Prospecting as a PC skill is based upon historical and current prospecting for valuable mineral wealth. Humans have leveled mountains, changed the course of human history, and created entertainment such the musical movie “Paint your Wagon” and several reality television series based on people looking for gold.
In my home campaign, while playing Keep on the Borderlands, Jewel a female dwarf fighter bought a prospecting permit from the castellan (the governor of a castle) to legally be prospecting in the nearby rivers and streams. She looked for gold using a prospecting gravity trap gold pan (a deep dish with small ridges on the interior side, a hand shovel, six shatter resistant glass bottles, and her prospecting skill that increased her chances to find gold. When they did find gold, they would find (1d6 +1) gold coins worth of gold per person per day.
My PCs prospecting agreement means that they split fifty percent of the profits with the keep’s castellan who owns the land that the gold is found within. The party’s paladin keeps track of all the gold that their party unearths. Prospecting is good way for my PCs to earn extra money, and only fighting an occasional wandering monster.
Your world seems to have a LOT of gold in them thar streams. 18 to 63 grams of gold a day would indicate a vein of gold ore the stream is passing through. IF they are encountering it frequently in many streams, then that's a lot of gold bearing spaces, which might devalue gold if there was an actual economy.
1d6+1 grams per day on a 10% chance of a stream having gold is more reasonable in terms of something more closely resembling Earth. If Gold is more scarce, that would go down, if gold is more coon (and therefore less valuable) that would go up.
Some form of Int check to determine if a stream is likely to have gold (high DC -- 20, 25), then just a hard DC to have success for a few flakes.
OF course, the downside is that if you find a reliable source, you have the "gold rush" and/or the local nobel taking it over for themselves (which is fitting -- prospectors sought out prospective gold claims, and then sold claims to miners).
IT is, however, a good call on a toolset that isn't normally found.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I'm guessing its not a PC skill for the same reason farming isn't a PC skill - time.
Prospecting is not something you do between your turns on watch. It is something that takes day, weeks, maybe months.
It would work well as a downtime activity (if the game had rules for downtime activities) but we want downtime activities to consume money, not generate it. After all, if a character is making a good income from prospecting (or crafting or running and inn or whatever), then why are they out doing the dangerous adventuring stuff?
It would make a good background. "I've climbed all over hills like these in my prospecting days."
After all, if a character is making a good income from prospecting (or crafting or running and inn or whatever), then why are they out doing the dangerous adventuring stuff?
Ahem...
The thrill of Adventure.
To seek out New Experiences.
To boldly go where no one has gone before.
To solve a mystery.
To find love.
To gain vengeance.
To sail beyond the sunset and all the eastern stars.
To find the second star to the right, so they can keep going until dawn.
To unearth ancient civilizations.
To free the oppressed.
To defeat an evil scheme.
To explore strange new lands, to seek out new peoples, and new cultures.
To answer a question.
To save their village.
To save their family.
To save their people.
To have freedom and few responsibilities.
To see where the road leads.
To make even more money.
To build something of value.
To recover something lost.
To get high.
To get laid.
To offer something of value to their Patron.
To find a way out of this crazy world.
To find a way to stay in this wonderful world.
To test themselves against dangers.
To grow stronger.
To find new places to pan gold.
Because it is there to be done.
The reasons they do the adventuring stuff are usually not actually about how nice a living they make (and prospecting is not a nice living).
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
But it's not a practical player skill, much like there's no tool set for growing plants. There's spells and burrowing speeds and magic items for creating tunnels in a fraction of the time, and as this is a focused adventure game and not a large scale fantasy sim, there's little to no player application for prospecting/mining. If you want it as a background thing, that's cool, but as I've seen others say here "roleplay is free".
Broadly speaking, prospecting comes under the broad umbrella of "non-adventuring job skills", which 5e mostly abstracts as tool proficiencies or ignores completely because they really do not matter to resolving exploring a dungeon or fighting a dragon. Not every edition did this, in 3.5e the "profession" skills existed.. and were mostly ignored because they didn't do anything useful (they allowed you to earn okay money at first level, but the way they scaled meant by mid levels it was a complete waste of time).
If you want to pay some attention to this, I'd probably just allow every PC a free job proficiency, however they choose to define it.
But it's not a practical player skill, much like there's no tool set for growing plants. There's spells and burrowing speeds and magic items for creating tunnels in a fraction of the time, and as this is a focused adventure game and not a large scale fantasy sim, there's little to no player application for prospecting/mining. If you want it as a background thing, that's cool, but as I've seen others say here "roleplay is free".
beg pardon.
