D&D 5E How much should it cost to use a permanent teleportation circle?

[Kobold Avenger]

A permanent teleportation circle costs around 18250 gold pieces to make (50gp material cost x 365 days in a year), which is quite a lot to setup. But once the teleportation circle is permanently there, how much should whoever setup the circle charge for it's use?

 

[billd91]

Is this a municipal teleportation circle or a private one? If municipal, I can certainly see a moderate toll since people with 5th level spells tend to have pretty decent means. Probably in the 10s of gold coins. Private - whatever they can get away with. All of this, of course, would depend on how well the circle managers can enforce a toll/payment since they can't simply send the arriving users back for lack of payment...

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Is this a municipal teleportation circle or a private one? If municipal, I can certainly see a moderate toll since people with 5th level spells tend to have pretty decent means. Probably in the 10s of gold coins. Private - whatever they can get away with. All of this, of course, would depend on how well the circle managers can enforce a toll/payment since they can't simply send the arriving users back for lack of payment...

I assume that enforcement is going to be a bunch of guards and the teleportation circle being in a room that can be secured physically, with maybe some magical reinforcement/wards.

 

[Oofta]

Well, it's not just the 18k+ gold, it's also the time and opportunity cost. The wizard(s) casting the spell has to be there every single day and spend a limited resource. Kind of cuts down on those options to vacation in Aruba if you're the sole caster.

So let's put the real cost at 30k GP. How often is the teleportation circle used? How quickly do you need to make a return on investment? If you need to protect the circle how much does that cost, what's the overhead? A human wizard may want to start making money within a couple decades, an elf could stretch it out to a century or more. Then of course you have to look at returns on alternative investments which could have had compounding interest, etc.

So simplifying again, take that 30k and assume the circle is used once a day. To break even in a year if you include overhead costs it would be something like 100 GP (30k/365=82, then round up) per trip. If you wanted to pay it off after 10 years and took into consideration alternative investment opportunities you didn't sink money into I'd say charging 15 GP sounds about right. Which, to be honest is less than I expected.

But it just depends how often it is used, after all you still need a 5th level spell slot so a 9th level wizard could do it once per day. In any case, that's the basic fuzzy but I think good enough math I would use.

 

[aco175]

Begs the question as to why people did not set up a bunch all over the major cities of Faerun in the 100 year gap between 4e and 5e. You would think all the merchant houses would rather teleport than caravan. If the costs are this cheap.

I guess the city might not want a circle in its borders in case of secret attack through it, but just locate it outside the walls or under some sort of guard.

Magic like this will impact the road repair crews and peasants that breed horses and make wagons. Governments could outlaw it since it might put a lot of low wage earners out of work. Someone's cousin might be up for a contract or other merchants start rumors about how some people end up in hell and not make the teleport.

 

[pukunui]

House Orien in Eberron charges a flat fee of 2500 gp to use one of its permanent teleportation circles.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I think it depends on the setting. The more common magic is, the cheaper it will be. In my campaign only a handful of NPCs can cast 5th level spells, and nobody is making new permanent ones (there are a few old ones lying around), so it would probably be a lot of money, probably in the thousands.

I could see a setting with more casters where it would be in the hundreds, or a "magic is technology" setting where it might even be in the tens of gp. Even then though, I think keeping it the fantasy equivalent of a plane ticket feels right to me.

Also to add to the odd economics of it all, if you are a non magic user, do you pay the person who casts it before you go, and then also pay the person who made the permanent circle when you arrive? Is there some sort of established guild where you pay once and they share the profits?

 

[MarkB]

Begs the question as to why people did not set up a bunch all over the major cities of Faerun in the 100 year gap between 4e and 5e. You would think all the merchant houses would rather teleport than caravan. If the costs are this cheap.

A teleportation circle is still useless without a 9th-level spellcaster to teleport things to it, so how many merchant houses have a plentiful supply of those on staff? Even for those who do, they can only move as much cargo per casting as can be shoved through it in six seconds. Even just in terms of the cost for employing a spellcaster of that level, it's a costly price for a shipment or two per day, before you consider usage fees for the circle at the other end.

 

[pukunui]

Begs the question as to why people did not set up a bunch all over the major cities of Faerun in the 100 year gap between 4e and 5e. You would think all the merchant houses would rather teleport than caravan. If the costs are this cheap.

As per Storm King's Thunder, the Harpers have set up just such a teleportation circle network among the northern Sword Coast cities (Waterdeep, Mirabar, Silverymoon, etc). It's meant to be a secret, though, as it is implied that most of the cities don't want a potential security breach of that kind inside their walls.

 

[ichabod]

I think it would be more economical to set up an associated object network using teleport. Yes, you need a 13th level caster instead of a 9th level caster, but you don't have to spend the money making a permanent circle. You just need to make sure to teleport objects from the target locations every six months.