Special Materials

[Crimson Wolf]

Okay so part of my game I made I have the implementation to have it where players will be able to find and claim nodes of any type of metals they find and be able to use these for eitehr gaining wealth, or gaining raw materials. Now they enjoy this idea but, I haven't fully thought out how I can make this go along. So from fellow dm's I must ask, how should this be implimented gameplay, dice rolling wise?

[SosadhScath]

Just spitballing a few thoughts here:
How does one find these nodes? Are you planning on something like Ore Veins, or searching for concealed cave entrances for crystal caves or something?
Or are these just sudden pockets of metal that magically materialized or fell from the sky like a meteor?

If the first, I'd say use hidden Knowledge: Dungeoneering/Nature, Survival, or (if the material is magic) Spellcraft checks (in conjunction with detect magic on that last one), with some really crazy bonuses for Stonecunning.
Second, hidden Search checks.
Last, Spot Checks. DC depends on the material. And if you roll a natural 1 and they don't have at least 4 ranks in Spot, I think someone is going to get hit with one of those falling sky-metal-nodes unless that can make a DC 25 Reflex save... Muah...haHA...MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Ahem.
Excuse me.

As I was saying. On the bright side, getting hit with falling metal balls of death means that you definitely get that metal. On the downside, there goes 3/4 of your hit points.

Last bit would also be a good way of dealing with whiners who say they haven't found any of the metal pockets.

[Crimson Wolf]

Ore Veins, concealed nodes, cache's of materials, plants found in the wild that have special components, deep cave systems, land already being looked over and possibly getting the deed to the land and also skymetal from fallen asteroids. Hmm I guess I can do part of your suggestion with knowledge checks like Knowledge Nature for natural deposits, Knowledge Planes for deposits of anything on any plane travel like plane of earth, and other various knowledge checks. Lol and omg that is perfect, do a DC30 Perception check, if failed, hit by meteorite x3 Course only happens once or twice in the game o3o

[oxybe]

Here are the special materials (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/special-materials)in the default pathfinder world.

If it doesn't give you a price per pound, I would extrapolate via ammunition as 10 iron crossbow bolts is = 1 pound. Since adamantine is 60gp per ammunition and 10 bolts to a pound, adamantine is ~600gp/Lb. Note that is not raw adamantine but for a single 1Lb, unworked ingot.

For actual rules on mining... the game is generally pretty vague on that. The time needed to mine it out and whatnot, as well as the skill needed is likely far more then what is worth for a PC to sit there and mine by their lonesome when compared to the profit one can make via adventuring for a few weeks.

I would recommend getting a startup mine/smeltery started and simply hiring some NPCs to do mine it up for your. An average skilled NPC is about 110gp a year to hire so there's that. hire a dozen of them (work the mine and eventually the smeltery once enough raw material is found) and you can have it paid off rather quickly with the profits from selling several pounds of adamantine. For something more common, like iron (at 1sp/Lb), you'll need a much larger quantity to churn out a profit. over a thousand pounds of iron would be required to pay for a single trained miner over the course of a year.

[Crimson Wolf]

I know what ones pathfinder have :P I just was mainly asking for gaining those materials through dice rolling, mining, and other things is all lol But yeah that was why I was asking cause the books are so vague.

[Coidzor]

I suppose they could be resources that could be exploited for BP and the like in the kingdom building/managing subsystem.

Otherwise you'd have to take a look at crafting via the craft skill, I guess, since 1/3 the GP cost of whatever object in raw materials is what it takes to make stuff. Pick out one or two things they'd craft with it and use that to figure out what ballpark you want the GP-equivalent value of the materials to be.

[oxybe]

I know what ones pathfinder have :P I just was mainly asking for gaining those materials through dice rolling, mining, and other things is all lol But yeah that was why I was asking cause the books are so vague.

This is one of those things I'd simply handwave away as a GM and as long as the players make a token effort to set something up, I'd give them the raw materials as another steady source of treasure to supplement whatever they find in dungeons, keeping them at WBL, no rolls needed on their part.

Then again I hate random treasure distribution, so I generally look for steady sources of income to give the players.

Find out how much "treasure" they should be getting to keep them at WBL and use that as a ballpark for the selling value of their materials gained by mining. Feel free to mix and match the quantities of the various ores as required. At lower character levels their new mine is probably still relatively near the top so they're getting copper, iron, gold, silver, etc but at higher levels they've dug deeper and deeper hitting veins of mithril, adamantine, cold iron and whatnot.

Maybe one month they run low on iron because they've hit a rather high up vein of mithril: they're not getting a lot out of it, but they can sell it off to a buyer or use it for themselves.

Setting up this mining camp allows several opportunities:
-NPCs to interact with: the foreman, the smiths, the miners, traders coming to pickup goods to bring wood/coal/food. If it prospers, non-miners might come and settle nearby knowing that commerce and opportunities can be found.
-A base of operations: if people want to find the PCs, they'll know where to look. It also gives the PCs a place to go back to and settle in.
-Adventure hooks: the mine could break into a kobold warren, a forgotten dwarven city, the underdark, etc... Bandits might come and try to steal the gems/precious metals or a warlord might come to try and annex the mineral-rich mine by force or diplomacy to get access to it's riches.

D&D is generally a game about adventures going about and doing adventurer things, not sitting in a hole and mining. Let others handle the mining and bring the adventure to them!

[Milo v3]

Races of the Dragon had mining rules, including digging up special materials, iirc.