What can a Lyre of Building build?

[Aquillion]

I was glancing over the item description for a Lyre of Building, and I noticed something strange:

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 bolded word is rather vague. Alarmingly vague, even. The lyre also doesn't say typical humans... does that mean it can do anything any given 100 humans could do in three days? Does that mean 100 humans with 3 str and 3 con? 100 level 20 human wizards? 100 humans with divine rank 20?

Can we use the lyre to build siege equipment? Ships? Weapons? Traps? Carts? Golems? Magic items? Artifacts? Water clocks?

[BisectedBrioche]

I think that in this case "whatever" referes to any large, inhabitable structure. This means siege engines and golems are out, ships might qualify though.

I'd guess that "100" humans would mean 100 humans with an average rank in the apropriate craft skill.

[Fizban]

I would say it means 100 typical humans, so that'd be human commoner 1's with 10 or 11 strength and no special focus on building. I think the question you're really trying to answer is: how high of a craft check can the lyre build to? That depends on how you want to run it. It could be limited to DC10, 15, 20, your craft check, your perform check, a set craft bonus for the lyre, or whatever else. This also depends on how you would handle building such types of construction: 1 leader makes a check for the whole group to determine the quality of the work they can physically get done? 1 leader using the craft skill with the workers using aid another to stack extra +2's? each worker making a check individually and adding the results together to find out how much total progress is made? Answer these and you can determine what the lyre can build.

[JackMage666]

Suspense? filler text.

[Jade_Tarem]

Artifacts, yes. Water Clocks, no.

Also: Relationships!

[Kioran]

I´d assume it can build most non-complex structures (DC 15) and assume it creates manpower equal to 100 Commoner 1 with a +5 on their Craft checks (4 ranks +1 Strength, for construction workers/laborers). Assuming taking 10 and taking it to the power of 2, that would mean 15*15*3*100 = produced work in CP per half hour = 67500 CP or 675 GP. That, of course, produces only utilitarian structures or simple houses, trenches etc. - no gothic cathedrals. And requires building materials for all but the simplest earthworks.

Of course, this is all my interpretation of it, but I think it´s quite reasonable.

[CASTLEMIKE]

It is based off the Fabricate spell which has pretty clear guidelines regarding high craftsmanship skill checks although since the Lyre has a DC perform check it would be up to each DM to make the call if the perform check could be substituted for the crafting skill check or if the performer needs the appropiate skill for making items requiring high degrees of craftsmanship in addition to his perform skill. My concern from the way the Lyre is written is it looks like you don't need the RAW materials that the Fabricate spell normally requires but nothing a good DM can't handle.


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.



Fabricate
Transmutation
Level: Sor/Wiz 5
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: See text
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: Up to 10 cu. ft./level; see text
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

You convert material of one sort into a product that is of the same material. Creatures or magic items cannot be created or transmuted by the fabricate spell. The quality of items made by this spell is commensurate with the quality of material used as the basis for the new fabrication. If you work with a mineral, the target is reduced to 1 cubic foot per level instead of 10 cubic feet.

You must make an appropriate Craft check to fabricate articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship.

Casting requires 1 round per 10 cubic feet (or 1 cubic foot) of material to be affected by the spell.

Material Component
The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created.

[Jothki]

It seems like it might be useful in a seige, since you could rapidly undermine walls and cause them to collapse. The person playing the lyre would be vulnerable, but probably no more so than normal tunnelers would be.

[Talic]

It is based off the Fabricate spell which has pretty clear guidelines regarding high craftsmanship skill checks although since the Lyre has a DC perform check it would be up to each DM to make the call if the perform check could be substituted for the crafting skill check or if the performer needs the appropiate skill for making items requiring high degrees of craftsmanship in addition to his perform skill.

The perform check is only used for performances longer than 1 hour. Using 3 people, it is possible to use a lyre of building 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no perform check being made, and everyone getting 8 consecutive hours of sleep.

[Ganurath]

The perform check is only used for performances longer than 1 hour. Using 3 people, it is possible to use a lyre of building 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no perform check being made, and everyone getting 8 consecutive hours of sleep.