Did you really just call a game where folks simulate a large scale fantastical alternate reality with magic and monsters and heroes "not a fantasy sim"?
I mean, yes, it does make for a good background and is great for downtime, but it could just as easily be used as a part of fulfilling a quest line. As could "growing vegetables", but that one would take at least three months, assuming the plants and seasons are comparable to Earth.
Had a 12 year old sit down at a table one night with a small clay pot in which she had planted beans. Those beans sprouted and grew, and the reason she plopped them down was she was an herbalist and the plant represented her character's carrying around a belt with a bunch of small clay pots on it in which she grew her herbs. it was a prop. Also, a school project.
Ain't no "useful player skill for growing plants" -- but there's herbalism and medicine. Role play is free, but sometimes roleplay benefits from a bit more creativity..
I can see use and value in adding in a prospecting kit -- hell, make it a subset of survival, or investigation (which can also have props, or did they finally remove the fire starting magnifying glass from the equipment lists?). I wouldn't give that much coin (but I run a coin poor world where there is an actual economy of sorts), but also I find that a bit too fantastical. half that, sure. Not just gold, but platinum, maybe a rare mineral needed fro some peculiar quest, maybe a bit of a special thing in exchange for a spell, since surely they don't just come up with spells off the top of their head in your world! They are supposed to be finding them, after all.
not a fantasy sim, LOL!
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
But it's not a practical player skill, much like there's no tool set for growing plants. There's spells and burrowing speeds and magic items for creating tunnels in a fraction of the time, and as this is a focused adventure game and not a large scale fantasy sim, there's little to no player application for prospecting/mining. If you want it as a background thing, that's cool, but as I've seen others say here "roleplay is free".
beg pardon.
Did you really just call a game where folks simulate a large scale fantastical alternate reality with magic and monsters and heroes "not a fantasy sim"?
I mean, yes, it does make for a good background and is great for downtime, but it could just as easily be used as a part of fulfilling a quest line. As could "growing vegetables", but that one would take at least three months, assuming the plants and seasons are comparable to Earth.
Had a 12 year old sit down at a table one night with a small clay pot in which she had planted beans. Those beans sprouted and grew, and the reason she plopped them down was she was an herbalist and the plant represented her character's carrying around a belt with a bunch of small clay pots on it in which she grew her herbs. it was a prop. Also, a school project.
Ain't no "useful player skill for growing plants" -- but there's herbalism and medicine. Role play is free, but sometimes roleplay benefits from a bit more creativity..
I can see use and value in adding in a prospecting kit -- hell, make it a subset of survival, or investigation (which can also have props, or did they finally remove the fire starting magnifying glass from the equipment lists?). I wouldn't give that much coin (but I run a coin poor world where there is an actual economy of sorts), but also I find that a bit too fantastical. half that, sure. Not just gold, but platinum, maybe a rare mineral needed fro some peculiar quest, maybe a bit of a special thing in exchange for a spell, since surely they don't just come up with spells off the top of their head in your world! They are supposed to be finding them, after all.
not a fantasy sim, LOL!
I stand by "not a sim"; downtime is mostly handwaved or has generalized activities to essentially skip across the time. Resource gathering is either a matter of the DM directing the party to a source, or converting GP and possibly time directly into the resource. Crafting is likewise just a matter of inputting GP and time. It's a game about telling an adventure story, not simulating what the day-to-day grind of your characters in the setting would be. Thus while it does include some simulation elements, it's not a sim game because those are secondary and only crop up when convenient to the primary goal of telling a story.
And Herbalism and Medicine have no direct bearing on growing plants. Yes, hypothetically an apothecary/healer could grow an herb garden, but there's no mechanical system at all for growing plants the normal way in 5e. It is something that happens in the setting, but not something players are intended to do. It's fine for fluff/flavor someone can add to their character, but there's no reason for the system to have tool kits or rules for it. These thing are outside of 5e's scope of play.
You might be using a different definition of sim. It's certainly not an economic simulator, though, D&D economics wind up completely nonsensical if you actually look at the implications and prices bear little resemblance to reality (for example, a pound of flour and a chicken are the same cost).
