As a home brew you could create an altered spell that does exactly what you want.
Call it lost magic and never let the players find the spell.
As for the regular spell.... In a large city wizards could make a very good living selling teleportation to rich people who need to travel far fast or even merchants moving very expensive items from city to city. This does require a bit of trust on the customers part and the target circle could be "moved" to a less secure area and the goods stolen.( make a new target circle and destroy the old one at the right time.Or just take over the target circle.)
These spells are just made for plot twists and story hooks.
As a home brew you could create an altered spell that does exactly what you want.
Call it lost magic and never let the players find the spell.
As for the regular spell.... In a large city wizards could make a very good living selling teleportation to rich people who need to travel far fast or even merchants moving very expensive items from city to city. This does require a bit of trust on the customers part and the target circle could be "moved" to a less secure area and the goods stolen.( make a new target circle and destroy the old one at the right time.Or just take over the target circle.)
These spells are just made for plot twists and story hooks.
Eh, Teleportation Circle isn’t much good for commerce; it only lasts for 1 round, so that’s a very narrow window to move goods, and it’s 50 gp/cast. Plus it’s not a ritual spell, so the casts per day are sharply limited. It’s certainly a service that could be offered, but I don’t think it can function as a fully-fledged transportation industry.
The customer pays for the material costs and if they want to move anything more valuable than 1000gp it starts to look cost effective. Gem merchants would pay well over 100 gp to move 10,000 gp of gems.
I tend to think that teleportation circles have different sets of send / receive sigils so that both permanent versions of TPC’s can be created, and intensely guarded.
A circle, whether it is to send or receive, might be semi complete and then abandoned for whatever reason, thus depending on how much is completed might well give little to all detail of where one might end up.
The circles created by the spell don't send, only receive. They're not magical gates, just addresses.
The default mode of the spell is "call a cab". If you cast it in the same place for a year, you have established an address that people can now take a cab to, but you still need to call the cab to leave there.
That is just it though, if one were to inscribe the unique sigil sequence of a permanent circle elsewhere in a different location on the same plane of existence, what happens?
You scribe the sigils, the materials required are consumed, and you are sent to the nearest unoccupied point close to the center of the permanent circle.
if I do that for a year straight, wouldn’t that make it a permanent “sending” location to the aforementioned “receiving” circle requiring just the spell and need consuming material just to teleport?
By the rules, no. There's no provision for any such thing. If you want to establish a place from where anyone can cast teleport circle to a specific teleport circle elsewhere, just write the sigils on the wall.
Presumably, though it's not well-defined, the sigils for a brand-new permanent circle are automatically given by the Internet Assigned Sigil Authority.
The "create a permanent circle" part of the spell seems to be a bit of an afterthought, probably to give an official answer to the question "how do the players get a permanent circle?" in a way to make it possible but deeply annoying, and they should've made the spell fully bimodal, instead of the "you don't have to teleport when you do it this way".
The bit on how a permanent circle is created is so long-running campaigns can set one up at a home base, but it’s completely untenable for players to attempt to create fast-travel points while adventuring. And making the spell create permanent outgoings would bump it to at least the same level as straight Teleport; long-distance teleportation is difficult and limited by design.
No, what the issue is that the Teleportation Circle Spell is so broadly defined that the Dm is responsible for how the mechanics of any from of a permanent circle may behave.
use the spell once as a quick trip mode for travel skipping, or deal with the DM who has to figure out how to deal with permanent circles.
They’re not broad, they’re very clear; you can use the spell to teleport from where you are to a permanent circle you have the address for, or you can use it daily for a year to create one. That is the beginning and end of all RAW information regarding the circles. Attempting to learn the destination from or otherwise create meaning in the circle drawn to teleport from is entirely homebrew. How the circle behaves is clear, people just try and make it do/be more.
I tend to think that teleportation circles have different sets of send / receive sigils so that both permanent versions of TPC’s can be created, and intensely guarded.
A circle, whether it is to send or receive, might be semi complete and then abandoned for whatever reason, thus depending on how much is completed might well give little to all detail of where one might end up.
The circles created by the spell don't send, only receive. They're not magical gates, just addresses.
But it's curious how, in some DnD adventures, we have two-way teleportation circles. I will replace the official texts for the sake of spoilers:
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist:
The circle is used by a person to meet secretly with another person and to teleport people to and from a place. See the teleportation circle spell description in the Player's Handbook for more information on how the circle functions.
A teleportation circle in the basement allows for swift transport to and from a place.
The evil wizard and his underlings come and go using teleportation circles inside this place.
Storm King's Thunder:
... windowless room that contains a permanent teleportation circle, which high-ranking people use to enter and leave the tower unseen.
Maybe a teleportation portal spell could be created.
One that lets a permanent portal be created from one spot to another. That would make it a 9th level spell since it would work without any other casting.
Or a limited distance teleportation spell could be created for a lower level. One that does not create a permanent circle. But one that could use a permanent circle to increase its range.
Another reason the spell Permanency should not have been removed. Limited yes but totally removed no.
