe the author of Western Europe: A Magical Medieval Society set a general conversion of 115gp = 1 pound stirling. I think I picked this up from their message board rather than the rulebook, however.

Azgulor