I don't think success in prospecting is something can be achieved by mastering an artisan tool; and that is probably why it is not a PC skill defined in the game. The tools needed to perform this activity are available in some form in the game (picks, shovels, carts, gunpowder, etc.) and it probably wouldn't take much effort to modify some other items or build a reasonable cost create them in an homebrew environment. But overall, the act of prospecting probably does more to destroy a natural environment and very little to build up aspects of civilizations (for example one doesn't need to have mastered engineering to level mountains in search of precious metals). A guild or wealthy family could invest in a professional set up that results in an easy extraction of materials but these works would be above and beyond the basic elements of prospecting.
I think a ruling on skills like Nature and History as it relates to understanding the land and what factors to consider when selecting sites to excavate or water sources to explore; History and Investigation (via a library or with a train scholar) on how to design tunnels or equipment to assist in your efforts; and everyone favorites Perception when shifting through grounds and water to find the smallest of treasure. It really isn't profession where you are crafting for success; like a mason or a stone worker would. It is on that request research and knowledge on what signs to look for and how set up an operation based on the conditions of the site.
It is a great element to give the players, and can offer a wide range of game opportunities (both simple and fantastical). Good luck with implementing and have fun with it.
But it's not a practical player skill, much like there's no tool set for growing plants. There's spells and burrowing speeds and magic items for creating tunnels in a fraction of the time, and as this is a focused adventure game and not a large scale fantasy sim, there's little to no player application for prospecting/mining. If you want it as a background thing, that's cool, but as I've seen others say here "roleplay is free".
beg pardon.
Did you really just call a game where folks simulate a large scale fantastical alternate reality with magic and monsters and heroes "not a fantasy sim"?
I mean, yes, it does make for a good background and is great for downtime, but it could just as easily be used as a part of fulfilling a quest line. As could "growing vegetables", but that one would take at least three months, assuming the plants and seasons are comparable to Earth.
Had a 12 year old sit down at a table one night with a small clay pot in which she had planted beans. Those beans sprouted and grew, and the reason she plopped them down was she was an herbalist and the plant represented her character's carrying around a belt with a bunch of small clay pots on it in which she grew her herbs. it was a prop. Also, a school project.
Ain't no "useful player skill for growing plants" -- but there's herbalism and medicine. Role play is free, but sometimes roleplay benefits from a bit more creativity..
I can see use and value in adding in a prospecting kit -- hell, make it a subset of survival, or investigation (which can also have props, or did they finally remove the fire starting magnifying glass from the equipment lists?). I wouldn't give that much coin (but I run a coin poor world where there is an actual economy of sorts), but also I find that a bit too fantastical. half that, sure. Not just gold, but platinum, maybe a rare mineral needed fro some peculiar quest, maybe a bit of a special thing in exchange for a spell, since surely they don't just come up with spells off the top of their head in your world! They are supposed to be finding them, after all.
not a fantasy sim, LOL!
I stand by "not a sim"; downtime is mostly handwaved or has generalized activities to essentially skip across the time. Resource gathering is either a matter of the DM directing the party to a source, or converting GP and possibly time directly into the resource. Crafting is likewise just a matter of inputting GP and time. It's a game about telling an adventure story, not simulating what the day-to-day grind of your characters in the setting would be. Thus while it does include some simulation elements, it's not a sim game because those are secondary and only crop up when convenient to the primary goal of telling a story.
And Herbalism and Medicine have no direct bearing on growing plants. Yes, hypothetically an apothecary/healer could grow an herb garden, but there's no mechanical system at all for growing plants the normal way in 5e. It is something that happens in the setting, but not something players are intended to do. It's fine for fluff/flavor someone can add to their character, but there's no reason for the system to have tool kits or rules for it. These thing are outside of 5e's scope of play.
overly narrow, perhaps?
The combat process itself is a simulation. Every rule in the game is a simulation. Theater of the mind or operation on a VTT -- all simulations (sims). THe entire game is a sim. What it focuses on is a factor of individual play styles (I mean, very obviously, OP has a use for it).
I'm not arguing that it isn't a "gardening" sim or a "mining" sim. But it is a fantasy sim. in the most literal way possible.
So, perhaps Pantagruel is correct -- we may be operating from different understandings of what a sim is.
Professionally, I would argue that the game is a Simulation, and these little subsystems and bits and such are Models. I would even go further and note that D&D is a Representational Simulation, because it utilizes abstract metrics meant to replicate general imagination processes (HP, Levels).
You may be looking at it from the perspective of "gaming simulation" of a particular model, and thereby at degrees of complexity -- farming sims, mining sims, sim city, civilization, etc.
All of those are indeed simulations -- sims -- but all of them ultimately derive their basis from other sims that exist -- monopoly is a sim. Risk is a sim. Battleship is a sim. games, as a general whole, are all Sims.
