Lyre of Building with mods

[Herobizkit]

My player wants to create a custom lyre of building. In addition to its regular features, he wants to add in a +8 skill increase to Perform. All good, right? Factor in his +10 to perform, and he operates at a +18. Ah, but what's the catch?

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.

Since skill checks don't automatically fail on a 1, this character will never fail a perform check. He may need to make exhaustion checks and Concentration checks once he hits 24 hours of uninterrupted play, but check this:

Lesser restoration dispels any magical effects reducing one of the subject’s ability scores or cures 1d4 points of temporary ability damage to one of the subject’s ability scores. It also eliminates any fatigue suffered by the character, and improves an exhausted condition to fatigued. It does not restore permanent ability drain.

So now you have a PC who can build an entire city in a few days, assuming that someone is on hand to cast lesser restoration and can give him food and water.

So... exactly how much work can a player with such a lyre produce, and exactly what effect does this work (that is, what equivalent amount of buildings, mines, etc.) produce?

 

[Angel Tarragon]

According to the SRD:
If the proper chords are struck, a single use of this lyre negates any attacks made against all inanimate construction (walls, roof, floor, and so on) within 300 feet. This includes the effects of a horn of blasting, a disintegrate spell, or an attack from a ram or similar siege weapon. The lyre can be used in this way once per day, with the protection lasting for 30 minutes.

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.

Emphasis mine. The lyre can only be used for 30 minutes per day.

 

[Jack Simth]

Emphasis mine. The lyre can only be used for 30 minutes per day.

Let's re-emphasize, shall we?

Lyre of Building: If the proper chords are struck, a single use of this lyre negates any attacks made against all inanimate construction (walls, roof, floor, and so on) within 300 feet. This includes the effects of a horn of blasting, a disintegrate spell, or an attack from a ram or similar siege weapon. The lyre can be used in this way once per day, with the protection lasting for 30 minutes.

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.

Mantle of Faith

(Emphasis added).

Negating attacks against a structure is limited to 30 minutes per day. The building function isn't limited in that matter - it's got it's own limitation.

But yes - technically, someone with +17 to Perform and a way to avoid the effects of fatigue/hunger/thirst can build a lot, fast.

Downside: Nowhere is it clearly defined how much work that is.

 

[Maldor]

Emphasis mine. The lyre can only be used for 30 minutes per day.

if you read it the first effect last 30 min. but the second leaves no shadow of doubt that it can be played longer. A full hour before you need to make the first skill check.

but for the mod i would have him do +5, +10, or +15 and would limit him to playing for a max 8 hours a day like crafting is.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It appears to me as if only the protection might be used once per day, but I might be wrong.

Anyway, let's pretend for a moment he didn't want the +8 bonus, and instead just put the requisite ranks in Perform. He could still do the same. Or he could use an entirely different item to get the bonus.
The Lesser Restoration thing is maybe a stronger effect.

So essentially, the question is if the Lyre of Building on its own could be problematic.
I'd say it's not worse or better then the Decanter of Water (?).

The work of 100 humans working for 30 days isn't bad.
You still need all the material parts to get it, and you can use the Lyre only for building structures (IIRC), not for mining. (You can build a mine, but the mining itself must be done by "real" people, and can take a lot of time). So, given you have all the material resources for building a city, you can do it quickly. But that's a big assumption. (And what good is a city without inhabitants?)

I think such a Lyre might be very interesting during a siege or in preparation for war - build your fortress in a matter of days, or reinforce your city walls in a few hours.

 

[Bagpuss]

So essentially, the question is if the Lyre of Building on its own could be problematic.
I'd say it's not worse or better then the Decanter of Water (?).

I think you'd be mistaken then. In most places of civilization water is readily available, otherwise people wouldn't have settled there. So while clean pure water is a useful commodity you probably aren't going to be able to charge for something a peasant can get for free from a river or stream.

Skilled Labour on the other hand has a clear price in the PHB. You are looking at 3sp/day for one mason, but just 30 minutes of play is 100 skilled labourers for 3 days, so 90gp. 180gp an hour, 1440 gps worth of work a day. In nine days the Lyre has paid for itself, in labour costs alone (half that time if he crafts it himself). But you are doing the same work in a fraction of the time so can probably charge a premium.

Of course you still need to find someone to pay for that service, but people always need houses, king want castles, etc. etc. It breaks the economy, so I'd be careful about introducing one at all.

Of course it opens up whole new adventure opportunities with the mason's guild hiring thugs and assassins to kill the bard and destroy his lyre that's making so many people destitute.

 

[Herobizkit]

He plans on making a Decanter as well.

It is important to note that the land, by and large, is a wasteland. There is *lots* of available stone and other materials, including the former homes of the inhabitants.

I only quoted the Lesser Restoration because he has both a Druid and his "actual" NPC Cohort Cleric to cast it. (As a solo game, I have three DMPC's that represent the core gaming group - he has attracted his own NPC cohort that follows the Cohort rules for XP/treasure gain and such).

I don't have a problem with him magically recreating the town so much as wanting to know the overall result once I handwave the time.

 

[Folly]

Given that the item does not state the skill of the work create, I would rule that he would have to make all the skill checks related to the work being done (though I would only require one check instead of 100). This resolves the issue of determining the amount of work achieved, since the craft rules detail how to progress on a project is achieved. Also since the DC are based around cost, this has minimal impact on doing mundane tasks, but does limit the player from easily creating weapons for an entire army in a week.

 

[Artoomis]

Oh for goodness sakes, let him have his fun!

But... the aspect of stealing business from the builder's guild could be a really neat in-game role-playing problem that needs to be dealt with.

The same goes for decanter(s?) of endless water. If he dramatically affects local economies, that needs to be taken into account.

Otherwise, what's the problem? Allow him to have his fun and don't try to mess with the rules to stop him.

He should pretty much get what he wants here, I think, but you have the after-effects fully within your control as DM. It could get... interesting... when the local population gets upset with him or, the other way around, start to revere him as a near-god. Either way could be LOTS of fun!

 

[VanRichten]

Based on the OPs question I can see where he is curious as to how much the Bard can build with the lyre not whether it is against the rules.

With that in mind if said Bard were to play the lyre in question for 24 hours continuously then he would effectively produce enough work done by 4800 humans laboring for 3 days.

Generally speaking there is no hard fast ruling on how much you could effectively build with such ability.

Though if you were to make one. Consider how much it costs to hire a laborer multiply that by 4800 then take that answer and multiply it by 3. This number is how much work has been completed with only 24 hours of playing the lyre.

If a house ran 5,000gp and a laborer costs 1cp per day. Then that means with 24 hours of playing the lyre you would do 144gp worth of building per 24 hour period.

Which means that it would take the bard about 35 days at 24 hours per day to build said house.

I don't know about you but one man building an entire house in a little over a month is quite impressive considering he is only playing music.