Let's Talk about Teleportation Circle (5th Level)

Today, we're putting airlines out of business.

My Assumptions

- Magic has not always existed.

- Magic was discovered last year.

- 1 out of every 1000 people are naturally gifted with magic.

- Spells are being discovered all the time.

- Magic breaks the laws of physics in ways we don't understand.

- This is not the only spell in the world.

Teleportation Circle

Level: 5

Casting time: 1 Minute

Range: 10 feet

Components: V, M (rare chalks and inks infused with precious gems worth 50 gp, which the spell consumes)

Duration: 1 round

As you cast the spell, you draw a 10-foot-diameter circle on the ground inscribed with sigils that link your location to a permanent teleportation circle of your choice whose sigil sequence you know and that is on the same plane of existence as you.

A shimmering portal opens within the circle you drew and remains open until the end of your next turn. Any creature that enters the portal instantly appears within 5 feet of the destination circle or in the nearest unoccupied space if that space is occupied.

Many major temples, guilds, and other important places have permanent teleportation circles inscribed somewhere within their confines. Each such circle includes a unique sigil sequence – a string of magical runes arranged in a particular pattern. When you first gain the ability to cast this spell, you learn the sigil sequences for two destinations on the Material Plane, determined by the DM. You can learn additional sigil sequences during your adventures. You can commit a new sigil sequence to memory after studying it for 1 minute.

You can create a permanent teleportation circle by casting this spell in the same location every day for one year. You need not use the circle to teleport when you cast the spell in this way.

What it Changes

Wow. This is the kind of spell I had in mind when I first thought of this series.

Let's get down to it. This spell lets you draw a circle on the ground and instantly travel between any two points, assuming you have the right gate code. However, the phrasing of the spell makes things a little less straightforward than you'd expect: The spell requires 50 gold worth of materials, which the spell consumes. To understand what that's worth in real money, I did some research to figure out how much gold might be worth in the real world.

Unfortunately, D&D gold can't really be equated with real-world currency, because gold in the game is set to aid player progression, not model economics. That being said, the closest answer I was able to find is that a single gold piece is worth between 15 cents and 200 USD. This means the spell would cost between $7.50 and $10,000 PER SPELL, which is ridiculous. The spell text says that a permanent teleportation circle requires the spell to be recast every day for a year, which means the final cost is somewhere between $2,738 and $3,650,000. For comparison, a private jet costs between $4,000,000 and $20,000,000. A Lamborghini costs between $50,000 and $400,000. Traveling instantly between two points would be worth a heck of a lot more than a private jet, I'll tell you that much. This means that even at the most extreme end of cost, it's not unreasonable.

It all sounds so familiar...

Technological Applications

Assuming a person (or corporation) can actually afford to cast this spell, how could this be used?

Since we're talking about the 10-foot circle version of this spell, this seems like a great way to transport a small, exclusive group of people, much like a private jet. Because of the price and the relative difficulty to cast the spell, this is prohibitively expensive for the average person or group. If one casting of the spell costs an average of five grand, it would mostly appeal to the elite, considering most plane tickets cost only a few hundred dollars. Everyone else would either fly or drive. Obviously you're paying for the convenience of instant travel, so there's that.

Topographic maps are highly underrated.

Sudden, dramatic changes in air pressure would affect the human body. Imagine traveling from Los Angeles (233 feet or 71 meters above sea level) to Colorado (6,800 feet or 2,072 meters above sea level). I'm no scientist, but Britannica.com says that heights above 5,000 feet have low enough pressure to produce mountain sickness and severe physiological problems. Here's my solution: permanent teleportation circles would only be built inside special pressure chambers that could match the air pressure of the places people were coming from. Think about that for a minute; instead of airports, there would be special facilities with pressure chambers. The lines wouldn't be as long, since fewer people would be using them.

Let's see if we can lower the cost of this kind of travel.

Any number of things could happen to reduce the cost of this spell:

- Bulk pricing
- Undercutting airlines

- Lack of maintenance costs over time

- Innovation and Competition

We see price reductions happen all the time for things. In 2017, flights are cheaper than ever if you want to fly from the US to Europe. This is due to bulk pricing, technological improvements, system optimizations and dozens of other minuscule factors. This happens everywhere, and it could happen for this kind of spell. 

Imagine a big corporation paying the cost to build a teleportation facility for its employees. Disney would do it. Microsoft and Apple would do it. It would be the de-facto way to travel, if only because of the speed. No more teleconferencing when you can literally travel around the world in just a few seconds.

On that note, assuming one could work out the economics, eventually air travel would be a thing of the past. 

I haven't even gotten to the military applications yet.

Since the military tends to develop and innovate technology first, this type of magic would absolutely be used for military engagements. You could teleport a bomb (of any size, really) almost anywhere, assuming you had the right gate codes. You could aggressively pinpoint and invade any part of the globe. Nobody expects a squad of marines to literally appear in their building and kill their targets, before teleporting away to safety exactly one minute later.

The spell text mentions gate sigils, which makes it sound like people had to figure out some kind of archaic longitude/latitude system. If D&D people can do it, modern people can do it, too. No location would be safe.

As you'd expect, this would cause escalation, because now people would need a way to protect themselves from this kind of magic (this is where all of the null-magic zone spells come in handy). However, until these countermeasures were developed, it would be the freaking wild west for a few months or even years. This technology probably wouldn't be adopted by the mainstream until it could be proven safe.