Can you Dig it? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Ranting Fool

2014-02-23, 07:42 PM

tzar1990

2014-02-23, 07:49 PM

Hey guys a random question which I hope someone has spent FAR to much effort working out already so I don't have to / pull a random number out of my arse.

How many feet of stone (assume solid stone) can a group of 4 strong/heroically strong and though men dig through a day given proper tools but WITHOUT the aid of magic?

A vague answer is fine :smallbiggrin: but I was just thinking I want to make it semi realistic.

Depends how you define "stone", "heroically strong", and "proper tools."

I'm not positive on the lower end of the scale, but the high end (Fighter or Barbarian 20 with an Adamantine pickaxe, built for strength and damaging objects etc.) could probably clear a given square with a single attack, allowing him to clear multiple adjacent squares per round.

Ravens_cry

2014-02-23, 07:52 PM

Damn, here I was hoping for ideas for an adventure based off of The Warriors, but in a Fantasy city setting. I could indeed 'dig' that.

Nettlekid

2014-02-23, 07:53 PM

Each 5-foot cube of stone has 900 HP, and you apply hardness 8 (of stone) to all attacks that don't bypass it. So you can go from there. Solid stone's a lot harder to just smash through than one might hope it would be, even for a level 20 martial type.

weckar

2014-02-23, 08:00 PM

If they would work at it for a FULL adventuring day.... Well, per day you get 4800 rounds, which can add up to 24000 attacks per person, because they never have to take more than a 5 foot step. Assuming average damage per hit as 50, each person could go through about 833333 cubic feet of stone per day.

Kalaska'Agathas

2014-02-23, 08:04 PM

Damn, here I was hoping for ideas for an adventure based off of The Warriors, but in a Fantasy city setting. I could indeed 'dig' that.

"AAAAADVEENTURRRERRRS! COME OUT AND PLAYYYAYYYYY!"

Actually, an Anabasis style campaign would be pretty excellent.

To the OP: I'm not sure about the rules on this, but I suspect the answer will depend in large part on the availability (and effectiveness) of mundane explosives.

Kane0

2014-02-23, 08:06 PM

If they would work at it for a FULL adventuring day....

So about a dozen spell slots then?

Edit: But to actually answer the OP maybe Minecraft can help you set a benchmark.

weckar

2014-02-23, 08:08 PM

but WITHOUT the aid of magic?

Just chopping away with brute force, they could tunnel about 6 miles per character.

Ranting Fool

2014-02-23, 08:08 PM

Sorry should have been more precise.

Mundane Picks. So sadly not adamantine.
Strength 16-18.
Level 4-5
Full Base Attack types. With Power Attack
Mining a tunnel.

Ranting Fool

2014-02-23, 08:09 PM

Just chopping away with brute force, they could tunnel about 6 miles per character.

Per/day/week/month?

weckar

2014-02-23, 08:13 PM

right, that does change things. A lot. We go from 50 average damage to 0.25 and from 24000 attacks to 4800. So, effectively, divide my earlier results by 1000.

83 cubic feet of stone per day per character.

Nettlekid

2014-02-23, 08:19 PM

Just chopping away with brute force, they could tunnel about 6 miles per character.

Where do your numbers come from, my god.

Sorry should have been more precise.

Mundane Picks. So sadly not adamantine.
Strength 16-18.
Level 4-5
Full Base Attack types. With Power Attack
Mining a tunnel.

A heavy pick does 1d6 damage. Wielding it in both hands, you can add 2*BAB from Power Attack and 1.5 Str from Strength alone.
With 18 Str, level 5, full BAB, you can do a minimum of 17 damage, and a maximum of 22 damage, with each attack. Minus Hardness 8, bringing it down to 9 to 14 damage per attack.

In a full adventuring day, that's 8 hours. 10 rounds/minute*60 minutes/hour*8 hours/day gives 4800 rounds per day. At BAB 5, they only have one attack per round, so that's 4800 attacks per character, except that Nat 1s will miss, so bring it down to 4560. That means they'll do approximately 41040-63840 damage to the wall in total, averaging 52440 damage in a day. As each 5 ft cube has 900 HP, they can excavate 58 of those in a day, which brings them 290 feet deep. If they want to squeeze, they can only carve out tunnels half as wide, to get in 580 ft in a day. That's still not very much, though.

Erberor

2014-02-23, 08:24 PM

Well, there is a (mildly) surprisingly small amount of information on tunneling rates when mining by hand, so I'm going to doa bit of math based on the games rules.

First of all, I'll assume level 5-ish characters with around 16 strength with steel picks. Two of them will be actively digging while the other two will be carrying away rubble and setting up supports and such

The two miners make one attack each round. Each attack is assumed to hit (I mean, it's an immobile wall of stone), and so every 6 seconds each miner will deal an average of 8.5 damage (not adjusted for hardness).

stone has hardness 8, so 8.5 is barely doing anything. Given that pickaxes are indeed the optimal tool for the job, I'll say that they get a 50% increase in damage. That makes 12.75 damage every 6 seconds, 4.75 after hardness, for 47.5 damage every minute, 95 damage each minute for two miners.

1 inch of stone has 15 hit points, so you're going through about 6.3 inches of stone every minute, and 380 inches (31.6 feet) in an hour. Given an 8 hours work day, that gives you 253.3 feet in one day.

Hope I was of assistance!

