Teleport Circle - Destroyer of Worlds

[Altalazar]

Upon further reflection, there are consequences beyond the circle itself and any immediate "competitors".


First, anything that is that difficult to build, as many have pointed out, would be worth quite a lot to guard.

But even if someone somehow bypassed this and destroyed it - guess what - that is a CRIME. Not only would that require prosecution, with appropriate and stiff medieval penalties, but also a civil suit as well - restitution to the tune of the cost of the circle and all of the lost business from the circle over its useful life. The perpetrator, if it was from a group of rich merchants, mind find themselves paying back the wizard for the rest of their natural lives. Now obviously, there likely isn't an Elvish Johnny Cochrane in a fantasy world, but they did have courts and laws and while corruption might play a part, I'm sure a city is NOT going to want to have a 17th level wizard pissed off at the authorities for not prosecuting what is an obvious and significant crime.

Aside from that, there are community considerations. If the circle is truly cheaper and safer than other modes of travel (and obviously much faster) all of the loyal customers will also profit by it. They will be able to sell their goods to a much wider market, perhaps finding new markets they couldn't before - like baked bread which would otherwise go stale if it had to be transported the normal way. They would all stand to lose all of that profit if the circle were shut down. It would be the equivalent today to a major city suddenly losing its international airport. I'd be willing to bet that NOBODY in that community would want to see that happen - with perhaps the exception of those who run the ship-port. And even some of them will probably see business drop because I'm sure there are goods that they transport that only arrive via the airport (or teleport circle in this case).

In other words, there would be a drastic effect on the local economy as a whole with the introduction (or elimination) of a teleport circle. I think the effect of having one would be overwhelmingly positive - to the point that anyone who wanted to destroy one would be looked upon with disfavor by just about every single being in the community - heck, they'd probably be considered a terrorist. Because likely ALL who use it would be profiting by doing so - cheaper transport, better insurance of arrival. And the increased trade to the city means increased taxes, which makes the authorities happy, and so on...

 

[CyberSpyder]

Jesus. By the logic of some of the people here, railroads would never have been built - after all, it requires substantial initial expense, and it's very vulnerable to a random person walking up with a stick of dynamite and blowing up the track.

Something like this - an item with a given price which lowers travel costs and times potentially indefinitely - would be constructed, and in large numbers, in any consistent and realistic world, unless there are extremely substantial downsides, like that 'horde of demons' example. (Though I personally find that a bit silly, but hey.) Magic in these games generally has the same role as technology, and if there's one thing we've learned from history, it's that technology keeps happening - where it would disrupt the old order, people often try to stop it, but in the end the old order just gets disrupted anyway. There's too much benefit to setting up permanent teleportation circles - or simply items enchanted with use-activated Teleport without error.

This is something that can be ignored in a campaign, or fixed by either removing teleportation as-is or adding downsides. But pretending that the issue doesn't exist in the core rules as written is just silly.

 

[Greybar]

Lest we recreate the wheel... there was a excellent world-creation thread based on the existence of the Teleport circle. Unfortuantely it seems to have faded off into the great archive in the sky (or at least my search failed).

john

 

[Endur]

I view teleport circles as similar to portals in Forgotten Realms.

Powerful magic items.

Extremely valuable.

Yes, Merchants will pay the 50k or whatever a wizard charges to set these up. Yes, there will be mercenary Wizards capable of casting 9th level spells who are willing to build these. Yes, Merchants will make more money than they spend on these circles. But sooner or later somebody stops the party for reasons mentioned in other posts.

For all the reasons mentioned, circles and portals are far superior to shipping, caravans, etc. The biggest problem is the initial investment. Many merchants don't have a 50k in start up money to invest in portals.

Looking at the DMG towns table, I notice that Metropolis's offer all items that cost 100k or less. Large Cities offer items that cost 40k or less. I would imagine that merchants in Metropolis's do have teleportation circles to connect to another Metropolis. Large Cities are a maybe. And there wouldn't be teleportation circles in anything smaller than a large city.

 

[drnuncheon]

By the logic of some of the people here, railroads would never have been built - after all, it requires substantial initial expense, and it's very vulnerable to a random person walking up with a stick of dynamite and blowing up the track.

Most dynamite wouldn't blow up all of the track and the trains as well.

