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Aron Times
2009-11-02, 05:38 PM
The cost to cast Linked Portal is 135 gold. Unlike 3.5's Teleport, there is no range restriction on Linked Portal, but the destination has to be at a teleportation circle. If your starting point is at a teleportation circle, i.e. you're going circle to circle, the cost goes down to 50 gold.

Assuming a circle to circle portal, it takes a DC 15 Arcana check to open the portal for three rounds and DC 35 to open it for five rounds. Basically, a well-trained NPC ritual caster can hold a portal open for three rounds for 50 gold. 50 gold to transport people and goods to any teleportation circle in the world. This is cheaper and much faster than a long ocean voyage, and it gets much more efficient the better the ritual caster gets.

Of course, setting up a teleportation circle network is expensive, but still far cheaper than outfitting a mid-paragon adventuring party. Creating a new teleportation circle requires 1,000 gold for each square in the circle (actually a square in 4E geometry, but story-wise it's a circle). It's basically 1,000 gold for a 5-ft. diamater circle, 4,000 gold for a 10-ft. diameter circle, 9,000 gold for a 15-ft. diameter circle, and so on.

I can see teleportation circles being high-priority targets in a large-scale battle. Destroying a circle would force an army to rely on conventional transportation to get its troops to that location, delaying reinforcements until it is too late. Capturing a circle would be worse for the defender since the attacker has now opened a new front, possibly in the middle of the country.

Teleportation circle access codes would have to be kept a secret and regularly changed to minimize the risk of an invasion by portal. They would be as heavily guarded as missile launch codes in the real world.

I can also see paragon-tier adventurers on deep infiltration missions to create a teleportation circle deep within enemy territory. Remember the Nydus Canal from Starcraft, or the GLA tunnel in Generals? Successfully creating and maintaining a teleportation circle in behind enemy lines would be very lethal to the defenders' morale.

For more peaceful pursuits, I can see anachronistic circle-accessible tourist resorts, for the wealthy tourist in need of rest and relaxation. Foreign-exchange students can attend school in one country while still living at home. Portal mail would make the world a lot smaller.

Note: House Orien in Eberron has a near-monopoly on portal services, and offer most of the services listed about, including the military ones.

Discuss.

Harperfan7
2009-11-02, 05:41 PM
Myth Drannor.
Yeah, I don't have any good advice.

Ravens_cry
2009-11-02, 05:54 PM
Well, it's still pretty darn expensive, so mass transportation of any but the most valuable goods is likely out. But they would very worthwhile for such goods, like spices and precious metals, as there is no longer the same threat from bandits. Towns with circles would likely be heavily fortified because of the threat. The danger of their use is as soon as one falls, all others can be accessed,so some means of keeping a gate closed from intruders would be vital. An adamantine 'iris' anyone? It would be an interesting balance. On one hand you don't want a portal too near a major city as that makes a quick short cut for attack. But you don't want it too far or the predications from bandits from goods travelling TO the major cities would make it not worth while. As a means of transporting troops it would be good for sending 'high level' crack quads and scouts. Mass armies would get expensive fast, however.

Doug Lampert
2009-11-02, 06:10 PM
The cost to cast Linked Portal is 135 gold. Unlike 3.5's Teleport, there is no range restriction on Linked Portal, but the destination has to be at a teleportation circle. If your starting point is at a teleportation circle, i.e. you're going circle to circle, the cost goes down to 50 gold.

As opposed to 0 GP for the equivalent 3.x spells, which did include permanent teleport circles.

This isn't a big change, it's FAR FAR more restrictive than 3.x in fact, especially when you consider that opening a circle takes significant time so outgoing circles will be closed almost all the time.


Teleportation circle access codes would have to be kept a secret and regularly changed to minimize the risk of an invasion by portal. They would be as heavily guarded as missile launch codes in the real world.

There's no indication ANYWHERE that I know of that you can change the codes/sigils of an existing circle. The sigils are part of the circle. How do you change them without destroying the circle?

In any case, I assume that existing permanent circles are all either located inside a defended minor (read: expendable) fortress with nothing else of value present or if near or in a city are heavily defended via a combination of troops, traps, preset rituals, built up defenses, and on call high level characters. In a serious war you'll destroy most of your own circles near the start, retaining only those you can defend and counting on someone at the other end to open them to field locations.

Aron Times
2009-11-02, 06:35 PM
This is 4E. Just because something isn't explicitly stated in the rules doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be done. For example, there were no rules for creating or maintaining a teleportation circle until the Manual of the Planes was released. But teleportation circles were assumed to exist and did exist; it's just that player characters had no way of creating them.

Thus, it would not be much of a stretch to assume that NPC ritual casters have access to a ritual like Change Teleportal Circle Access Code that lets them do just that.