Can characters travel between permanent teleportation circles? [duplicate]

Question

The Teleportation Circle spell (PHB pg. 282) states that in order for the spellcaster to "target" a remote teleportation circle he or she must know that remote circle's unique sigil sequence. What if a player or party wants to use a permanent teleportation circle to teleport to another permanent circle? This use case is not covered - or am I missing it?

I am including permanent teleportation circles in my campaign as sort of a municipal service "if you can afford or justify it" to get from one city to the next (and it won't always be safe, no). I have some ideas about how to set it up (as in how to have a "local spellcaster" set a destination for the portal) but I am curious if there is a method already defined elsewhere.

Answer 1

You aren't limited by existing mechanics when worldbuilding. As a DM, you are free to set your teleportation network as would be better for the story.

The Teleportation Circle spell itself suggests a wizard can learn additional sigil sequences during adventures when she meets the corresponding circles:

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 GM. You can learn additional sigil sequences during your adventures.

So if players want to use a permanent teleportation circle to teleport to another permanent circle they should probably be able to do that, providing they know the sigil sequence.

Answer 2

The rules for Teleportation Circles doesn't give any benefit of teleporting out from a permanent circle. The only benefit of permanence is that a permanent circle has a sigil sequence that serves as its address to teleport in to. You might change that with a house rule, so that teleporting out is simpler (e.g. shorter casting time) or less expensive (fewer consumed material components), but that's not in the spell's rules as written.

So there's no established reason that a spellcaster would need to use a permanent circle when departing a location. If you want circle to circle travel to be part of your world, you could give them a reason (with houserules, like I mentioned above). Or you may simply want to add an extra responsibility to your municipal service, that they keep a record of all the sigils representing all the other teleportation circles in the network. When a traveler shows up and tells them where they want to go, a clerk can look up the sigils for the destination circle in their records. You depart from the municipal teleportation circle simply because that's where you need to go to get access to the records that help you find your destination. The records could be stored somewhere far from the town's permanent circle, but it might make sense for the same organization to be responsible for securing the records and for defending the town against teleporting invaders.

Another question is how secretive the "teleportation guild" (or whatever you call the people maintaining the circles) will be about the sigils. They might not let a stranger cast the spell to open the portal themselves. They may say that a traveler must pay a local mage to do it, since they don't want to reveal the sigils of the destination circle to an outsider. But maybe they're a little more flexible than that, and will let a magically capable traveler see the sigils while casting the spell, but not copy them down. If the sequences are long enough to be hard to memorize, they may feel like that is secure enough. Such an assumption will really reward the PC wizard who has picked up the Keen Mind feat for perfect recall (though as you noted, unauthorized use of the system has its own consequences in the form of upset guards).

Answer 3

My experiences on both sides of the screen are that anything more than cosmetic adjustments - especially to abilities that players can access - are fraught with weird interactions and unintended consequences; that it's better to build a new thing that either stands next to or replaces the thing that would be tweaked. And, counterintuitively, large-scale changes are less messy than tweaks.

Want your magic missiles to look like fireworks? No sweat.

Want to play a cleric with the druid spell list (and pretend to be a druid generally, but with channels instead of an animal companion)? Almost certainly not a problem: while potent, not a lot of edge cases to worry about.

Want an item that deals "hellfire" damage, which is like fire damage except that it bypasses resistance/invulnerability to fire damage (except when it doesn't, because of reasons)? Just about every combat with fire-themed creatures is a debate. Oh, and does it affect creatures with vulnerability to fire like it's fire? Better just to call it "hellfire" but have it do, say, force (or even raw, untyped) damage and pre-empt all the questions.

And, that's before 5e's philosophy of "just because it exists in the world doesn't mean PCs can do it". 5e intentionally places some abilities out of the reach of PCs (mostly by making them monster abilities). That is to say that 5e goes out of its way to give the GM the permission - and even encouragement - to look beyond the PHB when designing the world.

With that in mind, I would encourage a frame-change: instead of looking at how to tweak Teleportation Circles to fit the story you want to tell, create a new thing that's Teleportation Circle-adjacent.

As an example, this GM would crib something from a 15+-year TV/movie franchise that produced a variant of d20 Modern: the Stargate, though with a better name in your game world; just "gates"?).

A crash-course in Stargates as presented in the series:

• matter can only travel one-way: from the side that opened the gate to the destination
• radio waves can travel both ways (they can use bog-standard walkie-talkies to talk to base)
• gates can be temporarily removed them from the network by being buried
• gates need a nearby "Dial-Home Device" ("DHD") to dial the gate (so, you might get somewhere only to find that you can't gate home)
  • without a DHD, dialing is possibly but extremely difficult - both physically and because it requires a staggering amount of energy
• a gate being active means other gates can't dial into it and it can't dial out
• there's a "hard" limit on how long a gate can stay open (38 minutes), but there are a number of effects that extend that for plot reasons
• each gate has a unique address

Those basic rules allow for a fantastic amount of versatility in how important the gate network is in any given story - from "it's how we got to the interesting part" to "it is the interesting part". Further: disruptions in the gate network don't necessarily prevent Teleportation Circle (or other teleportation effects) from working - or vice-versa.

And, a gate network doesn't negate the usefulness of Teleportation Circles generally (eg., wizards might still want them in their towers so they can get home faster; guilds may still have a few for members, etc.).

... and, surely there's no magic out there that can connect to a gate without already having a gate, right? ...

Answer 4

Calling Ahead

As the spell is written in the rules, Teleportation circles are what you teleport to, not from. But as you mentioned, there's plenty of good reasons to want to control access to these circles in highly populated and defended areas, and so - armed guards and murder holes. But how exactly does one schedule this, especially when one of the biggest advantages of this networks is the speed and immediacy - having to send a letter defeats the purpose.

Sending Stones are an item that replicates the spell sending between the two holders - a convenient magic cell phone. Linked sending stones kept in the same location as the teleportation circles could create a convenient communication network run by the same people providing the armed guards. A traveler shows up at their guarded teleportation circle, tell the guards where they want to go, and those guards use their sending stone to let the other side know authorized people are coming through. Anyone coming through without that call ahead? They're in trouble with the guards at best, and about to make some saving throws at worst. Maybe it's just murder holes, or maybe they only move the bear traps and drain the acid from the receiving pad when they get advance notice.