How much to hire a bard to play Lyre of Buidling

[Hawkson]

Lyre of Building:

The lyre is also useful with respect to building. Once a week its strings can be strummed so as to produce chords that magically construct buildings, mines, tunnels, ditches, or whatever. The effect produced in but 30 minutes of playing is equal to the work of 100 humans laboring for three days. Each hour after the first, a character playing the lyre must make a DC 18 Perform (string instruments) check. If it fails, she must stop and cannot play the lyre again for this purpose until a week has passed.

Faint transmutation; CL 6th; Craft Wondrous Item, fabricate; Price 13,000 gp;Weight 5 lb.

I have a lyre and I would like to hire a bard to play it. how many hours in a row can a bard play the lyre? how much work is 100 humans laboring for 3 days? how much land can be dug, earth moved and how many buildings can be built?

 

[Fieari]

An "untrained laborer" earns 1 sp a day. A "trained laborer" earns 3 sp a day.

If you wanted to give completely equivelent payment to the bard, you would offer 300 silver, or 30 gold, if you consider all the work that would be done to have been "untrained". For something a little more fancy, 900 silver (or 90 gold) would be in order. Given the flamboyancy of most bards, the latter option is more likely anyway.

This all for 30 minutes of playing, of course. Now, negotiations with the bard might get you lower rates for more playing. Or you might negotiate lower simply because, y'know, you're providing the instrument (I'm assuming) that he's playing, and he is after all, one person making the money of hundreds in just minutes. But I wouldn't count on negotiating lower, since Bards tend to be high on charisma and are pretty persuasive in their own rights. If you already had a bard to help negotiate, he'd be playing it for you.

On the other hand, you might argue that the service is the equivelent of spellcasting... but figuring out what level spell it's the equivelent of might get tricky.


EDIT: I just thought about this a little more, and actually, the bard can probably ask a lot MORE than the equivelent price in laborers, due to the rapid reduction in time. "Fair" wages then might require some more multiplication...

 

[Machiavelli]

He could also ask alot more simply based on demand.

For an extreme example: Let's say he's the only bard within 20 miles who can play a lyre, and you only have 1 hour to get a fortification built before an evil army of undead gets there to slay the crippled orphans. The bard may ask that you empty your pockets into his coin purse before he even considers playing for you and risking being killed by the undead army.

 

[FrostedMini1337]

The bard can play as long as he can make the check. All damn day if he can constantly make the 18's and stay awake. With the right gear, you can do make an 18, by rolling a 1 (Skill Focus+3, Circlet of Persuasion+3, Ability Mod +4 at minimum) at level 7. And that's core only. There has to be crap outside of core that will boost that. Then argue with your DM that the lyre has to be masterwork to make it magic, so you deserve at +2 bonus. That lowers it to level 5. But your bard most likely won't have that crap.

Offer him 100 gold a day that he can play, and point out how much cash that is.

If he gives you any lip during the playing and says he'll stop, destroy him if he does. You saved 100 gold.

How much work exactly 100 men for 3 days is, is open to interpretation. You could build a house no problem. Suffice to say that if these existed we may not have a cheeky saying about Rome.

 

[szilard]

In any decent population center, you ought to be able to find plenty of out of work musicians who would play this for next to nothing.

-Stuart

 

[Notmousse]

Personally I would just gather all Cha boosting materials and wing it myself. But you wanna pay some shmuck, so... I'd say a fair wage for doing little more than plucking strungs and possibly getting blisters (if he's a novice) is about 12.5gp per day (this is roughly how much you'd earn from a TU spent performing at DC 20), or if you wanted to be even more generous 125gp (the average of someone making a DC 30).

Given that it does 600 'human days' of labor every hour (and you get the first for free too boot!), I'd say it's a safe bet you'll only need the one day.

 

[pawsplay]

What does it matter? You'll be lucky if you're not giving him the lyre by the time it's all over.

 

[Jack Simth]

Lyre of Building:

The lyre is also useful with respect to building. Once a week its strings can be strummed so as to produce chords that magically construct buildings, mines, tunnels, ditches, or whatever. The effect produced in but 30 minutes of playing is equal to the work of 100 humans laboring for three days. Each hour after the first, a character playing the lyre must make a DC 18 Perform (string instruments) check. If it fails, she must stop and cannot play the lyre again for this purpose until a week has passed.

Faint transmutation; CL 6th; Craft Wondrous Item, fabricate; Price 13,000 gp;Weight 5 lb.

I have a lyre and I would like to hire a bard to play it. how many hours in a row can a bard play the lyre? how much work is 100 humans laboring for 3 days? how much land can be dug, earth moved and how many buildings can be built?

Craft rules. Assuming, for the moment, that the 100 humans laboring are all untrained, and all take 10, then for DC 10 checks, you have 100 cp worth of progress per day of labor (DC*check result, in copper pieces for Crafting on a scale of days). So for a DC 10 project, you have 100 cp * 100 humans * 3 days = 30,000 cp = 300 gp of progress per half hour of playing. For a DC 12 check, well, half the humans need to Aid Another (and letting them take 10 on Aid Another checks, just for grins), so you have 50 making check results of 12 - 12*12*50*3=21,600 cp/half hour = 216 gp of progress per half hour of playing. For a DC 14 check, well, two of every three of the humans needs to Aid Another, so you have 14*14*33*3=19,404 cp/half hour, or 194 gp of progress per half hour of playing. For a DC 16 project, three need to aid for each one that works - so you have 16*16*25*3=19,200 cp of progress per half hour, or 192 gp/half hour.

If we wanted to make a generic equation for this (again, letting the non-existant workers take 10 on their Aid Anothers, despite it not being permitted), we'd be looking at something like...

DC*DC*(100/(1+(DC-10)/2))*3 cp = DC*DC*(1/(1+(DC-10)/2))*3 gp for DC's that are Even and greater than or equal to 10 and less than 208 (off occasionally, as the lone person left out isn't making progress, but a decent approximation)

Spreadsheet results:
DC DC*DC*(1/(1+(DC-10)/2))*3 gp
DC GP per half-hour of playing
10 300
12 216
14 196
16 192
18 194.4
20 200
22 207.4285714
24 216
26 225.3333333
28 235.2
30 245.4545455
32 256
34 266.7692308
36 277.7142857
38 288.8
40 300

Then just figure out the gold piece value of the thing you're making, and the craft DC for it......

Oh, and for the record: best possible results are at DC 208, with 1297.92 gp of progress per half hour of playing.

 

[pawsplay]

As pointed out, the lyre is better than hiring laborers, because it's also faster.

 

[Bront]

Ok, I'm going to point out the biggest fundimental flaw in the pricing most people have here: He already owns the lyre.

So, you're simply asking someone to make a DC 18 check every hour (Fairly easy since he should be able to take a 10, so a level 2-3 bard will work, possibly even a 1st level if you consider the instrument masterwork for +2 to the check.) I'd use the perform rules for a fee, but since you're hiring him to basicly play for hours at a time, using the skilled labor table seems about right as well.

Edit: Also note, since there are no technical rules for fatigue, he can play infinately.