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



## Sir Draconion (Mar 12, 2005)

ok so its says in DMG 100 men laboring for three days in 30 min 
so 14,400 man hours 
great! so where are the rules for how long it takes to build some thing?

help please
Forman bard


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## dcollins (Mar 12, 2005)

1st Ed. AD&D.  

Seriously, the magic item text has been copy-and-pasted since then, but the core building rules didn't come along for the ride. Now folks turn to the "Stronghold Builders Guide" to answer that question.


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## Eolin (Mar 13, 2005)

the answers you got from The Dwarf over at kenzerco were better, wern't they?


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## Sir Draconion (Mar 13, 2005)

tryed that, only gives 30% reduction in cost 
and i cant find the rules for how many men are need for what ever construction
it just says that one week/10,000 gp


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## Sir Draconion (Mar 13, 2005)

Eolin said:
			
		

> the answers you got from The Dwarf over at kenzerco were better, wern't they?




i have no idea what your talking about must be someone else
post a link so maybe i can read it too


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## Jdvn1 (Mar 13, 2005)

Don't measure it in manhours.  One man working for ten hours is not the same to ten men working one hour.  Thiere isn't a simple way to do it, so I'd just simplify it by assuming that one week/10,000 gp is for the "correct" amount of men and that the Lyre of Building provides the ideal number.

The more specific you try to be, the more you delve into house rules.


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## Sir Draconion (Mar 13, 2005)

so any body have an idea of what could be built in one hour?


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## Jdvn1 (Mar 13, 2005)

One hour of playing the lyre?  A moderate sized house, probably.


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## Sir Draconion (Mar 13, 2005)

does fabricate it or use surrounding stone and wood?
does it clear the land of trees, take from other buildings or reconstruct a dungeon?


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## Jdvn1 (Mar 13, 2005)

Yeah, I was about to ask for a more specific question.

The description doesn't say it specifically, but I don't see why it wouldn't clear the land.  This is all house ruling, though.  You could say that the materials are fabricated or you could say it uses surrounding resources.  There isn't a RAW answer.

I'd say, for a moderate sized house, in an hour of playing, you'd clear the land, level the land, and build the house, assuming nothing overly complex.


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## Sir Draconion (Mar 13, 2005)

so maybe build a stock pile of wood and clear the land with 14,400 people in one hour
i wonder what the range is


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## Sir Draconion (Mar 13, 2005)

i know these are all hypothectical
but what can 24 people do in 6 seconds?
how far can someone dig a mine in 8 hours? 1' 
the price is pretty cheap to make your own way in to a dungeon


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## BSF (Mar 13, 2005)

You have a few options.  

Use the Stronghold Builders Guide which includes how a Lyre of Building reduces your costs.  If your campaign uses the rules from the Stronghold Builders guide, then you need to keep it all in line with each other.
Use the rules from a Magical Medeival Society: Western Europe by Expeditious Retreat Press.  It's available as PDF or paper.  It includes alternate rules for building stuff and includes guidance on the Lyre of Building.  
Wing it.  

I generally consider the Lyre of Building to be broken because there are no rules for fatigue while playing.  My high level Bard could play until he became _fatigued_ from lack of sleep.  Once your perform is high enough, it's easy.  Instead I created some general fatigue rules -2 to perform each hour after the first.  These are house rules.  These could be improved by considering the Con of the musician and whether the musician has Endurance as a feat.  

BTW - How do you get 14,400 man hours.  100 men x 3 days = 300 x [hours worked per day]  8-10 hours would be reasonable but tops out at 3000 man hours.  Even working them 20 hours a day would still only get you 6000 man hours of work for each 1/2 hour played.


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## Sir Draconion (Mar 13, 2005)

it states 100 men working for three days(72 hours), not 24 hours thats per 1/2 hour the first hour is free(no perform check the first hour)


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## Sir Draconion (Mar 13, 2005)

your #s are wrong 100 x  per half hour  x8 hours or 16 1/2 hours x 3 = 4,800


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## BSF (Mar 13, 2005)

OK, if you are assuming a full 72 hours, then you have a base of 21,600 (100 x 3 x 72) man hours per half hour you play.  

Yeah, I suppose you could interpret it that way.  I guess I am just too old school where the 1st Ed AD&D DMG states 100 men labouring for 3 days.  Since men don't labour for 72 hours, I always interpreted it as a work day.  *shrug*  Whatever floats your boat.  

While I love the concept of this item, and indeed my Bard is making one, it is an item that needs to be carefully discussed between DM & player before it is used in a campaign.  It is _so_ cheap and the language used to describe it's affects is so vague that it is very easily abusable.  Why wouldn't every kingdom with a Bard and a wizard have a couple fo these sitting around?


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## Sir Draconion (Mar 13, 2005)

so true, basic low income housing, build a dam, clear the local swamp, instant garrisons and out posts
so does anyone out there have numbers?


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## Starglim (Mar 13, 2005)

Assuming that the lyre simulates the work of men, as it states, not robots, an hour of playing equates to 6 days of work for normal workers. Say, a week.

The costs and wages given in the 1e _DMG_ work out to a crew of 30 to 40 men - say 33 - labouring on a building.

Thus, the amount of labour done by the _lyre_ in an hour is three times the amount of construction that would be expected from normal workmen in a week - three 10' cubes of stonework or six 10' cubes of timber construction.

edit: It can provide a truly impressive amount of ditch-digging, if the GM chooses to count that as building.


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## Eolin (Mar 13, 2005)

Sir Draconion said:
			
		

> i have no idea what your talking about must be someone else
> post a link so maybe i can read it too





Sorry, it was a thread that had nearly the same question -- or so I thought last night, when I'd been drinking. Here it is:
http://www.kenzerco.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=661356&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

Hopefully that link will work.

Through both these thread, I still don't have the answer to my question -- how long/much will it take to build a 14 story (13 + 1 underground) Wizard's tower? What I'd really like to see is just a straight-up rule for how much it takes to build each square foot. I could easily extrapolate from there.


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## Ogrork the Mighty (Mar 13, 2005)

You could just house rule that the quality isn't on par with that of normal crafting. Perhaps the structure falls apart after a while, or is of a very generic make with little ability for customization. 

It could be like the _create food & water _ spell. Sure it's nourishing, but it also tastes like wet cardboard and consuming it will slowly drive you insane!


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## Stormrunner (Mar 13, 2005)

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.)


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## Jack Simth (Mar 13, 2005)

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.


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