Lyre of building, what can i build in an hour?

[Stormrunner]

Presumably you have to somehow visualize what you want the lyre to do. for anything more complicated than a simple ditch, rampart, or palisade, I'd require rolls against Craft(carpentry), Craft(stonework), and/or Knowledge(architecture), or the resulting work is shoddy. A dwarven architect/bard could do some impressive stuff, but that's an unusual combination of talents - such individuals would be rare and expensive to hire.

A 14-story tower (140' tall) is an impressive feat of engineering. Most medieval buildings never got higher than 3 stories without falling down, even castles and cathedrals are rarely that tall. Notre Dame in Paris is 110' high, and took 87 years to build, using a lot more than 100 men. And all those flying buttresses aren't for show - they're there to hold up the walls. Your 140' tower will require a big "footprint" at its base for all the buttressing, etc., even if you use "magically strengthened" walls. For something this difficult and complex, I would definitely require Knowledge(architecture) rolls at a high DC, otherwise the first gust of wind will bring it crashing down. (Seriously - "wind load" is a major problem for any tall building, or one with a broad surface area.)

 

[Jack Simth]

Well, let's see.... An old-fashioned Barn-Raising party would take 30-50 people and put a decent sized wooden barn up in a single day, if materials were on hand. Id' guess at double that for a house (half the size of a barn, but internal structure, thicker walls, sturdier roof, et cetera). Call it *5 for stone instead of wood (again, an off the cuff guestmate), and you should be able to build six standard wooden houses of the time in one hour of playing, or one stone house-like structure, or one floor of a stone tower of house-like dimensions. For more than that (e.g., a three story stone tower), my personal response would be that you start needing rolls vs. some appropriet knoweledge/craft skill - DC 10 for a one-story (useable untrained, may take 10), +2 DC for each additional floor (thus, that two story tower needs a DC of 12, a four-story needs 16, an 11-story needs DC 30, your 14-floor tower needs a DC of 36) with a caveat that if you stop playing partway through (fail a playing roll) the entire thing comes crashing down, and must be started again from scratch. I'd also rule that you could reduce the per-level DC to +1, and remove the "one sitting" limitation by taking two hours per floor (the brute-force method of architecture - make the walls twice as thick) so that your 14-floor tower takes a DC of "only" 23, but takes 28 hours of playing to build. Decore and complex additions can be added later, with appropriet Craft rolls (use the Performance Check difficulty scale for the "quality" of the decore) and a single hour of playing per 10-ft square of wall so upgraded.

But that's just me and my silly estimates. Probably waaay off.