D&D 5E Teleportation circles costs *how* much?!

[Dragonsbane]

Totally fair cost. Aren't some magical items worth more than 18k?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

The Great Wall of China took 300,000 people to work for 9 years. Let's say they had a day off each week and worked 300 days per year, that's 810,000,000 unskilled workday at 2sp each in D&D money. T'as 1,620,000,000 sp or 162 million gold pieces. The effort the Qin Dynasty supported was worth around 8,000 teleportation circles. The limit is the scarcity of 9th level wizards, not the listed price.

But as @Faolyn pointed out, the spells just mentions that casting the spell each day for one year at the same place creates a permanent circle, not that the only way to create a permanent circle is to do that. Maybe a monthly casting is enough if the magic can be kept alive by 10 disciples chanting rituals non-stop between two castings.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Don't forget that the rules in the PH are mainly for PCs. The DM can easily say that any NPC wizard can build a permanent teleportation circle in less time, using cheaper reagents, because they have access to arcane or divine knowledge the PCs don't.

True enough, but I feel like on those rare occasions when the game actually tells you how to create a permanent magic thing using the spells in the book, having plot magic not available to players do it instead is dissatisfying worldbuilding and kind of a cheap move. Better to save mysterious arcane or divine knowledge the players don't have for the manifold things you want in your campaign that the PHB doesn't give an established way to create.

 

[Helldritch]

For economy
If you want kingdom building and management you can always refer to the old Rule Cyclopedia (or the companion set) of BECMI. It was fairly easy to understand and was quite accurate about how medieval income was working.

For teleportation circles.
The rules are clear and I would not chamge them. A ruler who wants such a circle in his castle would hire a mage just for this purpose (does the word court mage rings a bell?) and not a PC. A PC ready to do such a thing for himself and his friends must be ready to have someone ready to give him a hand "just in case" if he needs to get away for adventuring. Although some campaigns allow for this type of commitment, these are not the norm these days. But when such a campaign is on the road, I see no problems in a PC doing it.

 

[BookTenTiger]

As a player, I love this kind of stuff because it really ignites my imagination and makes me start to imagine a different mode of play... How can my 9th level wizard secure enough time to cast this spell every day for a year?

Money, of course, is no problem since 5e characters are drowning in gold, especially in "big quest against time" campaigns.

In the campaign I am playing in (which is a big quest against time), there are no established teleportation circles, so the DM and I worked together to develop an idea for how my wizard could discover / invent one. We came up with an isolated wizard who lived in a tower in a tiny, far away town, who had done about 11 months of work on Teleportation circles before dying. My character shows up, and takes a month of downtime to complete the research. Now we have a safe haven to return to, and a little town of our own.

In the campaign I run, the character are only 5th level, but the entire campaign takes place in a valley that takes something like two or three days to cross, so teleportation circles wouldn't be that valuable or game breaking. Still, if there's interest at 9th level, we will work them into the lore!

 

[Mistwell]

No, the richest people are the people who bankroll wizards, just like in the real world. Unless all wizards are adventurers, then the average wizard can't afford 18,000gp (plus living expenses) to set up a circle, doesn't have the contacts with a circle at the other end to trade with, doesn't have a supply of grain etc etc. He probably creates and operates the circle for a wage, or loses most of his profits paying back his business loan.

Yeah, I can see this as something a major city invests in. The city hires wizards, bankrolls the cost, with expected long term returns over years from trade with another major city.

I can definitely see some adventuring opportunities there. "Our wizard was just assassinated by a rival city's agent, and his backup was kidnapped. Rescue the wizard in the next 12 hours, or find a replacement for her, or 6 months of work and thousands of gold go down the drain!"

 

[Faolyn]

True enough, but I feel like on those rare occasions when the game actually tells you how to create a permanent magic thing using the spells in the book, having plot magic not available to players do it instead is dissatisfying worldbuilding and kind of a cheap move. Better to save mysterious arcane or divine knowledge the players don't have for the manifold things you want in your campaign that the PHB doesn't give an established way to create.

Meh. I think that's an "each to their own." I don't mind having PCs with stricter rules--it gives me, the DM, more options.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

The #1 problem with Teleportation Circle is it's useless if the GM hasn't implemented it in their world building.

I joined a campaign and the group had kept finding 'summoning circles'. I was playing a wizard and took Teleportation Circle since I figured I could take advantage of these magical circles. It turns out the 'summoning Circles' were some hand-waivy homebrew demon summoning. The DM told me, "Oh, I didn't even know that spell existed. No, there aren't any Teleportation Circles in this campaign."

So, yeah, he let me choose a new spell. I've only seen them used in one game but the DM homebrewed them to make them function more like the 3rd edition version in order to make them a bit more useful.

 

[aco175]

I just finished reading this necro thread. I got thinking about the gold and economy and looked up the cost of gold in dollars from 2016 when the thread started and it was around $1,250 to around $2,000 today. In 1970 from early days of D&D it was only $250. Not sure how that plays into the economy of kingdoms or wealth of nobles and cost of making circles. I mostly thought how real life things change and how D&D things do not, having everything cost PHB prices over the life of the books.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I'm very late to this thread, but on the subject of permanent teleportation circles being "huge security holes" I could be fun to think of how to build them so that if you don't prepare beforehand in a specific way (such as, pre-casting levitate on yourself) it's a deathtrap when you arrive.

And for making it permanent, do you think you could get your wizard friends to help you? Must the same wizard do all 365 castings? (And, for that matter, not all worlds have 365 day years....)