Mining Rules in 3.x or Pathfinder?

[Endarire]

Greetings, all!

Are there any official rules for mining (effectively digging the ground) to excavate valuable materials, like gems and ore?  Basically, if I dig for an hour in environment X, what charts are there to determine what I find/excavate?  If not official, what are the best homebrew rules around?

I ask because I'm interested in making a character who starts out mining, then opens a business, and adventures on the side.  I was pondering Warblade due to fighting skills and the STR focus being logical.  I'm aware of the official business rules from Dungeon Master's Guide II and Frank & K's revisions for these business rules.

I'm also well aware of the combat side.  I'm specifically after mining rules.

EDIT: To be more specific, are there any tables, charts, or/and rules that are significantly more specific than just a Profession check?  I mean finding a dig site, determining its worth, excavating it, hauling stuff to market, fighting off intruders, building supports...  that sorta thing.

[Nanshork]

IIRC Races of the Dragon has some sort of mining rules in it.  It won't have most of the specifics you're looking for since most of that falls under the vague profession checks.

[Keldar]

Yep, Races of the Dragon, page 98 has mining rules.  A profession check DC 15 gets a 5 foot cube, with an extra cube per 5 over.  Size impacts the rate.  Materials impact the check.

[Endarire]

I'm somewhat diappointed that the material of the mining tools (steel, adamantine) has no noted impact on how much you can mine, but OK.  Also that alchemy (see Artificers) seem so much better at mining than, say, a strong Warblade.

[CaptRory]

Once you have actual rules in hand, you could ask the GM if you're allowed to make them more robust.

I seem to recall that some time ago there were rules for building your own fortress, and it gave rules for using class abilities and magical treasures to help it along. I don't remember what book it was in though. It included, if I recall correctly, rules for excavating with wands of lightning and all sorts of wild things. Might be something to look at if you can find it.

[Sevash]

Rules for fortress and other base-building are the entirety of the contents in the Stronghold Builder's Guide.  I'd be lying if I said it wasn't one of my favorites, simply because I get a bit nit-picky about what I want my character's base of operations to look like right down to the end tables.

It does have rules on landscaping and excavating for the purposes of establishing a foundation for a fortress, but not necessarily for mine digging.  It DOES, however, list what the cost of various things will be based on how far it is from a pre-existing settlement and proximity to available natural resources like a good mining vein(as well as other factors such as legal land disputes, roaming monsters, etc).  And as the good Captain mentioned, it also has a list of core magic items that are handy for either building or furnishing such an establishment.

And maybe take a page from Dungeonscape for what the effects of different tools might do?  An adamantine pick may allow for harder metals (such as more adamantine or obdurium, detailed in the Stronghold Builder's Guide as a sort of Super-Adamantine) to be mined at the same rate as iron.  A mithral pick could allow for the mining of softer metals at a faster rate, since swinging a lighter pick generates less fatigue--but on things as hard as steel it's cancelled out by the lower impact force per swing, since it also has less mass.

[X-Codes]

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0677.html - Only the first few lines in the first frame is what's really notable, here.

If you want to FIND adamantine, then that's up to your DM to figure out how that works.  There aren't any rules on prospecting, I feel, and they'd probably involve a relevant Knowledge check rather than a Profession check.  Looking for rules to dig up a finite quantity of adamantine ore is not going to work well, either, since the rules for making stuff out of adamantine are just as abstract as the quantity of stuff needed for spell components.  As a result, if you want to put adamantine to use instead of just digging it up and selling it, then you really should be sticking to the Craft and Profession checks, I feel.  10 lbs. of adamantine is by all rights enough to make at least 10 adamantine daggers with a market price of 3301 gp each, or you can use it all to make one heavy flail with a market price of 3315 gp.

In other words, if you don't want the entire in-game economy to go berserk, then you should probably be working with your GM to develop rules for much more than *just* prospecting and *just* mining.  Alternatively, if you've got a mine with adamantine in it, then you can dig up X gp worth of adamantine, dependent on your profession check, which then can then be put towards the 20 gp raw materials price of an arrow or the 1000 gp raw materials price of an adamantine weapon, etc., and then Craft checks are used to turn that abstract quantity of raw materials into something usable.