So the difference could be one of perspective -- I am looking at as someone who spends a lot of time developing and identifying parameters for simulations of social systems. So my perspective might be from a larger scale than you are using, which could be narrower and more focused on a specific type of game.
WHich is not to say that they couldn't be used in the game as a whole -- one of the strange quirks to running open world games is that sometime the players just up and decide to turn it into a dang farming or civilizations sim, lol.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
But it's not a practical player skill, much like there's no tool set for growing plants. There's spells and burrowing speeds and magic items for creating tunnels in a fraction of the time, and as this is a focused adventure game and not a large scale fantasy sim, there's little to no player application for prospecting/mining. If you want it as a background thing, that's cool, but as I've seen others say here "roleplay is free".
beg pardon.
Did you really just call a game where folks simulate a large scale fantastical alternate reality with magic and monsters and heroes "not a fantasy sim"?
I mean, yes, it does make for a good background and is great for downtime, but it could just as easily be used as a part of fulfilling a quest line. As could "growing vegetables", but that one would take at least three months, assuming the plants and seasons are comparable to Earth.
Had a 12 year old sit down at a table one night with a small clay pot in which she had planted beans. Those beans sprouted and grew, and the reason she plopped them down was she was an herbalist and the plant represented her character's carrying around a belt with a bunch of small clay pots on it in which she grew her herbs. it was a prop. Also, a school project.
Ain't no "useful player skill for growing plants" -- but there's herbalism and medicine. Role play is free, but sometimes roleplay benefits from a bit more creativity..
I can see use and value in adding in a prospecting kit -- hell, make it a subset of survival, or investigation (which can also have props, or did they finally remove the fire starting magnifying glass from the equipment lists?). I wouldn't give that much coin (but I run a coin poor world where there is an actual economy of sorts), but also I find that a bit too fantastical. half that, sure. Not just gold, but platinum, maybe a rare mineral needed fro some peculiar quest, maybe a bit of a special thing in exchange for a spell, since surely they don't just come up with spells off the top of their head in your world! They are supposed to be finding them, after all.
not a fantasy sim, LOL!
I stand by "not a sim"; downtime is mostly handwaved or has generalized activities to essentially skip across the time. Resource gathering is either a matter of the DM directing the party to a source, or converting GP and possibly time directly into the resource. Crafting is likewise just a matter of inputting GP and time. It's a game about telling an adventure story, not simulating what the day-to-day grind of your characters in the setting would be. Thus while it does include some simulation elements, it's not a sim game because those are secondary and only crop up when convenient to the primary goal of telling a story.
And Herbalism and Medicine have no direct bearing on growing plants. Yes, hypothetically an apothecary/healer could grow an herb garden, but there's no mechanical system at all for growing plants the normal way in 5e. It is something that happens in the setting, but not something players are intended to do. It's fine for fluff/flavor someone can add to their character, but there's no reason for the system to have tool kits or rules for it. These thing are outside of 5e's scope of play.
overly narrow, perhaps?
The combat process itself is a simulation. Every rule in the game is a simulation. Theater of the mind or operation on a VTT -- all simulations (sims). THe entire game is a sim. What it focuses on is a factor of individual play styles (I mean, very obviously, OP has a use for it).
I'm not arguing that it isn't a "gardening" sim or a "mining" sim. But it is a fantasy sim. in the most literal way possible.
So, perhaps Pantagruel is correct -- we may be operating from different understandings of what a sim is.
Professionally, I would argue that the game is a Simulation, and these little subsystems and bits and such are Models. I would even go further and note that D&D is a Representational Simulation, because it utilizes abstract metrics meant to replicate general imagination processes (HP, Levels).
You may be looking at it from the perspective of "gaming simulation" of a particular model, and thereby at degrees of complexity -- farming sims, mining sims, sim city, civilization, etc.
All of those are indeed simulations -- sims -- but all of them ultimately derive their basis from other sims that exist -- monopoly is a sim. Risk is a sim. Battleship is a sim. games, as a general whole, are all Sims.
So the difference could be one of perspective -- I am looking at as someone who spends a lot of time developing and identifying parameters for simulations of social systems. So my perspective might be from a larger scale than you are using, which could be narrower and more focused on a specific type of game.
WHich is not to say that they couldn't be used in the game as a whole -- one of the strange quirks to running open world games is that sometime the players just up and decide to turn it into a dang farming or civilizations sim, lol.