EDIT: I seem to have forgotten about power attack, and I've been ninja-swordsaged. Curses.

Adjusted for power attack, you get 786.6 feet in a day, by my math anyway.

nedz

2014-02-23, 08:39 PM

weckar

2014-02-23, 08:42 PM

Where do your numbers come from, my god.
From my earlier post, a few posts up. At that point I was still assuming high level characters with perfect equipment, though.

Ranting Fool

2014-02-23, 08:52 PM

From my earlier post, a few posts up. At that point I was still assuming high level characters with perfect equipment, though.

Sorry I should have made it more clear.

So basically if adventures have a Pick to hand they could tunnel through a mountain quick enough. Getting into or out of a buried lair is the matter of a day or two work unless it's DEEP underground :smalltongue:

Nettlekid

2014-02-23, 08:54 PM

Sorry I should have made it more clear.

So basically if adventures have a Pick to hand they could tunnel through a mountain quick enough. Getting into or out of a buried lair is the matter of a day or two work unless it's DEEP underground :smalltongue:

Er, 580 feet in a day while the party is squeezing through the tunnel isn't very far. It's about as far as an average character could run in half a minute. To get through a huge ol' mountain would be substantially difficult.

Deophaun

2014-02-23, 08:58 PM

How many feet of stone (assume solid stone) can a group of 4 strong/heroically strong and though men dig through a day given proper tools but WITHOUT the aid of magic?
Do kobolds count as men?

Glimbur

2014-02-23, 10:31 PM

Per Races of the Dragon, not much. Your progress is measured in 5' cubes, and DC 15 gets you one in 8 hours of work. Add +5 for each additional cube. And you can only have two medium size creatures working at the end of a shaft at once, and each check is 8 hours, and... it's a mess. Seems implausibly low, even accounting for time for hauling and shoring up and such.

drack

2014-02-23, 11:15 PM

I'd say use profession (miner) since you can't realistically expect someone to be swinging their sword for 24 hours, and if you could they'd break allot of swords. That said if we're talking epic where your +7 sword ends up dealing several thousand damage a round you make good progress. :smalltongue:

veti

2014-02-23, 11:35 PM

"You load sixteen tons (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2tWwHOXMhI), and what do you get?"

16 (short) tons is about 14.5 tonnes, and your typical rock (http://geology.about.com/cs/rock_types/a/aarockspecgrav.htm) has a density of about 2.5 tonnes per cubic metre, so 16 tons would be in the ballpark of 6 cubic metres (rounding, because all numbers are wildly approximated anyway).

So that's an expected day's work for a professional miner using mundane tools.

Edit: although coal is considerably less dense than most types of rock, so if they have the good fortune to be tunnelling through coal, the rate would be double that. Better watch out for sparks, though...

Ezberron

2014-02-24, 12:50 AM

Damn, here I was hoping for ideas for an adventure based off of The Warriors, but in a Fantasy city setting. I could indeed 'dig' that.

I'd totally play that. A gang of rogues all set up for the assassination of a charismatic gang leader trying to unite the tribes... they gotta get to their home turf by dawn....

But as of late, I've had a craving for a street-level rogue campaign something awful. Sad that nobody wants to run it...

TypoNinja

2014-02-24, 01:37 AM

I think that Profession (Miner) is what you need, but the rules are fairly quiet on the details.

Real miners would

Set a fire to heat the rock
Quench with water to shatter the rock

Or just use explosives

Its buried in Races of The Dragon, because Kobolds.

The rules are a little wordy so I'm not gonna just paste em, but basically, a DC 15 profession miner check gets you a 5x5x5 block in 8 hours work. Two medium creatures can mine one block, one uses the aid another action.

DC modified by what you are digging through, from a +10 on your check for gravel and the like, and a -10 to the check for things like marble and quartz.

Every 5 you exceed the check is another 5x5x5 block mined out.

Races of Dragon also has extra mining tools, things like alchemical mixtures designed to melt a tough rock in your way, things of this nature. Gives bonuses to the check when used. Never actually mentions adamantine miners picks as a thing, but my group settled on it treating everything like gravel since it would make the rock's hardness irrelevant.

"You load sixteen tons (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2tWwHOXMhI), and what do you get?"

16 (short) tons is about 14.5 tonnes, and your typical rock (http://geology.about.com/cs/rock_types/a/aarockspecgrav.htm) has a density of about 2.5 tonnes per cubic metre, so 16 tons would be in the ballpark of 6 cubic metres (rounding, because all numbers are wildly approximated anyway).

So that's an expected day's work for a professional miner using mundane tools.

You sir are my hero.

Ranting Fool

2014-02-25, 06:48 AM

Asheram

2014-02-25, 06:59 AM

Thanks guys for all the feed back. The main reason I wanted to know was how long it would take them to Dig down to an evil lair of evil if they couldn't find the way in/it had caved in.

I'm much more inclined to take the "It takes a long time" rather then the stone has X hit points and they can power attack every round for 8 hours to dig through it like cartoons :smallbiggrin:

In addition to the earlier statements I'd recommend Knowledge Architecture/engineering, Profession Mining, Search checks with Stonecunning to ensure that the path they dig is structurally sound and won't come collapsing down on them.

Grayson01

2014-02-25, 09:03 AM

Damn, here I was hoping for ideas for an adventure based off of The Warriors, but in a Fantasy city setting. I could indeed 'dig' that.

That's what I thought too! "Can you count"!?