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View Full Version : Manning a Mine (or Dwarfing, as the case may be...)



Cieyrin
2010-02-04, 06:49 PM
So, a Dwarven Barbarian of mine has come into the ownership of a mine that inexplicably produces both Mithral and Adamantine and is completely devoid of life from an Orcish raid. (Crazy DM and his nonsensical plots). Also has a former dwarven city in it.

So, I now have money and I need to repopulate this thing and I don't wanna just handwave this as I spent this much for people and equipment. I have access to the Stronghold Builder's Guide, Arms and Equipment and a whole slew of other books. Also, my funds are ~200,000 gp (silly GM, going all Monty Haul on me...).

So, thoughts? Where do I start?

sofawall
2010-02-04, 06:52 PM
I have no ideas other than this.

Invisible Spell Prismatic Wall.

Hazkali
2010-02-04, 07:09 PM
Well, it depends on how very realistic you want to do it. You could go to the library and pick up books on the mining industry, and go from there.

Personally, I'd be a bit less thorough. You'll need lots of miners (labourers), some foremen and overseers to keep things in check, probably a couple of experts in the field, some engineers to make sure your tunnels don't fall down, a smattering of people to balance the books, and someone trusted to run the place. You can find or extrapolate daily wages from the Arms and Equipment Guide.

You'll need tools and equipment for everyone- again, prices for these can be found in the PHB and A&E. You'll probably want everyone to have a pickaxe or similar, and you might want to give everyone helmets.

You'll need a way of extracting the ore from the mine, minecarts and tracks is a good way, but I'm not sure where you'd find prices. At the end, you'll need to pack your ore into sacks or chests, which you'll need to pay for.

You'll also need lighting, which includes lamps and the daily cost of oil for lighting them. You'll have to work out how much oil you're using, and add that to the daily expenses.

Tools will wear out; your DM should probably set a rate, but I'd guess you'll lose about one pickaxe a week.

You'll need lumber for your mine supports, and you'll need a way of disposing of the waste rubble that comes out of the mine- which you could sell for building material. Adamantine and mithril are very rare, so you'll probably want a system where you can sift small amounts out of the rubble you produce.

Then comes the hard part- the rate of excavation. I have no idea how to calculate this, but I'd say it should be proportional to the number of people you have working (with 'specials' like foremen and engineers counting as some extra number of people) to some limit where extra people become a nuisance. As for actually how much a miner can excavate in a day, I've no idea.

subject42
2010-02-04, 07:09 PM
Rather than repopulate it, I would consider plundering as much mineral wealth as I can possibly manage out of it, and then bully a wizard into building you a SHBG-compatible, giant mobile super-fortress that can roll across the plains as fast as the swiftest horse. With it, your barbarian can drive his crush his enemies, see them driven before him, and hear the lamentations of their women.

Mobile siege dwarfs: they are what's best in life.

Noble Savant
2010-02-04, 07:12 PM
Buy a few golems and tell them to start working. Use your profits to buy more golems. Repeat until the world is yours.

sofawall
2010-02-04, 07:14 PM
Rather than repopulate it, I would consider plundering as much mineral wealth as I can possibly manage out of it, and then bully a wizard into building you a SHBG-compatible, giant mobile super-fortress that can roll across the plains as fast as the swiftest horse. With it, your barbarian can drive his crush his enemies, see them driven before him, and hear the lamentations of their women.

Mobile siege dwarfs: they are what's best in life.

i.e. Borg Cube w/style and spell turrets.

Gralamin
2010-02-04, 07:29 PM
So, thoughts? Where do I start?

Go play Dwarf Fortress. Its the perfect start.

Weezer
2010-02-04, 07:34 PM
^What he said. This here (http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/)should give you a good idea as to how to successfully start and manage a dwarfish mine.

(and by successfully I mean getting massacred by elephants and ending up having everyone go insane and kill each other.)

oxybe
2010-02-04, 08:14 PM
^What he said. This here (http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/)should give you a good idea as to how to successfully start and manage a dwarfish mine.