Literally every RPG ever is a sim by your definition, which imo makes it too broad to be practical. In fact, the vast majority of video games would fit too. Most games do involve an element of simulation, but few are specifically dedicated to providing the kind of in-depth experience found the games I’ve seen referred to as “sims”.
And I realize that people can hypothetically make anything happen in a D&D game, but running a farming sim with it is clearly not what the system was intended or designed for.
But it's not a practical player skill, much like there's no tool set for growing plants. There's spells and burrowing speeds and magic items for creating tunnels in a fraction of the time, and as this is a focused adventure game and not a large scale fantasy sim, there's little to no player application for prospecting/mining. If you want it as a background thing, that's cool, but as I've seen others say here "roleplay is free".
beg pardon.
Did you really just call a game where folks simulate a large scale fantastical alternate reality with magic and monsters and heroes "not a fantasy sim"?
I mean, yes, it does make for a good background and is great for downtime, but it could just as easily be used as a part of fulfilling a quest line. As could "growing vegetables", but that one would take at least three months, assuming the plants and seasons are comparable to Earth.
Had a 12 year old sit down at a table one night with a small clay pot in which she had planted beans. Those beans sprouted and grew, and the reason she plopped them down was she was an herbalist and the plant represented her character's carrying around a belt with a bunch of small clay pots on it in which she grew her herbs. it was a prop. Also, a school project.
Ain't no "useful player skill for growing plants" -- but there's herbalism and medicine. Role play is free, but sometimes roleplay benefits from a bit more creativity..
I can see use and value in adding in a prospecting kit -- hell, make it a subset of survival, or investigation (which can also have props, or did they finally remove the fire starting magnifying glass from the equipment lists?). I wouldn't give that much coin (but I run a coin poor world where there is an actual economy of sorts), but also I find that a bit too fantastical. half that, sure. Not just gold, but platinum, maybe a rare mineral needed fro some peculiar quest, maybe a bit of a special thing in exchange for a spell, since surely they don't just come up with spells off the top of their head in your world! They are supposed to be finding them, after all.
not a fantasy sim, LOL!
I stand by "not a sim"; downtime is mostly handwaved or has generalized activities to essentially skip across the time. Resource gathering is either a matter of the DM directing the party to a source, or converting GP and possibly time directly into the resource. Crafting is likewise just a matter of inputting GP and time. It's a game about telling an adventure story, not simulating what the day-to-day grind of your characters in the setting would be. Thus while it does include some simulation elements, it's not a sim game because those are secondary and only crop up when convenient to the primary goal of telling a story.
And Herbalism and Medicine have no direct bearing on growing plants. Yes, hypothetically an apothecary/healer could grow an herb garden, but there's no mechanical system at all for growing plants the normal way in 5e. It is something that happens in the setting, but not something players are intended to do. It's fine for fluff/flavor someone can add to their character, but there's no reason for the system to have tool kits or rules for it. These thing are outside of 5e's scope of play.
overly narrow, perhaps?
The combat process itself is a simulation. Every rule in the game is a simulation. Theater of the mind or operation on a VTT -- all simulations (sims). THe entire game is a sim. What it focuses on is a factor of individual play styles (I mean, very obviously, OP has a use for it).
I'm not arguing that it isn't a "gardening" sim or a "mining" sim. But it is a fantasy sim. in the most literal way possible.
So, perhaps Pantagruel is correct -- we may be operating from different understandings of what a sim is.
Professionally, I would argue that the game is a Simulation, and these little subsystems and bits and such are Models. I would even go further and note that D&D is a Representational Simulation, because it utilizes abstract metrics meant to replicate general imagination processes (HP, Levels).
You may be looking at it from the perspective of "gaming simulation" of a particular model, and thereby at degrees of complexity -- farming sims, mining sims, sim city, civilization, etc.
All of those are indeed simulations -- sims -- but all of them ultimately derive their basis from other sims that exist -- monopoly is a sim. Risk is a sim. Battleship is a sim. games, as a general whole, are all Sims.
So the difference could be one of perspective -- I am looking at as someone who spends a lot of time developing and identifying parameters for simulations of social systems. So my perspective might be from a larger scale than you are using, which could be narrower and more focused on a specific type of game.
WHich is not to say that they couldn't be used in the game as a whole -- one of the strange quirks to running open world games is that sometime the players just up and decide to turn it into a dang farming or civilizations sim, lol.
Literally every RPG ever is a sim by your definition, which imo makes it too broad to be practical. In fact, the vast majority of video games would fit too. Most games do involve an element of simulation, but few are specifically dedicated to providing the kind of in-depth experience found the games I’ve seen referred to as “sims”.
