According to the spell's description, I would say you can not turn a 5x5x5' cube of ore into a 5x5x5' cube of refined metal. You would just have a clean cube of ore. It says the final product is the same as the "quality" of the raw materials. But if you come up with a good spell that does produce permanently refined ore, I'm interested in learning about it for my world building.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
What you pay the miner a day is what the raw ore is worth. The final metal is worth what it cost to process into a pure form.
Almost all pre industrial mining was easy surface mining. Nothing real deep or hard. A few ,very few, places had a vein good enough to make hard rock mining profitable.
Almost all metals were found just laying on the ground or in rivers.
Most commoners in the game only make a few coppers a day maybe a silver. Finding a few silvers worth of gold in a nugget could be a life saving event.
Any "mine" that produces anything close to a gold piece a day in ore will quickly become owned by the nobility. They are the ones with the arms and power to take it.
Well, um, I would point out that you cannot mine during a short rest, because mining doesn’t qualify as a permitted action…
… but this ain’t my game, lol, and I say if another DM says they can do it, then cool.
I thought it was obvious from my wording, but what I am proposing is purely reflavoring. Instead of finding a chest of 100gp in the dungeon, the player mines 100gp of exposed ore during a short rest. It works because the DM is humoring the player and allowing them to roleplay their loot acquisition in a certain way. If you are more concerned with calculating historically-accurate approximations of effort and time to get X value of ore, you are free to do so but it's going to require way more work, making other players wait, and you're still changing rules anyway. I'm more concerned with keeping the game moving along.
You do not have to do your calculations during play. Do everything before hand.
Just set the minimum and maximum grams of gold panned.
With modern gold mining using bulldozers and automated panning systems they still only get a few ounces per ton of gravel screened and washed. even back in the 1800's in the big gold strikes in California they only panned out maybe half and ounce in a 16 hour day.
Your giving the player 100 times the best the world could ever hope for. If it was that easy gold in your world would be worth nothing. Copper would be worth more.
That is why characters go adventuring. Its easier than mining and farming. Not safer but easier. And far more profitable.
I'm currently playing a Mountain Dwarf Barbarian and have been doing so for over a year. The story arc is that he comes from a long family of Miners but hates it. Anyway, I'm doing a #NanoWriMo thing this year where I have to write 50,000 words in 30 days (November). I'm passionate about my dwarf, so I thought I would write about his upbringing and the mining society he comes from, why he despises it, etc.
It's morphed into an entire ecosystem. Right now, it's just for fun. I have no idea where I'm heading, but I've stumbled upon a handful of really useful links about ores & metals in DND and it's helping me shape my logic on things. The awesome magic armor and items that we all covet come from mining, gems, etc. I thought it would be fun to write about it a bit and see what happens.
Input on this post has been amazing. Thanks for the wisdom and idea sparks!
Angry Golems has been a fantastic resource. I'm mainly combining all of the information into one massive spreadsheet and parsing out a reasonable ecosystem with the information. All homebrew and just figments of my weird imagination. I tend to play characters that are entrepreneurial and always working a side hustle during the down time. The story I'm writing is about mining, the process of finding the ore vs. ingots, smelters, blast furnaces, sorting, etc. Through mining come gems and stones, as well, so that's been interesting. I never thought Basalt would be a thing in DND, but alas, it exists.
Best of luck to you on your writing assignment and your character development.
Of course, I am writing a story about my NC Bard, his name is Bene Timber. That story is 190,000 words and he has just reached level 3.
I am also working on the lore for my worldbuilding, and the lore of dwarven mining is a component of it. In my lore I describe how Dwarves look for natural fissures in the rock and then they "go to town" but making a sort of "highway" out of the fissure. They have strict rules about tunneling so the water drains out of the mine automatically due to gravity. They also have special trades for shoring up the mine, looking for seams of ore, general excavation and other fields ending with special stonemasons that widen out the tunnel to make it appear to me the inside of a masonry structure. In my lore, dwarves favor octagonal buildings with dome roofs. They make their columns octagonal shaped, and the north face of the octagon has a special texture so that any dwarf can place their hand on the column and know which way is north.
Also in my Lore, hill dwarves live on the slopes of the mountains and hills immediately outside a dwarven mining settlement. They do the outdoor things that support the community, and the mountain dwarves do the inside things. So the Hill dwarves farm and raise pigs and harvest trees. They gather the things the mountains dwarves need and the mountain dwarves respond in kind.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Realistically, the way you get wealthy by mining is by finding a good location for a mine and then paying someone else to extract it. Mining itself is pretty much always dangerous, low paying work.
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I mean, this whole discussion has been well outside the realm of the game's rules from the start, so it's all basically house rules anyway.
I think a Xorn would be a good choice given their Treasure Sense ability.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
How do you feel about the spell fabricate?