(and by successfully I mean getting massacred by elephants and ending up having everyone go insane and kill each other.)

hey, at least you learn how to feed a population & build a semi stable economy based on raising cats, slaughtering them & skinning them.

hooray for renewable resources... as long they aren't someone's pet.

then they get cranky.

BRC
2010-02-04, 08:19 PM
Alright, you're sitting on a dwarf's dream here, you probably don't need to pay them to come. Just put the word out.
Now, the chances of running into angry ghosts, getting attacked by Orcs, or breaking through to the tomb of an ancient evil is pretty darn high, so I'd be careful. Have a system ready to seal off tunnels fast in the event of an emergency.

Get yourself a competent foreman to handle operations for you. Get to work renovating the old city, clearing out the countless traps and monsters that are no doubt in there. Note, this will make life easier for both you and your DM.

Also, for your surface entrances, acquire the services of the most devious trap-masters you can, even if their Kobolds. There should be a switch you can throw that will turn the perfectly safe passages into a flaming, cutting, spinning, crushing deathtrap. Personally I'd go for a thick metal door at each end and a decanter of endless water. One switch causes both doors to slam down and the decanter to activate on Geyser mode.
Train a guard, I'd recommend a rotating millitia, that way you can mobilize a sizeable army without too much effort. Miners and other physical laborers serve as front-line infantry, other people are trained to use Crossbows.
And of course be prepared for somebody to take over and use this all against you.

KellKheraptis
2010-02-04, 10:36 PM
Rather than repopulate it, I would consider plundering as much mineral wealth as I can possibly manage out of it, and then bully a wizard into building you a SHBG-compatible, giant mobile super-fortress that can roll across the plains as fast as the swiftest horse. With it, your barbarian can drive his crush his enemies, see them driven before him, and hear the lamentations of their women.

Mobile siege dwarfs: they are what's best in life.

I'm actually the caster in that game :P I was thinking some form of automated servants, and enchanted mundane defenses (since if they disarm the magical trap without realizing there's a 10 ton block about to drop on them...hehehe) to supplement any sort of living populace. Hell, tell the dwarves you'll want shipped in there that they can hone their skills in battle instead of labouring away in a mine.

And if you'd rather just use it as a resource dump, I [b]do[/i] have access to shrink item...start pulling out ingots and turn them into a scrapbook :P

Admiral Squish
2010-02-04, 10:49 PM
Really, put the word out, and dwarves will come. Maybe off a homestead sort of deal. If they live in the city and work in the mine for X years, they can own their own place.

Using shrink item to help transport the mined ore seems like it would be a good idea. Not sure how it works on a pule of stones, but maybe you could make a box that shrinks, shrinking everything inside it? Fill a refrigerator-sized crate with ore, shrink it, and carry a shoebox off to the forges.

Viletta Vadim
2010-02-04, 10:53 PM
So, I now have money and I need to repopulate this thing and I don't wanna just handwave this as I spent this much for people and equipment. I have access to the Stronghold Builder's Guide, Arms and Equipment and a whole slew of other books. Also, my funds are ~200,000 gp (silly GM, going all Monty Haul on me...).

So, thoughts? Where do I start?
Well, to repopulate, I suggest starting with wenches. Lots of them. If you lack ready access to large numbers of wenches, potions of Reverse Gender are cheap, so start turning laddies into wenches. They can't turn back if sufficiently advanced in the repopulation process.

Buy a few golems and tell them to start working. Use your profits to buy more golems. Repeat until the world is yours.
Some cheaper breed of construct would be advisable. Homunculi, perhaps, or even the undead.

KellKheraptis
2010-02-04, 10:55 PM
Really, put the word out, and dwarves will come. Maybe off a homestead sort of deal. If they live in the city and work in the mine for X years, they can own their own place.

Using shrink item to help transport the mined ore seems like it would be a good idea. Not sure how it works on a pule of stones, but maybe you could make a box that shrinks, shrinking everything inside it? Fill a refrigerator-sized crate with ore, shrink it, and carry a shoebox off to the forges.

