Trying to create a new magic item - "portal" ring basically

[schreier]

Basically, we have a base of operation for the party, a remote tower on an island in the pirate isles. We played the adventure Tammeraut's Fate (from Dungeon Magazine 106) - moving it from Greyhawk to Forgotten Realms and placing it on Trait's Isle just off of Prespur.

It is an extremely remote location, and once the party finished the adventure, they started to rebuild the hermitage. I had a higher level NPC (the party wizard's mentor) come and establish it as a place of learning. If you have read the riftwar saga, kind of like a mini-Stardock (https://midkemia.fandom.com/wiki/Stardock) combined with Sorcerer's Isle to keep it unknown (https://midkemia.fandom.com/wiki/Sorcerer%27s_Isle)

To allow the party to adventure while still being able to return (but not making it too easy), I wanted to create an item that would always let them get back. My idea is a ring that, with limitations, will open a doorway to the entrance to the hermitage.

I am kind of combining the Astral Fortress (from Dragon Magazine 305) and the portals to the World Serpent Inn, and trying to come up with a cost.

Basically my idea is:

The Ring of the Hermitage:
This simple gold signet ring has an abstract door on its facing, with a key carved in the center.
The ring of the hermitage has been designed to facilitate the travel of its members by providing an avenue for return regardless of their location. At dawn, if the user of the ring opens any door while saying the command word then immediately steps through the doorway, they will find themselves standing just inside the entrance to the Hermitage. The portal remains active for one round, and anyone else stepping through during that same round will similarly arrive at the entrance.




How does it sound? What would the cost/prereqs be? It seems closest to a portal, which in the Players Guide to Faerun requires a lvl 9 spell (Teleportation Circle or Gate). Restricting it's use to one time per day would bring the cost down --- right now my calculation is 55,080gp (lvl 9 spell, CL 17, command-activated, use 1/day) -- does that seem right? It's obviously much higher than I would like, but I am trying to do it in line with the actual rules.

[Angrith]

If you only want the ring to open a portal to their base, then Teleportation Circle and Gate may be too powerful to give you an appropriate cost estimate. Word of Recall has a caster level of 6th for a cleric and teleports the user any distance (but not between planes) to the designated area. A ring forged using Word of Recall has a cost of 23,760 gp. (SL 6, CL 11, one charge per day).

The downside is that Word of Recall doesn't open a portal per se, so using it isn't quite appropriate. To make up for this you could scale the cost up another spell level: 32,760 gp (SL 7, CL 13, one charge per day).

Alternatively, you could restrict the item further. Your ring but with a once a week limit would only cost 7900 gp (5 over 1/7 charges per day is a 35x cost reduction).

[King of Nowhere]

I would use greater teleport or planeshift as the base, because really, that's what it does. it's not gate. just because there's no spell short of gate that can replicate its exact effect, it doesn't make gate the proper starting point.
furthermore, the effect is reduced in that it does not move you around freely. it only moves you to a specific place, and perhaps back from that specific place to exactly where you started. it's a severe limitation.
all things considered, i cuncur with angrith on a reasonable price being between 20 and 30 thousand gp

[Vaern]

I'd go with Word of Recall. It may not exactly open a doorway, but a magic item doesn't necessarily have to exactly duplicate the effect of the spell that it's created from. As far as effects go, Word of Recall is specifically bound to a designated point of sanctuary which seems more in line with the intention of the ring than a more open-ended teleportation spell.
The fact that its destination is set when the item is created and, presumably, can not be changed by someone who happens to come across the ring could allow you to justify reducing the market value of the ring due to its restricted use. You could also further restrict the usability of the ring by making it so that it only functions for someone who has already been to its destination, which is also in line with the function of Word of Recall - your designated sanctuary must be somewhere very familiar to you. Even if you were to increase the effective spell level to accommodate for the ring opening an actual portal, you could still probably get away with shaving 30-40% off of the final cost.

[schreier]

It definitely skews very closely to word of recall - you're right. And that price seems more in line with the power level.

Thank you all - I will move forward with that!