And I realize that people can hypothetically make anything happen in a D&D game, but running a farming sim with it is clearly not what the system was intended or designed for.
Yes, all of them are Sims.
Nor is it too broad to be practical (it is a standard used globally for the last sixty years).
sim, for gaming, is used as a marketing terminology.
and yes, that is not what the simulation is designed to encompass in detail (it lacks a model for it).
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
“The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
In my campaign, prospecting is for low level, player characters from about first to third level. These PCs need to make some extra money with a low level of risk. These PCs make extra money to buy consumable items such as food, arrows, and healing potions.
Moreover, they are only finding enough gold or other valuable metals to purchase consumable supplies. They are not going to dig up every speck of gold in any given stream or river.
Also, they are exploring in dangerous areas that most prospectors would not search within. It is also much safer than digging up tumulus or barrow burial mounds, and then fighting the undead.
Lastly, my campaign has a variant of the Detect Magic spell. Detect Metal has the same level, casting time, range, target, components, duration, and classes that can use that spell as Detect Magic. Somehow I forgot to include this in my first post.
1d6+1 grams per day on a 10% chance of a stream having gold is more reasonable in terms of something more closely resembling Earth. If Gold is more scarce, that would go down, if gold is more coon (and therefore less valuable) that would go up.
Just out of curiousity, how'd you end up with these fascinating numbers?
1d6+1 grams per day on a 10% chance of a stream having gold is more reasonable in terms of something more closely resembling Earth. If Gold is more scarce, that would go down, if gold is more coon (and therefore less valuable) that would go up.
Just out of curiosity, how'd you end up with these fascinating numbers?
I googled how much a typical prospector would find historically, and what the rough estimate of streams containing gold bearing ore were.
It's actually pretty high (fantasy world, after all).
I also happened to know how much a typical prospector would grab out of the stream each day during the early part of California Gold Rush (one of those innumerable odd bits of trivia) --that's 1 to 2 troy ounces -- and that Gold deposits in streams only happen when the stream comes from an artesian based source that passes through a deep vein or a runoff sources that passes through/over an exposed vein.
And that's pretty rare in the real world -- less than a 1% chance --so, again, fantasy world.
It is, then high and common enough that it gives the act of prospecting as a part of game play a more fun feel, without making it too overbalancing in the standard game's economics.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Typically, a prospector would spend weeks or more likely months working by themselves in order to come up with a single small sack of gold dust. Of course, they were rarely the ones who got rich, either. The people who owned the stores they bought supplies from, the saloons they got drunk in, and the brothels they sought companionship in tended to be the ones who made the real money.
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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.
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Prospecting as a PC skill is based upon historical and current prospecting for valuable mineral wealth. Humans have leveled mountains, changed the course of human history, and created entertainment such the musical movie “Paint your Wagon” and several reality television series based on people looking for gold.
In my home campaign, while playing Keep on the Borderlands, Jewel a female dwarf fighter bought a prospecting permit from the castellan (the governor of a castle) to legally be prospecting in the nearby rivers and streams. She looked for gold using a prospecting gravity trap gold pan (a deep dish with small ridges on the interior side, a hand shovel, six shatter resistant glass bottles, and her prospecting skill that increased her chances to find gold. When they did find gold, they would find (1d6 +1) gold coins worth of gold per person per day.
My PCs prospecting agreement means that they split fifty percent of the profits with the keep’s castellan who owns the land that the gold is found within. The party’s paladin keeps track of all the gold that their party unearths. Prospecting is good way for my PCs to earn extra money, and only fighting an occasional wandering monster.
Prospecting Tools.
Your world seems to have a LOT of gold in them thar streams. 18 to 63 grams of gold a day would indicate a vein of gold ore the stream is passing through. IF they are encountering it frequently in many streams, then that's a lot of gold bearing spaces, which might devalue gold if there was an actual economy.
1d6+1 grams per day on a 10% chance of a stream having gold is more reasonable in terms of something more closely resembling Earth. If Gold is more scarce, that would go down, if gold is more coon (and therefore less valuable) that would go up.
Some form of Int check to determine if a stream is likely to have gold (high DC -- 20, 25), then just a hard DC to have success for a few flakes.
OF course, the downside is that if you find a reliable source, you have the "gold rush" and/or the local nobel taking it over for themselves (which is fitting -- prospectors sought out prospective gold claims, and then sold claims to miners).
