Mining with a Waraxe

[IanB]

When Power Attacking you are making wild swings, sacrificing accuracy for power.



I would rule that when attacking inanimate objects you are already whacking as hard as you can, since accuracy is of little interest. Thus hitting with all you have is already assumed and implemented into the Hardness rules. Result: No Power attacking allowed.

That creates some serious cognitive dissonance when dealing with animated objects, which have hardness.

 

[Thurbane]

This is why I think you need weapon damage rules - unless that axe is admantine, you are going to totally wreck it the process...

 

[Brother MacLaren]

This is why I think you need weapon damage rules - unless that axe is admantine, you are going to totally wreck it the process...

First of all, it is adamantine in the case I posed.
Second, in the more general instance of mining with a weapon, in order to be consistent, weapon damage rules should apply when attacking a great many things.

Stone golems, iron golems, animated objects, enemies in fullplate, monsters with natural armor stronger than fullplate, etc.

I can't imagine a system that would be consistent, elegant, plausible, and not slow down the game. But that may be because I've seen to many fumble charts or whatnot that are hideously implausible and do nothing but slow down the game.

 

[Thurbane]

First of all, it is adamantine in the case I posed.
Second, in the more general instance of mining with a weapon, in order to be consistent, weapon damage rules should apply when attacking a great many things.

Stone golems, iron golems, animated objects, enemies in fullplate, monsters with natural armor stronger than fullplate, etc.

I can't imagine a system that would be consistent, elegant, plausible, and not slow down the game. But that may be because I've seen to many fumble charts or whatnot that are hideously implausible and do nothing but slow down the game.

Sorry, I missed that the example you gave was adamantine.

Still and all, I don't think some kind of weapon damage system would be a bad thing, but I agree that it would be painful to implement effetively.

 

[monboesen]

That creates some serious cognitive dissonance when dealing with animated objects, which have hardness.

Obviously. But I can live easier with that, than the fact than Power Attacking dwarves crumbling 100+ pounds of stone/metal every 6 seconds

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

My answer to this problem is to not use combat rules for non-combat tasks. In combat the idea is to disable, not tunnel. To me, a disabled wall would no longer support the ceiling and cause a cave-in rather than create a tunnel.

Instead I use Profession: Miner as follows:

Mining: knowledge of where/how to pick can be much more important than brute strength.

Profession: Miner skill checks:
DC 10, excavate 5' cube of dirt in 20 hours
+2 DC for difficult soil or sandstone
+4 DC for Stone or root entangled soil
+6 DC for Granite or Kalichi (a hard clay layer such as found in the Arizona deserts)
+4 DC for improvised implements

And in keeping with Sean Reynolds’s recent rant on avoiding absolutes, +5 DC for untrained use.

Characters with Stone-Cunning get a +4 to their check.
Optional: This use of Prof (Miner ) is modified by STR
For each point higher than the DC, you reduce the time spent by 1 hour, to a minumum of 1 hour.

Hasty Mining: You can reduce the DC by 10 points if you prefer safety over speed, however the tunnel gains a weakened ceiling. "A weakened ceiling may collapse when subjected to a major impact or concussion. "
Further mining has a 10% chance per hour of causing a cave-in.
Other concussive forces may cause the cave-in as well.

Using this, the OPs scenario would end up with a DC of 16 {10 + Granite + Improvised - Dwarven Cunning}. If he wanted to be hasty, that would reduce to a DC of 6. Still would not be a good surprise tactic...

Passwall and other spells would be better.

Using Profession: Miner avoids all those consistancy issues with weapons being more effective than mining equipment.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Using Profession: Miner avoids all those consistancy issues with weapons being more effective than mining equipment.

That's a decent solution.

I'd say that attacking a stone surface risks a cave-in, but doesn't guarantee one -- that depends on the dimensions of the tunnel and the nature of the surface. A 6"-wide hole is unlikely to cause a collapse in most cases. Smashing a 5'-wide hole through an unmortared 20'-high castle wall will likely cause a collapse of some or most of the stone blocks above the hole. Smashing that hole through a 20'-high Wall of Stone is less likely to cause a collapse, because it is one solid piece of stone.

Of course, a natural stone surface often has fissures and fractures. Smashing a hole in it would, I would guess, be less safe than smashing through a Wall of Stone, but safer than smashing through an unmortared castle wall. For this short and narrow tunnel, perhaps a 30% chance of a minor collapse (a few rocks from the tunnel ceiling fall for maybe 2d6 damage), and maybe 5% chance of a major collapse (8d6 and possibly pinned, as in the Earthquake spell).