Plus, if they're Elans, they don't need food. So, three Elans with a lyre of building of adequate level to fend of local creatures singlehandedly could turn an uninhabited continent into an uninhabited Coruscant with enough time.Wait, it can only build once per week. So, add a lot more time so we can keep the cycle of one guarding, one sleeping, and one playing.

[Talic]

Plus, if they're Elans, they don't need food. So, three Elans with a lyre of building of adequate level to fend of local creatures singlehandedly could turn an uninhabited continent into an uninhabited Coruscant with enough time.Wait, it can only build once per week. So, add a lot more time so we can keep the cycle of one guarding, one sleeping, and one playing.

Now I didn't see that. We need a person with a +17 perform, and no need to sleep. Let's go Necropolitan Bard. Throw in Masterwork tuning kit, a lowbie necropolitan performer cohort aiding another (or two non necropolitan helpers), Skill focus (perform), and max ranks, and you could get it at level 7. Every 24 hour period would be equivalent to 100 people working for 144 days.

If you had a dozen or so of these, Rome maybe could be built in a day.

[Kioran]

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.

Emphasis on the bolded part. You produce work, or manpower, but not raw matterials, so by common sense you still need them for anything that requires them. There´s nothing in the Item description telling you you get a free lunch.....
Even so, the Lyre of building is very possibly horribly broken, but then so are decanters of Endless water etc.

[sikyon]

Emphasis on the bolded part. You produce work, or manpower, but not raw matterials, so by common sense you still need them for anything that requires them. There´s nothing in the Item description telling you you get a free lunch.....
Even so, the Lyre of building is very possibly horribly broken, but then so are decanters of Endless water etc.

The lyre could have them cut down trees for timber, mine ore out of the ground, etc.

[Kioran]

The lyre could have them cut down trees for timber, mine ore out of the ground, etc.

The D&D economy doesn´t account for producing things from scratch (except in the case of quarterstaves or clubs) or handles this very poorly, so by RAW, it isn´t possible. Despite this, even if we consider the possibilities, it´s a lyre of building, not one of "quarrying", "mining" or a "lyre of the lumberjack", even though the latter would be plain awesome. It can build. It cannot do anything else, at least if we go by the description.
Granted, that still means it can dig trenches or Moats for free, and in amazingly short time, but if you want these trenches to be shored up, you still need worden boards or timber as raw materials for the building, or stone to errect a keep. It can render the services of construction workers obsolete with appalling ease, but cannot create cities from scratch.

To quote someone on these boards, I don´t know who it was or if I get the qoute exactly right: "Why do people, if there are two possible readings of a rule, automatically assume the obviously broekn one to be true?"

[BlackRabite]

My group got a Lyre of building in the last really long campaign we played. Towards the end the group consisted of a Necromancy specialist Wizard Lich(myself), A Rogue, Bard and Fighter all Vampires. When we decided to end the campaign we had built a series of church's all over the countryside for our new religion of undeath, where we preached the glories of being undead and 'converted' followers with the promise of immortality.

We used the Lyre in our last session to build a giant Safe-T-Dungeon to act as our evil lair. The top 5 levels of the underground dungeon was a fake dungeon with resetable traps and level 1 undead minions. We charged up and coming adventurers to make a practice run through our mostly safe dungeon in order to give them a good feel for dungeoneering and we gauranteed enough experience to reach third level or free entry into the church of undeath, whichever came first.

It was a really fun gaming session, we got to make up the Safe-T-Dungeon and the real Dungeon beneath it and our DM ran a group of level 1's through the fake dungeon while we helped/hindered them and then ran a real adventuring party of high level goodly adventurers bent on our destruction through the rest of the dungeon to see how well we would do.

[sikyon]

The D&D economy doesn´t account for producing things from scratch (except in the case of quarterstaves or clubs) or handles this very poorly, so by RAW, it isn´t possible. Despite this, even if we consider the possibilities, it´s a lyre of building, not one of "quarrying", "mining" or a "lyre of the lumberjack", even though the latter would be plain awesome. It can build. It cannot do anything else, at least if we go by the description.
Granted, that still means it can dig trenches or Moats for free, and in amazingly short time, but if you want these trenches to be shored up, you still need worden boards or timber as raw materials for the building, or stone to errect a keep. It can render the services of construction workers obsolete with appalling ease, but cannot create cities from scratch.

