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Hey everyone!
I've been doing a 1on1 session with my friend recently, and we've recently gotten into building a stronghold for him.
The Pathfinder sessions I hold for either my friend or for other groups are always a mixture of Pathfinder and D&D 3.5e, so we used the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook from 3.5e.
After some in-depth and time consuming choosing and customizing, i've only run into one problem, and it's not that big of one.
The stronghold, which is essentially miniature thorp populated by soldiers surrounding a keep, embedded into a mountain, has access to a nearby Iron mine, this was determined during the creation of the stronghold from the book.
My question would be as follows:
For a level 12 player who owns a 120,000 Gold keep which is in sole control of an Iron mine, what would you feel is the appropriate income a month for such a mine?
How would you properly implement this mine without making it into a cardboard cut out taped onto the side of a mountain?
I've been scouring the internet for hours looking for some nice management ideas for things like this, but I just can't seem to find anything. Maybe Paizo has the exact book I might need and i'm just missing it, i'm not sure.
Check out Ultimate Campaign.
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well there is system like this in pathfinder but pretty sure, it is quite incompatible with stronghold builder guidebook and don't want you to throw all your hours of work away.
But anyway, you might take inspiration from ultimate campaign downtime rules or just read the famous adventure path, Kingmaker which is about kingdom building, again with rules included in Ultimate Campaign.
For the mining:
It will be tedious, but consider that a 1 cubic foot of iron weighs ~500 lbs. To get that, you need a lot of ore with rock often mixed in that is melted down and made into ingots through smelting before it can be used. There's a fair amount more rock than raw ore in a pound for pound sense. Now, work out what you need to to both chip off and transport that much material.
According to the Equipment chapter, that much iron is worth 500 silver. An unskilled workman earns 1 silver per day. A wagon costs 35 gold. Feed for livestock costs 5 silver per day. Stabling also costs 5 silver per day. You'll also need a rider and stable master. A single head of cattle costs 50 gold. A harness is 2 gold. A light pick costs 4 gold. Upfront costs look like 92 gold and 3 silver.
Thankfully, a healthy head of cattle who remains healthy will get you about 10 good productive years. However, a wagon, harnesses, stables, and feed all need repair and replacing. I'd give a well-made wagon about a month of use before requiring some form of repair in the 1 gp range and a quality harness about 6 likely requiring a replacement. The pick can last a long time but will require sharpening and repairs of its own, say weekly sharpening and monthly haft repair of 1 silver each. Let's assume taxes are roughly half. So, from a monthly perspective, your costs look something like 40 gold.
This, so far, is for basically a minimal, one man operation: a single miner, a single wagon rider, a single stable master. But, we're easy friggin targets. Let's say one guard to ride with the wagon and two to watch the mine and stable on different shifts, assuming the stable is right next to the mine. We don't want commoners who decided to pick up a sword and call themselves a soldier. That requires training. So, two trained guards will cost another 18 gold per month.
Some of these numbers will scale better than others. However, for a minimal operation, we need to make 58 gold a month. If you mine enough rock to yield two cubic feet of iron per week, you can profit about 42 gold per month after taxes. That's not enough to pay back initial costs should you be extended credit. That will take a little bit. That's still a pretty good income, enough to save and preempt many of next month's expenses, to pay on that credit, and so on.
Scale as you wish. However, 40 gold per month per "unit" of output as described above is pretty fair, I think. Keep in mind this doesn't account for illness, impromptu taxation or appropriation by by moody nobility, paying for the smelting itself, other transportation costs, and so on. Adjust as you see fit.
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Thanks for all of your responses, I really appreciate it.
And thanks a ton to you in particular Buri Reborn, it's always awesome to get perspective and this should really help me do what I need to do, thanks a lot!
It really is a shame there's no way of commending you other than a thanks, but I guess that'l have to do
No worries. Pay it forward.
No worries. Pay it forward.
Will do where possible
No worries. Pay it forward.
One more question.
How much do you reckon a singular untrained miner could produce in the mines lbs of iron wise.
IE: 1 worker = ?lbs/month
I tried to find something to base that on using just a pick, but I couldn't. However, 1 pound a week seemed too slow for five eight hour shifts. 1 pound a day seemed too much given all the rock and other stuff you extract with the iron ore. So, 2 pounds a week seemed like a nice compromise.
They... have income rules in the book you are using. Look a bit closer.
After accounting for costs of running the place, you likely will barely break even, or turn a small profit.
I think 'income source' gives you like 1% of the total value back per year, minus operations costs...
BTW, LOVE that book, I use it too.