I was thinking something similar, involving wagons. Just fill up some REALLY sturdy open wagons with ore. Make em big enough and I'd only need to cast it once or twice (gee, I smell eternal wand material...) a day. Makes getting it to the refinery easier, and if we're now level 9 (as we seem to be), I'm close to (and high enough level to for the lesser versions) being able to permabind the "forge" for refinement even. Heck in a few levels all that iron ore doesn't have to remain iron once I get PAO >=)

EDIT : Viletta, just when I'm || to forever abandoning BoEF and it's horridly awesome casting PrC someone comes along with a fantastically dastardly and utter awesome idea like that >=) And for the record, why not both? I can always nix the components with Linked Power, or I can bind in some Necropolitans. In a few levels we might as well go all out and bring in the Dwarf Ancestors though :P

Viletta Vadim
2010-02-04, 11:08 PM
EDIT : Viletta, just when I'm || to forever abandoning BoEF and it's horridly awesome casting PrC someone comes along with a fantastically dastardly and utter awesome idea like that >=) And for the record, why not both? I can always nix the components with Linked Power, or I can bind in some Necropolitans. In a few levels we might as well go all out and bring in the Dwarf Ancestors though :P
If you want something really ghastly from BoEF, try zombie husbandry. By BoEF rules, if you cast Gentle Repose on a fresh body immediately and maintain it indefinitely, then bring them back as a zombie, they're still fully capable of reproduction. Now, pair that with Flesh to Stone, which can turn a statue into a corpse, allowing you to mass produce fresh corpses of any creature you please, use Gentle Repose on them, and mate them, you get a steady stream of fully living beings from nothing but rock, even if those creatures never even actually existed in the world.

MickJay
2010-02-04, 11:38 PM
Prices listed in Stronghold Builder's Guide are generally far, far above of prices you'd end up with if you calculated the cost of raw materials and cost of hired labour necessary to transform them into whatever you want to build. Depending on what you want to get, you can save up to 90% of the building cost if you ignore SBG prices and get people to work on specific tasks.

herrhauptmann
2010-02-04, 11:43 PM
If you want something really ghastly from BoEF, try zombie husbandry. By BoEF rules, if you cast Gentle Repose on a fresh body immediately and maintain it indefinitely, then bring them back as a zombie, they're still fully capable of reproduction. Now, pair that with Flesh to Stone, which can turn a statue into a corpse, allowing you to mass produce fresh corpses of any creature you please, use Gentle Repose on them, and mate them, you get a steady stream of fully living beings from nothing but rock, even if those creatures never even actually existed in the world.
Wow, that's creepy. Needs DM to agree that the internals of a Stone to Fleshed statue match properly with a human/dwarven/whatever body. Some might just say that the statue becomes a person shaped slab of flesh. In which case, haul it off to the kitchens and start cooking. No organs, no bones, no gristle. Just 100+ pounds of meat :)

Avoid stronghold builders guidebook for purpose of building a fortress. Using its rules, you'll find that your 200k won't create too much in the way of a stronghold. Perhaps the dwarven mountain plateau in Sword and Fist would work better.
Don't forget that you'll need more than just miners to keep this thing functional. Either friendly neighbors to buy food off from, a magical source of food, or you'll need a whole bunch of farmers as well. And most of your men will want to bring their families in. If there's no room for families, perhaps set up a rotating shift. Have shifts 2 weeks long. At any one time, there's 2 shifts on site. Now you just need to set up a quality barracks. And splurge on comfort there, since they can't personalize their homes, they'll need comfort to keep morale up (realistically, uncomfortable homes, no family, and easy access to booze will actually hurt both morale AND productivity. Everyone's always drunk or hungover)

Viletta Vadim
2010-02-04, 11:47 PM
Wow, that's creepy. Needs DM to agree that the internals of a Stone to Fleshed statue match properly with a human/dwarven/whatever body. Some might just say that the statue becomes a person shaped slab of flesh. In which case, haul it off to the kitchens and start cooking. No organs, no bones, no gristle. Just 100+ pounds of meat :)
Well, the Flesh to Stone spell explicitly states that it turns a statue into a corpse, not a person-shaped mound of flesh, and the Animate Dead spell quite explicitly animates a corpse and turns it into a zombie. There's ultimately no arguing that you get some sort of viable corpse and functioning zombie out of the procedure by RAW. The most direct interpretation is it's a zombie of whatever the statue was of.

