High level Artificer construction worker?

[bobthedragon]

So I'm playing a straight level 20 artificer in a campaign right now. One of the things my character is going to be doing at some point is helping rebuild 1-2 cities that were destroyed in a war with the BBEG. Have a set of items I'm going to put together, but need help figuring out the extent of what I could do with them, and the best way to go about the reconstruction process. I want to be able to do as much as possible with magic, and only rely on other workers when absolutely necissary.

Currently planned items:
Lyre of building
Command use item of wall of iron
command use item of wall of stone
command use item of fabricate
+10 (maybe 20) items of knowledge(architecture engineering) and craft (construction)
(also, I can use an eternal wand of lesser restoration + ring of sustenance to be able to just keep working basically without need for food or sleep)

more specific questions: Don't need super specific or detailed answers, just trying to figure out some base numbers that I can present to the DM
Is it actually possible to construct a building by just casting fabricate a couple times on rock and iron? (How much can I do with what will soon be a +25 craft check that I could easily boost to + 60 if I need to)

About how long would it take to reconstruct the demolished ruins of a large city?

I feel like it would be a rather boring city made out of nothing but rock and iron, is there a way (spell) I could use to get access to huge amounts of wood without having to deforest everywhere within 50 miles of the city?

[Sith_Happens]

The Lyre is at least 90% of what you need.


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.

That's 4800 man-hours of construction work per hour. Wear a Ring of Sustenance, a command-word item of Lesser Restoration, and a +17 Perform (string instruments) item and just don't stop playing the thing until all the work is done. Or have a homunculus or other construct do it for you, in which case you can skip the ring and the Lesser Restoration item. If you want to speed things up, more constructs with more Lyres of Building and +17 Perform (string instruments) items.

If you're worried about stripping the surrounding area bare of all construction materials in the process of Lyre-ing it up, that's when you make with the Wall of Iron and Wall of Stone items (plus Transmute Metal to Wood items for your lumber needs). I don't know off the top of my head how many of them you need per Lyre to be 100% eco-friendly, but the important part is to have constructs activating them for you.

[shaikujin]

If looters have not carried away pieces of the ruins en-mass, you already have a source of materials and don't really need the use Wall of Stone/Iron. Right?

You only need a number of Lyres of Building.

For a better idea of the time required, get an approximate number of households, and what type (such as how big and how many rooms each type has). Then refer to Stronghold Builder's Guide to work out the time required.

For simplicity, treat the city as a single massive Stronghold. Or if you want to do it fast and have sufficient minions to play the Lyres, treat each house as a separate Stronghold and assign a Lyre player to each house and have them work simulataneously across the city.