J

 

[Carnifex]

Some one seems to have cast Animate Dead on a slew of ancient threads from *last year* *stares at Altalazar*

 

[MaxKaladin]

Tzarevitch is right. The Manual of the Planes mentions something about the links between two gates (and, presumably, permanent teleport circles) attracting unwanted attention on the Astral. In my world, such permanent circles do not exist for exactly that reason. I reason that individual teleportation spells are safe enough since the connection exists for only a few seconds at most and the chances of it attracting something on the astral are virtually nonexistant, but permanent circles exist long enough to have a significant chance of attracting unwanted attention.

I did some math regarding non-permanent teleport circles once and concluded that they simply wouldn't replace conventional means of hauling cargo. I took food and labor costs as well as arbitrary overhead/maintenance into account and came to the conclusion that you could make a profit on very high value goods, but the 1000gp cost of casting the teleport circle would be too high to make much (or any) profit moving low value goods like food or raw materials. You would need a permanent circle to make a profit with those low value goods. Any other teleport spell wouldn't be efficient due to the weight restrictions.

Items that cast a teleport circle on demand would probably be the only way this would work. It would be much more expensive up front, but safer.

I'd also point out that the economic effect may well be like when the railroad came to a town in the old west. The town that got the railroad prospered and the towns that didn't withererd.

 

[Norfleet]

The more interesting aspects of a permanent teleportation circle are its military applications: If it becomes a military application, this neatly changes the entire concept of "guarding" it: If you're using it as a military tool, the guards are inherent in the fact that you're shuffling your military through it. Think about how valuable a teleportation structure is in any fantasy wargame you've ever played: It's easily worth your left arm to set up a network of the damn things across your entire empire, thus allowing you to defend using point-reaction forces instead of standing garrisons. The commercial benefits are considerable to boot.

Really, there's no really good reason why this hasn't happened, except the entire "horde of demons" drawback. Depending on how you view things, this might not even be a drawback. After all, that wizard needs to recoup that 5K-odd XP somewhere.....and how better to do that than to camp a spawn site? Come on, you know it'd happen: Adventurers build these things, not because they're concerned about the commercial or military applications at ALL, but because for a mere investment of 5K XP, you have a steady well of XP to spawncamp...and when you get tired of it, all you have to do is close it.

Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if, as a result of the entire horde of demons problem that renders it militarily and commercially nonviable, ADVENTURERS begin pointlessly establishing gates that go, well, NOWHERE interesting.....just so they can spawncamp the portal for the horde of demons.

 

[Zappo]

Night of the living thread, yes?

XP don't grow on trees (unless you like shooting elves, that is).

Man, I'd forgot that line. I thought it was pretty clever at the time.

...hey, let me dream, ok?

Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if, as a result of the entire horde of demons problem that renders it militarily and commercially nonviable, ADVENTURERS begin pointlessly establishing gates that go, well, NOWHERE interesting.....just so they can spawncamp the portal for the horde of demons.

Marvelous! You've finally discovered a logical justification to MMORPGs!

 

[Saeviomagy]

I did some math regarding non-permanent teleport circles once and concluded that they simply wouldn't replace conventional means of hauling cargo. I took food and labor costs as well as arbitrary overhead/maintenance into account and came to the conclusion that you could make a profit on very high value goods, but the 1000gp cost of casting the teleport circle would be too high to make much (or any) profit moving low value goods like food or raw materials. You would need a permanent circle to make a profit with those low value goods. Any other teleport spell wouldn't be efficient due to the weight restrictions.

For 170 minutes, you can ferry through 1 mule a round, carrying 690 pounds of goods.

Lets trade something normal. Like... salt. 5gp a pound.
That's 3450gp on each mule (you can afford to put them at heavy load, because they're only taking a few steps.

170 minutes * 10 rounds *3450gp of goods = 5865000gp per circle.

Assuming no more than a 1% difference in price from end to end, that's 58650gp per casting of the spell. Your investment is 1700*8cp+1000gp+2cp (cost of drivers, 1 per 10 mules) = 1136.02gp per circle.

Perishables, would be likely to rake in more than that.

Doing it for wheat or something similar would be quite unprofitable.

However - why would we EVER do it for wheat? If you've got the technology of the teleport circle, then there's not really a lot stopping you from setting up your manufacturing at the site of the resource. Bread comes in at 4 times the price of wheat per pound. Or brew it up and sell it by the keg.