Ben Mathis's page

Agreed, it's a house rule, you can play it as you like.

My point is that the item predates the Ultimate Campaign book (or Paizo. Or WotC.) If the designers thought the item rules needed modification they likely would have included them it in the UCam book or the Core Rule update that hit my inbox this morning. Or assigned it a point value under the downtime building system. The lack of rule change leads me to think they didn't feel the need. And I'm sure they thought about it.

The idea that "The players can get something for nothing, can't have that!" just sits poorly with me. The item eliminates labor costs. So bumping the transport cost to compensate strikes me as being punitive for no good reason. Extra transport costs to stockpile materials? Fifty trips in a wagon will cost as much as fifty wagons making one trip. Or ten a day for five days. and it will still be a fraction of the actual material cost. And your players know this. Gigging them for planing ahead when you let them have the lyre seems like poor sport. And if they do take up the gauntlet then expect to see them realize the (underground building=no transport cost) mechanic I mentioned above.

Now if you want to talk about really unbalancing uses...
>Use the stone from underground construction as an offset for BP when building roads.
>Irrigation ditches dug with the Lyre make plains farmland hexes faster and cheaper. Terracing makes hill hexes into fields for lower BP
>Rerouting waterways can dry out swamp hexes fast, lowering BP cost to put anything there by lowering prep costs.
>Motte & bailey, rampart & ditch, moats, and other earthworks can be produced fast and free (since the spoil is used in adjacent rammed earthworks) and increase the defensive value of settlements.
>Breakwaters, quays, and defensive shoals can spring up overnight. Harbors can be dredged out equally rapidly. Reduce the BP cost for Waterfront. And eliminate the cost for waterways.

None of these projects have any transportation cost, or the cost is offset by the diminished labor costs to extract the material (example-the gravel from the excavation going to road construction). With 1 Labor=20gp and 1BP=4000gp THIS is where you'll see the unbalancing effect.

Transportation costs should not be equal to 1/2 the labor costs of a building. Teamsters are quite a bit cheaper than stonemasons and carpenters (or they should be). And since the lyre can be used for excavation (as per the item description- "magically construct buildings, mines, tunnels, ditches, ect.") if the materials are available on site in their natural state (stone in a quarry for example) then this should not cause any cost increases at all. I would also apply this to wood used in construction if the building site is in a forest, but that's just me.

And for underground construction there would be no material cost as long as the areas excavated didn't require materials from off site to be used for bracing. As long as the stone you're working can be engineered to hold itself up (dwarven bards looking really useful all of a sudden) then labor cost should be 0gp.

Honestly, this comes back to the oldest trick in the DM-ing arsenal. If you think an item is overpowered, don't let the players have it. Period. You can give reasons (can't find one to buy, can't find the needed information to make one, ect), impose penalties for having it (in this specific case I'm sure nobles tend to confiscate Lyres of Building from untitled riff-raff. Especially if they go building fortifications without permission. Tradesman's guilds likely go a bit nuts about them too.) or just say "No, you can't have one."

But in the end, how big an issue is this? Does it need a rule? I think not. The only time I have ever had players pulling their hair out trying to get one of these was while running Kingmaker. And if they had located one, I'd have let them have it. It's primary use is during downtime. Kingmaker is the only time I've had a situation where a Lyre could mess up the story line, but it was just the B story. The odds on it trashing your main plot line are normally pretty low. Just work with it.

OK, so to confirm for the mildly confounded...

#1-I am currently running RotRL as a home game with standard PFRPG characters. After the players finish Thistletop I can give them (and myself) a Chronicle Sheet for "Burnt Offerings" that may be applied to any 3rd through 5th level PFS character in their inventory.

#2-Then after they finish Foxglove Manor I can give out "The Skinsaw Murders" Chronicle Sheet. It can be applied to any 4th to 6th level PFS character. It does not have to be applied to the same one that received the "Burnt Offerings" sheet.

#3-In either case, the Society characters that get the Chronicle Sheets for sanctioned Adventure Path content can still be played normally in Society scenarios and sanctioned modules. Or other sanctioned Adventure Paths for that matter.

Are these assumptions correct?