Could you use that to make a 5 foot cube of metal ingots? If you need to see it then maybe locate object and mold earth to expose some?
Mining with magic.
I didn’t see what you did there.
According to the spell's description, I would say you can not turn a 5x5x5' cube of ore into a 5x5x5' cube of refined metal. You would just have a clean cube of ore. It says the final product is the same as the "quality" of the raw materials. But if you come up with a good spell that does produce permanently refined ore, I'm interested in learning about it for my world building.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
What you pay the miner a day is what the raw ore is worth.
The final metal is worth what it cost to process into a pure form.
Almost all pre industrial mining was easy surface mining. Nothing real deep or hard. A few ,very few, places had a vein good enough to make hard rock mining profitable.
Almost all metals were found just laying on the ground or in rivers.
Most commoners in the game only make a few coppers a day maybe a silver. Finding a few silvers worth of gold in a nugget could be a life saving event.
Any "mine" that produces anything close to a gold piece a day in ore will quickly become owned by the nobility. They are the ones with the arms and power to take it.
There is one kind of mining that was very common in the middle ages.
Salt.
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You are correct.
And salt was a very valuable commodity. Everyone needed it for food preservation.
I thought it was obvious from my wording, but what I am proposing is purely reflavoring. Instead of finding a chest of 100gp in the dungeon, the player mines 100gp of exposed ore during a short rest. It works because the DM is humoring the player and allowing them to roleplay their loot acquisition in a certain way. If you are more concerned with calculating historically-accurate approximations of effort and time to get X value of ore, you are free to do so but it's going to require way more work, making other players wait, and you're still changing rules anyway. I'm more concerned with keeping the game moving along.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
You do not have to do your calculations during play. Do everything before hand.
Just set the minimum and maximum grams of gold panned.
With modern gold mining using bulldozers and automated panning systems they still only get a few ounces per ton of gravel screened and washed.
even back in the 1800's in the big gold strikes in California they only panned out maybe half and ounce in a 16 hour day.
Your giving the player 100 times the best the world could ever hope for. If it was that easy gold in your world would be worth nothing. Copper would be worth more.
That is why characters go adventuring. Its easier than mining and farming. Not safer but easier. And far more profitable.
I'm currently playing a Mountain Dwarf Barbarian and have been doing so for over a year. The story arc is that he comes from a long family of Miners but hates it. Anyway, I'm doing a #NanoWriMo thing this year where I have to write 50,000 words in 30 days (November). I'm passionate about my dwarf, so I thought I would write about his upbringing and the mining society he comes from, why he despises it, etc.
It's morphed into an entire ecosystem. Right now, it's just for fun. I have no idea where I'm heading, but I've stumbled upon a handful of really useful links about ores & metals in DND and it's helping me shape my logic on things. The awesome magic armor and items that we all covet come from mining, gems, etc. I thought it would be fun to write about it a bit and see what happens.
Input on this post has been amazing. Thanks for the wisdom and idea sparks!
Angry Golems has been a fantastic resource. I'm mainly combining all of the information into one massive spreadsheet and parsing out a reasonable ecosystem with the information. All homebrew and just figments of my weird imagination. I tend to play characters that are entrepreneurial and always working a side hustle during the down time. The story I'm writing is about mining, the process of finding the ore vs. ingots, smelters, blast furnaces, sorting, etc. Through mining come gems and stones, as well, so that's been interesting. I never thought Basalt would be a thing in DND, but alas, it exists.
Angry Golem is the bomb.
Best of luck to you on your writing assignment and your character development.
Of course, I am writing a story about my NC Bard, his name is Bene Timber. That story is 190,000 words and he has just reached level 3.
I am also working on the lore for my worldbuilding, and the lore of dwarven mining is a component of it. In my lore I describe how Dwarves look for natural fissures in the rock and then they "go to town" but making a sort of "highway" out of the fissure. They have strict rules about tunneling so the water drains out of the mine automatically due to gravity. They also have special trades for shoring up the mine, looking for seams of ore, general excavation and other fields ending with special stonemasons that widen out the tunnel to make it appear to me the inside of a masonry structure. In my lore, dwarves favor octagonal buildings with dome roofs. They make their columns octagonal shaped, and the north face of the octagon has a special texture so that any dwarf can place their hand on the column and know which way is north.
Also in my Lore, hill dwarves live on the slopes of the mountains and hills immediately outside a dwarven mining settlement. They do the outdoor things that support the community, and the mountain dwarves do the inside things. So the Hill dwarves farm and raise pigs and harvest trees. They gather the things the mountains dwarves need and the mountain dwarves respond in kind.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Realistically, the way you get wealthy by mining is by finding a good location for a mine and then paying someone else to extract it. Mining itself is pretty much always dangerous, low paying work.