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

[cbwjm]

I know that older editions had cost of spell services, does 5e? That might help determine what's needed for there to be profits, though perhaps a city hires wizards full time which brings the costs down (part of why I like the thought that there are ritualists linking the various circles together, they don't necessarily have to be a 9th level caster).

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Honestly, if you have a wizard in attendance to create a trade route to another TC, there is a chance you'll operate it often. Therefore any wizard in attendance to SEND a party to a TC'ed destination will get a local permanent TC "for free" after 365 days.

Also, if you're casting a 5th level spell, you might as well first cast Reduce on a Large object, like a crate full of spice, into a Medium, 1/8th of its weight, one. A single man could carry 1200 pounds of expensive spice and your half-ton just becaue 4 tons.

 

[ezo]

Our games also equate 1 gp = $100 USD.

Creating a permanent teleportation circle would be about 20,000 gp or $2,000,000! That doesn't include the costs for any structure to hold it, people to "run" it as a business, guards, etc. Those would be yearly expenses, so you aren't just looking at recouping costs, but covering continuous costs as well. Assuming a competent staff, guards, etc. of perhaps 20 people total, at an average of 1.5 gp / day, that would just about double the costs to 40,000 gp (half for the circle, half for employees and unkeep).

Many businesses require two years to break-even and begin showing an actual profit. This means the "business" would only need to make about 80 gp/day (250-day work year). Then you have to decide how many "inbound" customers would be arriving daily. If you have 100 a day, that would be only a 8 sp "arrival fee" for using a permanent circle as your destination to break-even. If you double that to roughly 1.5 gp, you're profits would be about 20,000 gp yearly (again assuming 100 incoming customers @ 250 working-days).

Since permanent cirlces are "incoming" only, someone has to cast the spell to send whoever/whatever the permanent circle is receiving. This requires a 9th+ level caster, that service needs to be considered as well. However, since the out-going circle will be active for 6-seconds, you could send a decent number of travelers through. Since spell slots of 5th+ level are rather limited, you would like only have a couple out-going trips a day. If you had everyone gather around the "sending circle", you could probably get about 50 travelers per casting. At 2 gp per traveler, that 100 gp covers the material component costs and provides an additional 50 gp for the caster.

Putting it together, the out-bound cost might be 2 gp, and the arrival fee another 1.5 gp; round it up to 4-5 gp total per traveler. While that might seem cheap, it does represent a "modest" lifestyle for 5 days. Most commoners could not afford to travel on a whim.

Ultimately, this depends on the rarity of 9th-level casters to cast the spell. Due to that alone, the price could easily be 10x to 100x or more!

This makes the "answer" very much campaign dependent.

 

[cbwjm]

I've been rereading the spell description, I feel like once you have a couple of circles set up, the components should be the chalks inks (as mentioned) or another permanent circle. Also kind of feel like this should be a ritual. I sort of understand why they didn't designate it as such, but still feel like it should be.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I know that older editions had cost of spell services, does 5e? That might help determine what's needed for there to be profits, though perhaps a city hires wizards full time which brings the costs down (part of why I like the thought that there are ritualists linking the various circles together, they don't necessarily have to be a 9th level caster).

The Forgotten Realms wiki mentions that the gross margin of crossing the Araunoch in caravan is such that 100 gp of goods from one side can get 500 gp on the other side. If we assume (from the same spice article) that the most expensive spices fetch 40 gp per pound (at the destination), a single carrier of a Reduced sack can carry 48,000 gp worth of spice at destination (for an investment of 9,600).

Even with a more modest 100% gross margin (spices from Persia to Western Europe in the real-life middle ages), the wizard will make a healthy buck sending his fighter friends to carry the goods (what other uses might fighting men with pointy sticks have for our heroic and entrepreneurial wizard?)

Note by Ao: if you try to make sense of Faerun's economy, it will cause yet an another Sundering!

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Note that in such a context, any two 9th level wizard should stop adventuring and invest in creating a permanent TC at their convient trading location. The initial cost of 36,500 gp (that they should have saved from their adventuring days that led them to level 9), even if there is no convenient TC in the world (which is a boon for them, since they will have no competition) can bypass a trade route for expensive items and they can recoup their investiment on day 366 and turn a mighty profit starting on day 367.

Even better, they could equip their fighting friends with bags of holding. A single on can carry 500 pounds, but with a casting of Reduce that's 4,000 pounds of spice one of them can carry. Imagine they send two friends, each way, that's 640,000gp worth of trade good they can ferry on the first day. They'd have acquisition cost of 128,000 gp, so they should start quite rich (convince their fighting men friend to invest their share of hteir adventuring profit?) for a net gain of 512,000 gp on the first day (equally shared: 250,000 gp for each wizard and 3,000 for each fighting man who didn't stury arithmetics and was fooled with amortization).

 

[ezo]

A point of interest in all this when speculating transporting goods (especially the spice trade) is moving that much spice could "flood the market" and drastically reduce the value of the good. Rarity in trade was historically a major reason for price fluctuation.

 

[kigmatzomat]

You are not incorrect. Most of the time being a mercenary is far less cost effective than being some kind of merchant. You will note that historically, warriors would take over a region then charge tolls & taxes because waging war can result in loot, but loot is finite while trade is infinite.

However the security implications of teleport circles are non-trivial. It's a 10ft diameter circle. In grid terms, there are 12 adjacent squares, so with double moves, 144 people can get through (60ft move/5ft=12person line x 12 paths). That's a non-trivial assault force. Add held actions for a second wave, and we're up to 288. Horses can squeeze through a 5ft square, so why not use cacavalry?

The only way to prevent someone from using a permanent circle is to have a controllable antimagic zone or completely block it. Antimagic is rare and powerful so probably out. Even a massive block of stone isn't perfect as earth elementals can pass through stone.

So what you get are portals with complex barriers augmented by spells that hedge out the worst nasties (I.e. Forbiddance) put some where semi-inhospitable and probably trapped like crazy.

Or, you wind up with a portal at an old ruin where there used to be a trade portal without sufficiently complex barriers, spells to hedge out nasties or traps to eliminate the ones that get through.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

The only way to prevent someone from using a permanent circle is to have a controllable antimagic zone or completely block it. Antimagic is rare and powerful so probably out. Even a massive block of stone isn't perfect as earth elementals can pass through stone.

According to the rule, if the destination square is occupied, the creature passing through appears in the closest free square. So even if you were to fill the room the portal is with concrete, it is by RAW still possible to use it as a destination point.

 

[cranberry]

The underlying problem with this question is that high level characters in 5E typically have so much gold that costs are irrelevant.