Skills for Underground Construction

[pgb]

Not answering the original question directly, but I'd allow a limited amount of Lifting ST that affected only digging, as another way of representing higher effective ST due to technique or physique Probably only costing 1/level i.e. a (levelled?) perk. There's a precedent with the perk doing a similar thing for effective ST for bow or crossbow use.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by dcarson

A Physical Work(HT) skill with a required specialty to cover any kind of physically demanding job and learning how to minimize the effort, train the right muscles. Like the scrawny old farmer that can toss more bails of hay than the football star teen.

I hadn't considered this, and probably should have, so thank you. Also, see below.

Originally Posted by pgb

Not answering the original question directly, but I'd allow a limited amount of Lifting ST that affected only digging, as another way of representing higher effective ST due to technique or physique Probably only costing 1/level i.e. a (levelled?) perk. There's a precedent with the perk doing a similar thing for effective ST for bow or crossbow use.

I'd say a perk, but it also occurs to me that this could be a technique or optional specialization of the Lifting skill.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by dcarson

A Physical Work(HT) skill with a required specialty to cover any kind of physically demanding job and learning how to minimize the effort, train the right muscles. Like the scrawny old farmer that can toss more bails of hay than the football star teen.

This makes sense for a HT/A skill. It could also represent animals conditioned to perform physically demanding tasks like carrying loads.

Laborer (HT/Average)
Defaults: Crewman-3, Farming-3, Hiking-3, Lifting-3, Masonry-3, Soldier-3, Smith-3.

You’re trained to perform all manner of repetitive, physically strenuous, non-combat tasks such as chopping wood, digging, turning cranks, tossing hay bales, and pulling loads.

Roll vs. Laborer skill when you attempt to drag, push, pull, or shift (but not lift) a heavy object. On a success, increase your Basic Lift by 5% per point by which you made your roll.

You may also substitute your skill for Basic Lift to determine how fast you dig (p. B350), or for HT to determine how quickly you fatigue when doing tasks such as chopping wood or operating human-powered machines.

Animals can learn this skill to help them better adapt to carrying packs, pulling wagons, or powering machines.

Any skill which involves repetitive non-combat physical activity might default to Laborer, but only for tasks which could reasonably be part of that skill. For example, low-tech Seamanship defaults to Laborer when performing tasks like hoisting sails, manning pumps, or turning capstans.


It could also be combined with the following perk.

Trained Strength (Type) (Leveled)
You get a +1 bonus per level to Lifting ST to perform a single, repetitive non-combat task, such as breaking rocks, chopping wood, digging, or carrying a certain type of load.
This is the generic, non-combat version of perks such as Strongbow. Realistically, the GM might limit the type of tasks this perk benefits or limit characters to just 1-2 levels.

[Varyon]

I could see a Digging (HT/E) skill being used, in addition to what's already been noted, in the following functions:

Per-based to notice areas where you shouldn't dig unless you want a collapse to occur (this would also serve as a complementary skill for noticing - or creating - relevant traps).

IQ-based to shore up what you've been digging, stabilizing it against collapse. This is fairly basic, only able to support a fairly short, shallow tunnel - more complex tunnels call for an appropriate flavor of Engineering.

HT-based for its primary use, reducing the rate of fatiguing. By default, digging burns FP at a rate of n per hour, where n is set by the type of ground involved - 1 for loose soil, 2 for ordinary soil, 3 for hard soil, and 4 for rock/stone. The higher resolution option that would be called for to make a Digging skill relevant here would be to change these to rolling against HT every so often to avoid losing 1 FP* - every 30 minutes for loose soil, every 15 minutes for ordinary soil, every 10 minutes for hard soil, and every 7.5 minutes for rock/stone. Digging skill could replace HT for this.

Finally, I'd probably adopt the Trained ST concept from Technical Grappling, using the Fast progression for Digging, to represent trained diggers being able to dig more rapidly - they functionally have higher ST for digging purposes.


As a potential further option, it seems like it should be possible to push yourself to dig faster. The default rules parallel those for Hiking, so pushing yourself paralleling the rules for Running seems appropriate. Jogging means going about twice as fast as Hiking, while Sprinting means going twice as fast as Jogging. Jogging burns through FP at 30x (!!!) the rate of Hiking**, while Sprinting burns through FP at 4x the rate of Jogging. So, you can dig at twice normal speed by instead rolling every minute, 30 seconds, 20 seconds, and 15 seconds, for loose soil, ordinary soil, hard soil, and rock/stone, respectively. You can dig at 4x normal speed by rolling every 15 seconds, 7.5 seconds, 5 seconds, or 2.5 seconds, respectively. Going faster than this would call for Extra Effort.


*This assumes the default rates are appropriate for a character with effective HT of 10 (such that the character will, on average, fail at half the rolls - so losing 1 FP every hour, every 30 minutes, every 20 minutes, and every 15 minutes, respectively).
**Hiking costs a flat 1 FP per hour with no rolling involved, so if you did roll for it you'd be rolling every 30 minutes.