To quote someone on these boards, I don´t know who it was or if I get the qoute exactly right: "Why do people, if there are two possible readings of a rule, automatically assume the obviously broekn one to be true?"

If you want to include the fabricate spell as a limit on how high of a craft DC it can build, then for consistency you must also include how the fabricate spell can turn trees into timber and minerals into refined ores.

[mikeejimbo]

... "lyre of the lumberjack"...

I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK...

[Kioran]

If you want to include the fabricate spell as a limit on how high of a craft DC it can build, then for consistency you must also include how the fabricate spell can turn trees into timber and minerals into refined ores.

I didn´t. I posted my own numbers, based on 100 decently built commoners would contribute to such a task, which are 675 GP of work up to a DC of 15. This is in no way based on the spell but rather on the item description, with fabricate chosen for it´s similiarity but the item not accurately reproducing the spell´s effect. So it can only build. A command-word activated Item of fabricate costs a minimum of 5*9*1800 = 81000 GP, so it stands to reason to assume the lyre is weaker/more specific.
I´m nothing if not consistent, even if I don´t claim ultimate knowledge or authority on the subject.

[sikyon]

I didn´t. I posted my own numbers, based on 100 decently built commoners would contribute to such a task, which are 675 GP of work up to a DC of 15. This is in no way based on the spell but rather on the item description, with fabricate chosen for it´s similiarity but the item not accurately reproducing the spell´s effect. So it can only build. A command-word activated Item of fabricate costs a minimum of 5*9*1800 = 81000 GP, so it stands to reason to assume the lyre is weaker/more specific.
I´m nothing if not consistent, even if I don´t claim ultimate knowledge or authority on the subject.

Fair enough. Still, though, you could "building" is pretty vague. If you can build a moat, why can't you build a mine? Meanwhile, as you're building the mine, the various ores come out of course... and if you're going to build that moat over a forest, then the trees have to come out... log cabins... etc.

[CASTLEMIKE]

Fair enough. Still, though, you could "building" is pretty vague. If you can build a moat, why can't you build a mine? Meanwhile, as you're building the mine, the various ores come out of course... and if you're going to build that moat over a forest, then the trees have to come out... log cabins... etc.

A PC with a lyre of building can build a mine (it is specifically cited as one of the examples in the DMG and the first post of this thread) but it doesn't say it will be useful stuff.

[Severus]

We used this as basically unskilled laborers with a skilled overseer. So ditches, simple buildings, tunneling, etc all were fine. Advanced buildings required stonewrights to do the construction and therefore the lyre was helpful in shaping blocks of stone, or moving it, but not in the actual building.

I think the lyre's abusability is campaign dependent. We used a couple to build a series of canals in our campaign to tie a nation together. Worked for us, but by that point of the campaign, it was mostly color and not game altering in a significant way.

[Illiterate Scribe]

Artifacts, yes. Water Clocks, no.

Also: Relationships!

A Winrar is You.

Pretty much every character I've made at high levels had carried a Lyre of Building, and several CC ranks in Perform (stringed instruments). That's not even taking into account the other elephant in the room from LoB - the horribly, horribly worded 'negates attacks' ability. Get 48 of them, and hide in a featureless box (warded vs. teleportation) - nigh-on impossible to enter.

[RandomFellow]

A Winrar is You.

Pretty much every character I've made at high levels had carried a Lyre of Building, and several CC ranks in Perform (stringed instruments). That's not even taking into account the other elephant in the room from LoB - the horribly, horribly worded 'negates attacks' ability. Get 48 of them, and hide in a featureless box (warded vs. teleportation) - nigh-on impossible to enter.

I house-ruled a 30 second 'vulnerability' period between 'uses' of that ability. 5 rounds of vulnerability is usually enough for someone to punch a hole in the wall. =)

[Illiterate Scribe]

I house-ruled a 30 second 'vulnerability' period between 'uses' of that ability. 5 rounds of vulnerability is usually enough for someone to punch a hole in the wall. =)

Ah, but that's a use of something known as 'common sense'. Banish it hence from a RAW discussion!