Of course, abusing this is gonna get hit with rule 0 pretty quick (probably around the time you're using Revive Outsider to create seven Cyric clones), but RAW is rather explicit here.

Beorn080
2010-02-04, 11:48 PM
Food is Stone to Flesh + Wall of stone. Wall of fire to cook it and your set.

Also, if you flesh to stone, and the anatomy isn't there, then PaO to get your first breeding pair.

KellKheraptis
2010-02-05, 12:04 AM
If you want something really ghastly from BoEF, try zombie husbandry. By BoEF rules, if you cast Gentle Repose on a fresh body immediately and maintain it indefinitely, then bring them back as a zombie, they're still fully capable of reproduction. Now, pair that with Flesh to Stone, which can turn a statue into a corpse, allowing you to mass produce fresh corpses of any creature you please, use Gentle Repose on them, and mate them, you get a steady stream of fully living beings from nothing but rock, even if those creatures never even actually existed in the world.

Combine with pain to pleasure and that clamp and this little ditty will make it even easier to mass produce items as well with a couple 'Wrights.

herrhauptmann
2010-02-05, 12:07 AM
Well, the Flesh to Stone spell explicitly states that it turns a statue into a corpse, not a person-shaped mound of flesh, and the Animate Dead spell quite explicitly animates a corpse and turns it into a zombie. There's ultimately no arguing that you get some sort of viable corpse and functioning zombie out of the procedure by RAW. The most direct interpretation is it's a zombie of whatever the statue was of.


I know what the spell says. It's in the frickin SRD if I ever have a question. Now, outside of Tippyverse, where will you find a DM to allow you to create a fully functional (albeit dead) body from a statue? Now that it's a corpse, it's technically available for a raise dead or a reincarnate, right? FREE MINIONS!! No.
The designers said it creates a corpse because they didn't want players hitting statues of famous warriors and getting free epic paladins out of it.
Don't bother arguing RAW, that's what lead to the creation of Punpun, the Omnificer(sp?), and the ogre bowling ball (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19873078/Hulking_Hurler_build)

hamishspence
2010-02-05, 03:50 AM
DMG2 has rules for running a business- these might work.

Power of Faerun expands on this- combining the business rules with the Leadership rules.

bosssmiley
2010-02-05, 06:59 AM
DMG2 has rules for running a business- these might work.

The DMG2 business rules are terrible. I mean "shunned, spat upon and driven them from among you" bad. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Zombie Adam Smith arose from his grave to drop-kick those responsible for them.

The Al-Qadim and/or Birthright trading rules (%age return on investment, increased likelihood of it going bad for higher risk/return goods) were simpler and less replete with howlers.

on topic: If you can find the pdfs (or cheap copies of the books) the 1st Ed DMG and Dungeoneers' Survival Guide had some excellent material on running a shaft mining operation: surveying rules, digging rates per day by race (also useful for sieges and digging canals), costs for labour and equipment (winches, pumps, pit ponies, etc), mine output per day, rules for mapping veins and for determining depletion.

For general flavour you will want to read about the various gold and diamond rushes of the 19th century (California, Oz, S.Africa). Hey look! It's D&D as western all over again. :smallamused:

Grumman
2010-02-05, 07:59 AM
Get yourself a competent foreman to handle operations for you. Get to work renovating the old city, clearing out the countless traps and monsters that are no doubt in there. Note, this will make life easier for both you and your DM.
And make your foreman a Cleric with Spontaneous Domain Casting and the Creation domain. That way, any spells he doesn't use for the day get converted into Create Water and Create Food and Water, saving on expenses.

Volkov
2010-02-05, 08:50 AM
Watch out for kobolds, they have a nasty habit of randomly springing up in mines. Also, don't dig too deep, very, very nasty creatures live in the underdark. Drow, Goblinoids, Kobolds, and Duregar would be the least of your problems if you dug too deep, if you reach the under dark then you can expect Beholders, Mind Flayers, Beholder Hives, Mind Flayer Cities, Aboleths, Neolithids, Shadow Dragons, Deep Dragons, Illithid Brainstealer Dragons, Illithidae, Beholderkin, Liches, Demiliches, Lich Kings, Mummies, Greater Mummies, Golems, and Ao knows what else.