Do NOT switch to the Campaign Guide unless you want to totally rebuild it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_ore
Medieval iron mining got about 60-70% iron by weight out of the ore it mined through the smelting process. So, You just need to figure out how many lb in ore can get pulled out in a month.
They... have income rules in the book you are using. Look a bit closer.
After accounting for costs of running the place, you likely will barely break even, or turn a small profit.
I think 'income source' gives you like 1% of the total value back per year, minus operations costs...
BTW, LOVE that book, I use it too.
Do NOT switch to the Campaign Guide unless you want to totally rebuild it.
I'd wager that is more because Paizo doesn't want a "win" scenario economically for PCs. However, mining rights are HUGELY profitable IRL, and they've basically always been throughout history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_ore
Medieval iron mining got about 60-70% iron by weight out of the ore it mined through the smelting process. So, You just need to figure out how many lb in ore can get pulled out in a month.
Right. That's the part I couldn't find a reference for, and I've never gone pick mining myself. :) I couldn't even spitball it. If I Googled for it, I got inundated with Minecraft and Runescape stuff.
Ive seen a reference on mining in the 1800's links it anywhere from 1 ton to 350 tons depending on the size of the mine. Most seem to fall anywhere from 10 to 40, but I suspect that depends on the size of the operation.
Ive seen a reference on mining in the 1800's links it anywhere from 1 ton to 350 tons depending on the size of the mine. Most seem to fall anywhere from 10 to 40, but I suspect that depends on the size of the operation.
And that is both tons of ore, and per month.
If you want to have a person being capable of 10 tons per month at 6 tons of iron after smelting, that's 1,200 gp in gross output.
To expound, simple transportation of 10 tons to a smelter with a light wagon (50 gp, not 35, oops) will take 10 trips. That's two trips each for three weeks and one week with three trips. For an ox pulling at 5 mph, you have a maximum distance of 66 miles to the smelter. That's far enough to outsource it to a whole other city if the distance is similar to that between Sandpoint and Magnamar.
1200 I'd expect thats an output involving a team of miners as well. Very few 1 man operations produce very much.
As far as the rules go, they're kind of scarce as to what sort of income a mine would generate, from what I can see, there's sort of three main rules for it:
1) The Stronghold Builder's Handbook specifies that if your stronghold has a single income source, you get 1% of the total value of the stronhold as income per year. So with a 120k stronghold, you get 1.2k gp per year as income. Or 100gp/month.
2) The Kingdom building rules specify that a mine boosts your local economy by +1, and provides you with 1 BP per kingdom turn. Given that a kingdom turn is a month, and 1 BP is roughly equivalent to 4k gp, so you get 4k gp/month.
3) The Downtime rules are full of stuff for profiting from your castle and structure... but they don't explicitly mention mining, forestry, or any other kind of primary-resource gathering operations. The closest it comes is in the "Teams" section, where you can hire a team of Craftspeople, which is a team of 3 people trained in a particular craft or profession, typically level 4 experts. Such a team has an earnings value of +4 (gp, Goods, or labour). Which translates to earning 40gp/month, or 36 capital (either goods or labour). Keeping in mind that you have to pay the costs of that capital (360gp, in this case). Which sounds like a loss, until you realize that you can use that capital to accomplish 720gp worth of crafting or construction. (or other things) And of course, multiply as needed to get the size of your operation.
So the first one scales depending on the size of your operations, but leaves all the details of how exactly you're making money up to the RP factor, but nails down the amount.
The second assumes that it is a mine of national significance, and thus rather large (aka since it can't share a hex with much else, it likely a reasonably large scale mine, and has dozens, if not hundreds of miners. So it probably represents the upper end of what your mine *could* become, but probably isn't yet.) Also a fixed amount that doesn't dwell on the details of exactly how many people are involved, or anything.
And the third one ignores what kind of mine it is, and simply tells you how productive a team of level 4 experts in mining would make/produce in the given time period. This one more or less ignores the structure, but emphasises the body count. Note: If you care to convert your structure into the downtime rules - or at least, the rooms in it - there's probably a fair number that will stack with your miners to produce quite a bit more.
((I wouldn't recommend converting fortifications over, though. While the DT system is remarkably detailed and usefl for the rooms and internals of a structure, it is abysmal at dealing with the fortifications and walls. What it has in the way of defensive stuff is most suited to mansions and inner-city stuff))
You have all been a massive help and I can't thank you all enough.
I'd love to be helpful as well but i've been gradually learning pathfinder by my lonesome to hose for friends since i've never had anyone legitimately teach me.
Whenever possible i'll be attempting to forward the notion.