IT is, however, a good call on a toolset that isn't normally found.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I'm guessing its not a PC skill for the same reason farming isn't a PC skill - time.
Prospecting is not something you do between your turns on watch. It is something that takes day, weeks, maybe months.
It would work well as a downtime activity (if the game had rules for downtime activities) but we want downtime activities to consume money, not generate it. After all, if a character is making a good income from prospecting (or crafting or running and inn or whatever), then why are they out doing the dangerous adventuring stuff?
It would make a good background. "I've climbed all over hills like these in my prospecting days."
Ahem...
The reasons they do the adventuring stuff are usually not actually about how nice a living they make (and prospecting is not a nice living).
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
But it's not a practical player skill, much like there's no tool set for growing plants. There's spells and burrowing speeds and magic items for creating tunnels in a fraction of the time, and as this is a focused adventure game and not a large scale fantasy sim, there's little to no player application for prospecting/mining. If you want it as a background thing, that's cool, but as I've seen others say here "roleplay is free".
Broadly speaking, prospecting comes under the broad umbrella of "non-adventuring job skills", which 5e mostly abstracts as tool proficiencies or ignores completely because they really do not matter to resolving exploring a dungeon or fighting a dragon. Not every edition did this, in 3.5e the "profession" skills existed.. and were mostly ignored because they didn't do anything useful (they allowed you to earn okay money at first level, but the way they scaled meant by mid levels it was a complete waste of time).
If you want to pay some attention to this, I'd probably just allow every PC a free job proficiency, however they choose to define it.
beg pardon.
Did you really just call a game where folks simulate a large scale fantastical alternate reality with magic and monsters and heroes "not a fantasy sim"?
I mean, yes, it does make for a good background and is great for downtime, but it could just as easily be used as a part of fulfilling a quest line. As could "growing vegetables", but that one would take at least three months, assuming the plants and seasons are comparable to Earth.
Had a 12 year old sit down at a table one night with a small clay pot in which she had planted beans. Those beans sprouted and grew, and the reason she plopped them down was she was an herbalist and the plant represented her character's carrying around a belt with a bunch of small clay pots on it in which she grew her herbs. it was a prop. Also, a school project.
Ain't no "useful player skill for growing plants" -- but there's herbalism and medicine. Role play is free, but sometimes roleplay benefits from a bit more creativity..
I can see use and value in adding in a prospecting kit -- hell, make it a subset of survival, or investigation (which can also have props, or did they finally remove the fire starting magnifying glass from the equipment lists?). I wouldn't give that much coin (but I run a coin poor world where there is an actual economy of sorts), but also I find that a bit too fantastical. half that, sure. Not just gold, but platinum, maybe a rare mineral needed fro some peculiar quest, maybe a bit of a special thing in exchange for a spell, since surely they don't just come up with spells off the top of their head in your world! They are supposed to be finding them, after all.
not a fantasy sim, LOL!
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I stand by "not a sim"; downtime is mostly handwaved or has generalized activities to essentially skip across the time. Resource gathering is either a matter of the DM directing the party to a source, or converting GP and possibly time directly into the resource. Crafting is likewise just a matter of inputting GP and time. It's a game about telling an adventure story, not simulating what the day-to-day grind of your characters in the setting would be. Thus while it does include some simulation elements, it's not a sim game because those are secondary and only crop up when convenient to the primary goal of telling a story.
And Herbalism and Medicine have no direct bearing on growing plants. Yes, hypothetically an apothecary/healer could grow an herb garden, but there's no mechanical system at all for growing plants the normal way in 5e. It is something that happens in the setting, but not something players are intended to do. It's fine for fluff/flavor someone can add to their character, but there's no reason for the system to have tool kits or rules for it. These thing are outside of 5e's scope of play.
You might be using a different definition of sim. It's certainly not an economic simulator, though, D&D economics wind up completely nonsensical if you actually look at the implications and prices bear little resemblance to reality (for example, a pound of flour and a chicken are the same cost).
I don't think success in prospecting is something can be achieved by mastering an artisan tool; and that is probably why it is not a PC skill defined in the game. The tools needed to perform this activity are available in some form in the game (picks, shovels, carts, gunpowder, etc.) and it probably wouldn't take much effort to modify some other items or build a reasonable cost create them in an homebrew environment. But overall, the act of prospecting probably does more to destroy a natural environment and very little to build up aspects of civilizations (for example one doesn't need to have mastered engineering to level mountains in search of precious metals). A guild or wealthy family could invest in a professional set up that results in an easy extraction of materials but these works would be above and beyond the basic elements of prospecting.
