bare-fingered digging and damage to hands?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

Yeah, especially if there's stuff like sharp stones mixed in with soft soil. I know personally when I'm digging barehanded I instinctively go slower and feel my way around to avoid pressure points.

There's also stuff like when you pull out roots growing in your yard. Those can pinch bare flesh if you're holding them in a rope-grip, gloves help avoid abrasions w/ that.

That stuff is more general discomfort than damage; seeing as using bare hands and using a mess kit see no difference, I assume the GURPS rules don't consider the person going slower to avoid discomfort, just injury.

Originally Posted by Plane

Probably don't need steel gauntets and stuff (that would limit gripping dexterity) I was just thinking 1 DR because I can't imagine digging w/ more force than it takes to deliver a "5 crushing" basic damage, which 1 DR protects from Hurting Yourself.
[...]
You rarely get 1d crushing from hurting yourself, were you thinking Collision rules for damage?

"Hurting Yourself" is for punching with a properly-formed fist, not striking with your fingertips (which is more-or-less what you do when digging barehanded). Realistically, I think things like Lethal Strike (which is a strike with the fingertips) should suffer more injury when striking a hard surface, rather than just reducing the DR limit, but the latter is a lot easier in play and is honestly more fun (remember, GURPS is not a reality simulator, it's a roleplaying system).

That said, if you want to make DR 1 (which you can probably manage with thick gardening gloves) sufficient, just make it 1 cr per unit time (I suggested 20 minutes, but you can use whatever) and you should be good. Or maybe even have it be something like thr/5 cr, round up (as for Hurting Yourself).

As for going with 1d? Part was a desire for variability - 1d has a chance of crippling the hand of a typical person, which would be an appropriate result if you suddenly jam your hand at full strength into a sharp rock. It also happened to be negated (on average) by DR 4, which is my go-to DR for ignoring the Hurting Yourself rules, not suffering the -3 for Parrying Unarmed, and so forth.

Originally Posted by Plane

So you figure the Burrower perk implies the steel tool rate and not the wood tool rate?

Yes. It just says "a shovel," without specifying if it's made of orichalcum, steel, wood, stone, or papier-mâché. That indicates the intent was that it's equivalent to having a typical shovel, and the rules are clear a typical shovel is a metal one.

Originally Posted by Plane

There's this gradual GURPS scale to superheroes who probably could dig through stones (although cleaving them in two w/ a crushing attack is a bit off-base, much like we lack rules for severing arms via Wrench Limb, you need a custom Cutting Attack from Fantasy to do it)

Honestly, that's probably handled fine by the fact such characters have high ST, which is what you base digging speed off of. A character with ST 20 who is digging barehanded but is careful enough to avoid injury (so 1/4th the rate of using metal tools) digs at the same rate as an ST 10 human using metal tools, regardless of if they're going through loose soil or solid rock (so long as both the Super and the mundane human are working on the same type of material).

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Just for rufference, we have a 14lb dog and I have seen her dig a 6" deep by 8" diameter conical hole in our grass in less than 15 seconds.

Dogs are pretty incredible diggers - both their claws and the way their body structure is layed out allows them to dig really well. I wouldn't oppose giving some of them the Burrower Perk, honestly. Of course, that was also for a quick burst of speed, comparable to Sprinting while the hourly rate is more akin to Hiking.