I'm not quoting all that:
And no intrepid psion couldn't find a way around those limitations. I can see a group of adventurers finding a way around it all.
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Sure. Just that this very same group of adventurers would have a MUCH easier time just plundering a galleon. And they'll plunder 150 tons of gold, instead of diverting the psion's maximum load, which is something in the low hundreds of pounds
at best. So whatever amount of gold a high level group of adventurers might steal from a circle of teleport, it PALES in comparison to what that
same group of high level adventurers might steal from a galleon. Your point is completelly stupid. Sure, it's *possible* that some high powered group of Somalians Special Forces (??) might go into the main office of Toyota and steal *one* car that was going to be teleported from Tokio to Berlin. But compare it to the easiness of stealing a ship with DOZENS of them in the sea, it's just absurd.
Oh, let's see what D&D campaign has no psionics,[...]
Those aren't campaigns, those are settings. A campaign is a serie of adventures played in a given game table. None of the *campaigns* I've played in Forgotten Realms *setting* have had psionics, but one. That's less than 10% of them.
Psionics have been optional in most settings (all of them but Dark Sun) for a loooong time.
So let's see, a spell that requires a 19 intelligence isn't the rough equivalent of Advanced Calculus or Relativity. Okay...
No, what I said is that finding that the cost of 5 galleys and 2 years of trading is higher than 2 circles of teleport is a trivial issue compared to Calculus. The trader that realize this (and anyone with three digits in IQ would do) does not need to cast the spell himself: he pays for it. You have even the cost listed in the PHB, go figure. In a world where magic is as common as electricity, it's easy as pie to get it.
Plus as someone said: a wizard with 19 intelligence is just someone barely able to cast spells, with a +6 INT headband. The only problem is the level. But in several worlds where magic is as common as electricity, it's not *cough*forgotten*cough*. There's no sigle city, organization, guild or faction in Forgotten that do not have at least a *dozen* of spellcasters able to cast that. Anyone with lvl 17 HAS 19 intelligence. Assuming the commoner set of stats, and giving the higher one (a mere 13) to int, including the 4 bumps through levels (4-8-12-16), and a incredibly cheap +2 INT headband, you have enough intelligence to cast 9th level spells.
You stated how Eberron is the most likely campaign to make use of magic like that. And it has a low number of high level characters. Coincidence?
No, it's not coincidence. It's the only setting that used common sense to be built, so the designer decided that in a world where magic is common, the high level spellcasters shouldn't exist, becouse they would own the world. Forgotten realms have high level spellcasters, and magic everywhere, and that's why it *does not have any sense*. There's no point Cormyr make mundane royal trade routes when they have high level casters in service of the king that might do teleportation circles. If Felipe II could teleport the gold from Habana to Sevilla, he would do so instead of risking thousands of tons of gold to the pirates and weather. Azoun IV has the chance to do so, but he doesn't. Becouse the designers of the world didn't realize the real effect such common magic would have.
Keith Baker did, however. And his world reflects what a world with common magic would look like. Tolkien also realized what effect would have "magic is everywhere", he didn't like it, and that's why he greatly reduced what spellcasters can do, to the point that the mightiest spellcaster in his novel, Gandalf, needed help from a Giant Eagle to escape from a tower, becouse he could not even fly (much less teleport)