I am giving my players alternate time-spans over which to complete the circle. The rule I'm using is every day the under-construction permanent circle accumulates a number of points equal to the square root of the number of times that Teleportation Circle was cast there that day, and at 365 points it becomes permanent. This fits with the current scenario (because the square root of 1 is 1), but conveniently gives some intuitive results with more castings.
For example, making it permanent in half the time requires twice the total number of castings (4x per day for half a year). I'm sure rich nobles would splurge gold to get an army of mages to cast it on the same location continuously. Using this square-root rule, with a casting time of 10 minutes (and no down time in between because they can start the next casting as soon as the portal pops up) gives 144 castings per day, the square root of which is 12, which means the circle gets finished 12x as fast, which is one month! (This costs a little over 217k gold, which is, not surprisingly, 12x the normal cost of ~18k gold).
EDIT: for your own sanity, make them pick a whole number for the Speed Increase Factor before they start the process, like 2,3,4,10, etc., and then have them cast it the corresponding number of times per day (4, 9, 16, 100, etc.) so you don't have to use a calculator all the time.
As a home brew you could create an altered spell that does exactly what you want.
Call it lost magic and never let the players find the spell.
As for the regular spell....
In a large city wizards could make a very good living selling teleportation to rich people who need to travel far fast or even merchants moving very expensive items from city to city. This does require a bit of trust on the customers part and the target circle could be "moved" to a less secure area and the goods stolen.( make a new target circle and destroy the old one at the right time.Or just take over the target circle.)
These spells are just made for plot twists and story hooks.
Eh, Teleportation Circle isn’t much good for commerce; it only lasts for 1 round, so that’s a very narrow window to move goods, and it’s 50 gp/cast. Plus it’s not a ritual spell, so the casts per day are sharply limited. It’s certainly a service that could be offered, but I don’t think it can function as a fully-fledged transportation industry.
The customer pays for the material costs and if they want to move anything more valuable than 1000gp it starts to look cost effective. Gem merchants would pay well over 100 gp to move 10,000 gp of gems.
By the rules, no. There's no provision for any such thing. If you want to establish a place from where anyone can cast teleport circle to a specific teleport circle elsewhere, just write the sigils on the wall.
Presumably, though it's not well-defined, the sigils for a brand-new permanent circle are automatically given by the Internet Assigned Sigil Authority.
The "create a permanent circle" part of the spell seems to be a bit of an afterthought, probably to give an official answer to the question "how do the players get a permanent circle?" in a way to make it possible but deeply annoying, and they should've made the spell fully bimodal, instead of the "you don't have to teleport when you do it this way".
The bit on how a permanent circle is created is so long-running campaigns can set one up at a home base, but it’s completely untenable for players to attempt to create fast-travel points while adventuring. And making the spell create permanent outgoings would bump it to at least the same level as straight Teleport; long-distance teleportation is difficult and limited by design.
No, what the issue is that the Teleportation Circle Spell is so broadly defined that the Dm is responsible for how the mechanics of any from of a permanent circle may behave.
use the spell once as a quick trip mode for travel skipping, or deal with the DM who has to figure out how to deal with permanent circles.
They’re not broad, they’re very clear; you can use the spell to teleport from where you are to a permanent circle you have the address for, or you can use it daily for a year to create one. That is the beginning and end of all RAW information regarding the circles. Attempting to learn the destination from or otherwise create meaning in the circle drawn to teleport from is entirely homebrew. How the circle behaves is clear, people just try and make it do/be more.
I agree with this. A similar question and answer were given on RPG Stack Exchange: Is a permanent teleportation circle only a destination, and not a point of departure?
But it's curious how, in some DnD adventures, we have two-way teleportation circles. I will replace the official texts for the sake of spoilers:
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist:
Storm King's Thunder:
Technically a 'sending' teleportation circle is called a Portal
Maybe a teleportation portal spell could be created.
One that lets a permanent portal be created from one spot to another. That would make it a 9th level spell since it would work without any other casting.
Or a limited distance teleportation spell could be created for a lower level. One that does not create a permanent circle. But one that could use a permanent circle to increase its range.
Another reason the spell Permanency should not have been removed. Limited yes but totally removed no.
I am giving my players alternate time-spans over which to complete the circle. The rule I'm using is every day the under-construction permanent circle accumulates a number of points equal to the square root of the number of times that Teleportation Circle was cast there that day, and at 365 points it becomes permanent. This fits with the current scenario (because the square root of 1 is 1), but conveniently gives some intuitive results with more castings.
For example, making it permanent in half the time requires twice the total number of castings (4x per day for half a year). I'm sure rich nobles would splurge gold to get an army of mages to cast it on the same location continuously. Using this square-root rule, with a casting time of 10 minutes (and no down time in between because they can start the next casting as soon as the portal pops up) gives 144 castings per day, the square root of which is 12, which means the circle gets finished 12x as fast, which is one month! (This costs a little over 217k gold, which is, not surprisingly, 12x the normal cost of ~18k gold).
EDIT: for your own sanity, make them pick a whole number for the Speed Increase Factor before they start the process, like 2,3,4,10, etc., and then have them cast it the corresponding number of times per day (4, 9, 16, 100, etc.) so you don't have to use a calculator all the time.