Mining Pick? How much damage to stone?
- Thread starter Emirikol
- Start date
Patryn of Elvenshae
First Post
Well, I'd make use of three rules.
The first is:
I'd say, "Sorry. Your battle axe just doesn't do any damage to the stone wall. Care to try something built for the task?"
Second: Medium Heavy Picks generally do 1d6 damage.
But these heavy picks are actually military picks, and so are suitable for use as weapons.
A miner's pick is not. I'd increase it to a two-handed, improvised weapon, and increase the damage dice to 1d8.
Third: One inch of stone has 15 hit points, and Hardness 8. I would not allow Power Attack to be used in this case. So, every 15 HP of damage he does to the stone wall results in a one inch depression. You'll need to decide how big the depression is.
The first is:
SRD: Carrying said:
I'd say, "Sorry. Your battle axe just doesn't do any damage to the stone wall. Care to try something built for the task?"
Second: Medium Heavy Picks generally do 1d6 damage.
But these heavy picks are actually military picks, and so are suitable for use as weapons.
A miner's pick is not. I'd increase it to a two-handed, improvised weapon, and increase the damage dice to 1d8.
Third: One inch of stone has 15 hit points, and Hardness 8. I would not allow Power Attack to be used in this case. So, every 15 HP of damage he does to the stone wall results in a one inch depression. You'll need to decide how big the depression is.
Patryn of Elvenshae
First Post
Well, let's do a quick math check, eh?
Let's say an average miner has a Strength score of 14. That gives him an average damage of 1d8+3 per 6 seconds.
The chance that he damages the wall at all in any given round is 3 / 8, or ~38%.
When he does manage to damage the wall, he'll roll 10 damage on average, which means he'll get 2 points past the hardness. His average damage per round, then, 0.75.
Therefore, it will take a standard miner, on average, 20 rounds, or two minutes, to put a 5' by 5' by 1" depression in a wall of rock.
This translates into roughly 4 hours to dig a 5' by 5' by 10' tunnel for a standard miner. It seems a little fast, to me, but then we're dealing with D&D, so a little bit of unreality seems fine.
Note that if you make the above-mentioned miner slightly weaker (Strength 12 or 13), it takes a full 24 hours of work to dig the same tunnel.
So, how do those numbers sound to you?
Let's say an average miner has a Strength score of 14. That gives him an average damage of 1d8+3 per 6 seconds.
The chance that he damages the wall at all in any given round is 3 / 8, or ~38%.
When he does manage to damage the wall, he'll roll 10 damage on average, which means he'll get 2 points past the hardness. His average damage per round, then, 0.75.
Therefore, it will take a standard miner, on average, 20 rounds, or two minutes, to put a 5' by 5' by 1" depression in a wall of rock.
This translates into roughly 4 hours to dig a 5' by 5' by 10' tunnel for a standard miner. It seems a little fast, to me, but then we're dealing with D&D, so a little bit of unreality seems fine.
Note that if you make the above-mentioned miner slightly weaker (Strength 12 or 13), it takes a full 24 hours of work to dig the same tunnel.
So, how do those numbers sound to you?
The DMG has hit points for sections of wall, per inch of thickness, based on material. The hit points represent a 5 ft x 5 ft area. Once you "kill" such an area, you have opened a breach.
In that sense, any weapon can eventually do it, though as Patryn of Elvenshae mentioned, you can rule certain weapons as useless.
In that sense, any weapon can eventually do it, though as Patryn of Elvenshae mentioned, you can rule certain weapons as useless.
UltimaGabe
First Post
Then let them roll for it. The worst that could happen is that he'll miss once every 20 times.
Patryn of Elvenshae
First Post
hong said:
It doesn't seem right to me.
Power Attack is a combat feat that represents (in my head, anyway), ignoring certain openings in your opponent's defense in order to strike only at particularly opportune times (for an increase in damage per successful hit).
So, if you're not making attack rolls, there's no "certain openings" to ignore, and therefore no benefit to be gained.
This has a side-effect of disallowing Power Attacks on CDGs, which follows similar logic, but allowing it on standard attacks against helpless foes. I find the cinematic aspect of this palatable.
I'm not entirely sold on the issue, however, and YMMV.
Patryn, your explanations and analysis seem spot on, except for one thing that I disagree with. IMO, a miner's pick should do slightly more than 1d8 damage, since otherwise, a character without above-average strength would *never* be able to get anywhere with it. I don't mind a low-Str character being moderately ineffective with a pick, but the idea of having an average human (or dwarf, for that matter) swinging away at a wall for an arbitrarily long amount of time and not making any progress at all seems a little odd.
If it were my game, I'd simply rule that a pick does 1 extra point of damage against suitable objects (such as unworked stone). This means that even a normal person could make some progress with it, while a Str 14 character such as the one you used in your example above (a person who is actually very strong) is able to make exceptional progress.
If it were my game, I'd simply rule that a pick does 1 extra point of damage against suitable objects (such as unworked stone). This means that even a normal person could make some progress with it, while a Str 14 character such as the one you used in your example above (a person who is actually very strong) is able to make exceptional progress.