So I'd invest quite heavily in security if I were you, most campaign settings hold implausible numbers of very, very deadly creatures underground. Not to mention the robbers, dragons who will want to take your mines as a lair or take over your business to increase their coffers, or both. Undead and Construct workforces are also recommended, they'll never ask you for anything and they'll slave away for you for all eternity. You will need some live workers to help manage your unliving and mechanical workforce though.

Seriously though, watch out for Mind Flayers and Beholders. They can ruin your day faster than you can say "Hoopla!"

Ormagoden
2010-02-05, 10:35 AM
Just hire an optimized dread necromancer and be done with it.

Volkov
2010-02-05, 10:39 AM
Just hire an optimized dread necromancer and be done with it.

Beholder Hives are very capable of plowing through any amount of undead you throw at them, since they are all universally guaranteed to fail their saving throws against the disintegrate eye ray. You are going to need better security than that to deal with the threat of Beholders, Liches, and Dragons.

Eldan
2010-02-05, 10:48 AM
If you use stone shape with the zombie husbandry trick, you can turn the excavated stone material into more workers instead of having to haul it outside.

BRC
2010-02-05, 11:26 AM
And make your foreman a Cleric with Spontaneous Domain Casting and the Creation domain. That way, any spells he doesn't use for the day get converted into Create Water and Create Food and Water, saving on expenses.
Yes, do this.

You can build abunch of nifty mining tools with magic items, for example, you can build an item that casts Shout in order to break through rock quickly, perhaps even leaving chunks of ore behind.

Constructs tend to be rather expensive, I mean, they're good, but I'd still go with dwarfs. Undead are an option, but they're rather stupid, unless you have somebody to give them orders constantly, they'll probably just end up collapsing tunnels on themselves or ignoring ores.

I say a largely dwarven workforce augmented by a few specialized constructs. get an Effigy of a Bullete or something burrowing to help quickly dig tunnels. If it's an option, use Undead as ore-haulers, it's a simple job that needs lots of brute strength and isn't easily messed up. Secure a food source early on, and stay on constant lookout for stumbling into a den of Kobolds/Drow/mindflayers/ some unspeakable evil. Mind you, you will run into all or some of these things anyway, but it pays to be prepared. Your standing orders should be, in case of something fishy, you're guards ring a big evacuation bell, people have ten minutes to get out of that tunnel. Once that's passed, your guards lock the tunnel in question down and wait for you and your party to handle it.

If you're using Zombie ore haulers, they can make a good way to lock someplace down, just order them to shuffle into the tunnel, blocking it with themselves while your marksdwarves shoot over their heads with crossbows.

Volkov
2010-02-05, 11:41 AM
Yes, do this.

You can build abunch of nifty mining tools with magic items, for example, you can build an item that casts Shout in order to break through rock quickly, perhaps even leaving chunks of ore behind.

Constructs tend to be rather expensive, I mean, they're good, but I'd still go with dwarfs. Undead are an option, but they're rather stupid, unless you have somebody to give them orders constantly, they'll probably just end up collapsing tunnels on themselves or ignoring ores.

I say a largely dwarven workforce augmented by a few specialized constructs. get an Effigy of a Bullete or something burrowing to help quickly dig tunnels. If it's an option, use Undead as ore-haulers, it's a simple job that needs lots of brute strength and isn't easily messed up. Secure a food source early on, and stay on constant lookout for stumbling into a den of Kobolds/Drow/mindflayers/ some unspeakable evil. Mind you, you will run into all or some of these things anyway, but it pays to be prepared. Your standing orders should be, in case of something fishy, you're guards ring a big evacuation bell, people have ten minutes to get out of that tunnel. Once that's passed, your guards lock the tunnel in question down and wait for you and your party to handle it.