I think a ruling on skills like Nature and History as it relates to understanding the land and what factors to consider when selecting sites to excavate or water sources to explore; History and Investigation (via a library or with a train scholar) on how to design tunnels or equipment to assist in your efforts; and everyone favorites Perception when shifting through grounds and water to find the smallest of treasure. It really isn't profession where you are crafting for success; like a mason or a stone worker would. It is on that request research and knowledge on what signs to look for and how set up an operation based on the conditions of the site.
It is a great element to give the players, and can offer a wide range of game opportunities (both simple and fantastical). Good luck with implementing and have fun with it.
overly narrow, perhaps?
The combat process itself is a simulation. Every rule in the game is a simulation. Theater of the mind or operation on a VTT -- all simulations (sims). THe entire game is a sim. What it focuses on is a factor of individual play styles (I mean, very obviously, OP has a use for it).
I'm not arguing that it isn't a "gardening" sim or a "mining" sim. But it is a fantasy sim. in the most literal way possible.
So, perhaps Pantagruel is correct -- we may be operating from different understandings of what a sim is.
Professionally, I would argue that the game is a Simulation, and these little subsystems and bits and such are Models. I would even go further and note that D&D is a Representational Simulation, because it utilizes abstract metrics meant to replicate general imagination processes (HP, Levels).
You may be looking at it from the perspective of "gaming simulation" of a particular model, and thereby at degrees of complexity -- farming sims, mining sims, sim city, civilization, etc.
All of those are indeed simulations -- sims -- but all of them ultimately derive their basis from other sims that exist -- monopoly is a sim. Risk is a sim. Battleship is a sim. games, as a general whole, are all Sims.
So the difference could be one of perspective -- I am looking at as someone who spends a lot of time developing and identifying parameters for simulations of social systems. So my perspective might be from a larger scale than you are using, which could be narrower and more focused on a specific type of game.
WHich is not to say that they couldn't be used in the game as a whole -- one of the strange quirks to running open world games is that sometime the players just up and decide to turn it into a dang farming or civilizations sim, lol.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Literally every RPG ever is a sim by your definition, which imo makes it too broad to be practical. In fact, the vast majority of video games would fit too. Most games do involve an element of simulation, but few are specifically dedicated to providing the kind of in-depth experience found the games I’ve seen referred to as “sims”.
And I realize that people can hypothetically make anything happen in a D&D game, but running a farming sim with it is clearly not what the system was intended or designed for.
Yes, all of them are Sims.
Nor is it too broad to be practical (it is a standard used globally for the last sixty years).
sim, for gaming, is used as a marketing terminology.
and yes, that is not what the simulation is designed to encompass in detail (it lacks a model for it).
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
“The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
In my campaign, prospecting is for low level, player characters from about first to third level. These PCs need to make some extra money with a low level of risk. These PCs make extra money to buy consumable items such as food, arrows, and healing potions.
Moreover, they are only finding enough gold or other valuable metals to purchase consumable supplies. They are not going to dig up every speck of gold in any given stream or river.
Also, they are exploring in dangerous areas that most prospectors would not search within. It is also much safer than digging up tumulus or barrow burial mounds, and then fighting the undead.
Lastly, my campaign has a variant of the Detect Magic spell. Detect Metal has the same level, casting time, range, target, components, duration, and classes that can use that spell as Detect Magic. Somehow I forgot to include this in my first post.
Just out of curiousity, how'd you end up with these fascinating numbers?
I googled how much a typical prospector would find historically, and what the rough estimate of streams containing gold bearing ore were.
It's actually pretty high (fantasy world, after all).
I also happened to know how much a typical prospector would grab out of the stream each day during the early part of California Gold Rush (one of those innumerable odd bits of trivia) --that's 1 to 2 troy ounces -- and that Gold deposits in streams only happen when the stream comes from an artesian based source that passes through a deep vein or a runoff sources that passes through/over an exposed vein.
And that's pretty rare in the real world -- less than a 1% chance --so, again, fantasy world.
It is, then high and common enough that it gives the act of prospecting as a part of game play a more fun feel, without making it too overbalancing in the standard game's economics.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Typically, a prospector would spend weeks or more likely months working by themselves in order to come up with a single small sack of gold dust. Of course, they were rarely the ones who got rich, either. The people who owned the stores they bought supplies from, the saloons they got drunk in, and the brothels they sought companionship in tended to be the ones who made the real money.
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.