I remember a great thread from those masterminds at *chan's /tg/, on this very subject; the design was very, very complicated, but I do remember that the pertinent facts that it was completely immune to every possible form of weapon damage, was impossible to shut down via AMF, and revolved on the spot at several thousand feet/second in order to bring its wall of self-resetting flame strike traps to bear.

[Tack122]

Warforged bard, get a high enough check and he never stops.

[Talic]

Yes, the rules don't specifically account for mining, and lumberjacks.

But they do account for creating mines, and using lumber. Yes, they don't specifically TELL you that you can cut down a tree with a Profession (lumberjack) skill....

But do they REALLY need to? After all, using the Profession skill allows you to make money. Couldn't that money value be in barter goods, or raw materials? For example, your Profession (lumberjack) roll says you netted 13g 4s today... Can't it be 13g 4s worth of lumber?

[Triaxx]

I've always seperated them into Lyre of Building, and Lyre of Construction. Lyre of Building requires materials, and will build most buildings. If you want a mansion you're going to need more than one.

A Lyre of Construction is similar, but also requires several transmute X to Y spells. It'll construct just about anything you can build, even if you don't have the materials. Need a catapult? It'll shape mud into a catapult, turn it to stone, and then steel.

[Dervag]

I think the lyre's abusability is campaign dependent. We used a couple to build a series of canals in our campaign to tie a nation together. Worked for us, but by that point of the campaign, it was mostly color and not game altering in a significant way.

It's hard for a small group of adventurers with a magic item to profit greatly from the ability to build stuff, because once it's built it stays built. If you use the Lyre to dig a canal, you can't stop anyone from using it except by waylaying passersby and demanding a toll. And it's going to take you a lot of time sitting around and collecting tolls to recoup your investment, even if it were more profitable than other ways for adventurers to make money.

So as a rule things like that are only useful if:
1)The adventurers in question are in charge of an organization that can collect the tolls and benefit from the construction even when they aren't there. This was assumed to be the case for high-level adventurers in AD&D, back when there were detailed rules for stronghold construction and maintainence in the DM Guide.

or
2)The adventurers are contractors working for a one-time fee, in which case it's up to the DM to decide what the fee is. Remember that there's probably more than one Lyre of Building in the country, so competition will tend to keep prices down to whatever the minimum is. And that labor may be relatively cheap compared to other commodities for a powerful government that runs on quasimedieval social structures. So the price of getting something built that would normally require 300 man-days of labor isn't going to be much more expensive than 300 man-days of labor.

Yes, the rules don't specifically account for mining, and lumberjacks.

But they do account for creating mines, and using lumber. Yes, they don't specifically TELL you that you can cut down a tree with a Profession (lumberjack) skill....

But they do give stats for a tree, right? In that case, you can just send a commoner with an axe out to chop down the tree. If the price of lumber is known, you can estimate roughly how much wood comes out of a tree of, say, Huge size.

[LibraryOgre]

The definition of the work done by a lyre of building has remained the same since 1979.

According to the 1st edition DMG, page 106, 100 men for 3 days would drive three 75' shafts (one would be a bit shorter, because of a lack of workers) through hard rock (lava, granite), or three 225' shafts through very soft rock (limestone).

A 100' long, 10' deep, 20' wide ditch would take 100 men about 1 day, 16 hours, and 19 minutes.

Stone Construction, if you have the stone (i.e. already cut, at the rates listed above for quarrying), is built in 1 week per 10' cubic section (not 10 cubic feet... 10' cubic section, meaning 1000' cubic feet). However, they don't list an assumed number of workers there; I put it at 4 people, which would mean 100 workers could build 25 10' cubic sections in 1 week... or an hour and a half of playing.

Wood Construction is done in one-half the time of stone construction. Wooden "hoardings", can be built at the rate of 10' section per day... again, I'm assuming 3-4 workers for that, and the wood pre-cut. Therefore, a Lyre of Building, with an ample supply of wood, could build 750' of wooden palisade in 30 minutes.

I would KILL for a woodknife.