If you're using Zombie ore haulers, they can make a good way to lock someplace down, just order them to shuffle into the tunnel, blocking it with themselves while your marksdwarves shoot over their heads with crossbows.

There are two constructs detailed in the MM2 that were built specifically for mining, they were called Automatons I believe.

Benejeseret
2010-02-05, 11:43 AM
Permanent animated objects - picks, carts, belts, furnaces, doors

All run by a savage species anthropormophized rat artificer

Flood all the tunnels, all the time, with water since it will not affect animated objects or their task and have it patrolled by water elementals who help transport around and act as guards when you flood into a new area.

Volkov
2010-02-05, 12:07 PM
The names of the two automatons are The Pulverizer, and the Hammerer. The pulverizer was built specifically for mining, while the Hammerer was constructed for heavy lifting. The Pulverizer will use a sonic shriek to weaken rock, then it will use it's wedges to finish the job of breaking it up. The Hammerer could be used to move heavy loads of ore around. With these two handling the digging and the lifting, you can use your living crew to get the precious materials and direct the machines. They are apparently a great deal cheaper than golems, but this comes at the cost of reliability, as they only have a %50 chance of taking any actions in a round. But I believe you could ask your DM to fix this by using a more physical conscious instead of the shadowy simulacrum they normally have.

Viletta Vadim
2010-02-05, 12:30 PM
I know what the spell says. It's in the frickin SRD if I ever have a question. Now, outside of Tippyverse, where will you find a DM to allow you to create a fully functional (albeit dead) body from a statue? Now that it's a corpse, it's technically available for a raise dead or a reincarnate, right? FREE MINIONS!! No.
Actually, it's not subject to Raise Dead/Reincarnate/Resurrection/True Resurrection. Those require a soul, not simply a body, and Stone to Flesh only says it creates a body. The only kind of creatures you can resurrect in this fashion are outsiders, since their bodies are their souls, and you can cast Revive Outsider.

Now, as for where you can find a DM willing to allow the artificial production of zombies? Quite a few places, in fact. Allowing a necromancer to create her own corpses without disrupting the campaign or diving head first down the path of evulz is quite attractive to many DMs. And other than making hydras, it really isn't unbalanced. There's still the horde limit in place, and you still have to pay to animate your minions. You just get to make more interesting zombies.

Cieyrin
2010-02-06, 12:45 PM
Wow, lots of responses, only half of them Dwarf Fortress references. :smallbiggrin:

Also, I suppose I should elucidate on the situation. First, my Barbarian is sorta Chaotic Good, so zombie workers, even if they're made from statues, probably wouldn't work very well for me. Not very dwarven, either.

Also, I think a lot of people seem to have missed the fact that there is a former Dwarven Fortress already in the mine, though as it was described, it seems to be buildings built in a large cavern that housed ~1500 dwarves before the orcish massacre (how they managed it, I have no idea, as the forces we came across were by no means capable of taking out that many dwarves). As for details of said fortress, that's kinda light in detail, as all I know specifically is that there is a major temple to Hanseath, Dwarven god of Feasting and Berserkers, here, which also happens to be my character's deity.

So, what this means is we have a number of buildings of undetermined nature and value that need to be reclaimed (and I would like to, as amusing as a mobile siege fortress would be, though well beyond my price range). I'm thinking the Dwarven Redoubt from the Stronghold Builder's Guide would be a good starting place for what this place looks like.

As for actually running the mine, I looked over the DMG2 business rules and didn't find them very appropriate for this, as the closest was the Service business, which didn't seem to take into account any mercantile forces, so I guess that doesn't help any. The actual mining rules can be found in Races of the Dragon, in the skill section for Profession(Miner), though the only discusses rates of digging per 8 hours, not what sort of yield I could get for it or anything else very useful. I know I've seen digging rules with foremen and lots of other things, though I can't for the life of me find it now.

Finally, I'd love to man this place with Pulverizers and Hammerers, though neither the MM2 or the errata for it give any creation rules or costs of them that I could find, unlike the other constructs, so some thoughts on what those would be would be nice.

Thanks for all the input, it is appreciated. Keep it coming, even if they're Dwarf Fortress references. =D