A Land Far Away

what is a good class for a miner to have?

Umm... I'm going to move this to General Discussion, and wonder what the access is like for the Standards forum

Assuming you don't mean one of the NPC classes...

Rogue generally fits best as the "average joe" class, but you could probably also go fighter.

Or a cleric.

Dwarven Upender.

I like fighter

if you want to, you could downplay the feats that imply specialty training and instead focus on feats that would imply toughness (toughness, great fortitude, etc) and maybe get real good with a mining implememnt used as a weapon (weapon focus, hammer) and bashing stuff (power attack)

all very beleivable for a basic miner.

Alternatively, as posted above, a specialty in the mines would do well well with rogue. Skills with traps learned from rigging collapses, disabling traps from working with troublesome formations below ground, etc ,etc

Knowledge architecture/engineering would play an important role to most miners.

As would spade work...

The NPC Expert class would work best.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/npcClasses/expert.htm

Note they are basically skill monkeys. Pick your 10 favourite skills, those are your class skills (no crossclass burden). Lots of skill points each level. Turn out to have d6 hitdice and the same combat progression as a rogue. Worse skills though.

I suppose the Rogue class is "close enough", they at least have Profession as a class skill, though unfortunately only Knowledge (Local) is class... Knowledge (anything else miner useful) is crossclass.

Get a decent enough CON and STR to reflect tough manual labour, and INT to take advantage of being a skill monkey, I guess.

I tend to agree with BB. Rogue is a very flexible class, moreso than fighter when you need skills. Of course, it also depends on what kind of miner you want to play. The grunt doing the hacking? The foreman? The engineer? The draughtsman?

Lessee...

Miners are strong and tough, as a rule. So a class that grants a fort save bonus and good hitpoints would be nice.
Skill-wise, we're looking at:

• Appraise, probably. Gotta be able to tell gold from pyrite.
• Climb.
• Knowledge: Dungeoneering.
• Profession: Miner (duh!)
• Search could be useful, to find ore veins.
• Use rope, because you want to make sure you can climb up out of the mineshaft again.

In the end, I'd go for Fighter. The non-class skills can be boosted with Skill Focus feats, and the overall toughness of a Fighter better matches other PCs' (and their players') perception of what a miner is.

On a side note, at least in Exodus/Amn the dagger model 73 is a pick. Smallish, though, so maybe you can find one that's a more appropriate for a mighty mattock.

Simply? None.

The classes available for PCs in ALFA re for adventurers. If someone wants to be a "Miner" they:
1)They are playing the wrong game.
2)Any class that has "profession" as a class skill if you really must do it, as abilites dont matter squat within the rules without the requisite skill. So Bard or Rogue.

-edit
Im going to argue the toss with statements above. Use rope, or other skills have nothing to do with being a miner. The only skills that have anything to do with mining are "Profession-Miner" which provides the base skill to check and "Knowledge-Architecture" which would provide a +2 synergy bonus if more than 5 skill ranks are invested in it.

This is DnD, the above is the rules as stated in the rule books, like anything in DnD its as codified and set in black white as your PCs attack rolls are.

I have to agree with Sand here, except for the playing the wrong game part.

A fighter would make a great prospector - fending off monsters while clearing a mine.

That said, the profession miner will take care of all the skills you need to be a well umm miner. You do not need to cobble search, use rope etc. together.

Search is for adventurer type searching - findign useful objects, hidden treasure, traps, secret doors. It is not for locating types of ore etc Think of profession miner as coming with a limited search/identify skill - you can find and identify types of rock.

This creates a nice DnD rules issue where use rope is concerned, but that is for another thread.

A miner who gets into a fight with something, and then winds up working mine security, and then winds up running said security... perfect entree to adventuring class out of the profession.

Castano wrote:This creates a nice DnD rules issue where use rope is concerned, but that is for another thread.

Profession: Dominatrix?