These gloves are actually better than a ring of x-ray vision in several ways.
1. The gloves goes through 15' of ANY material. The ring is blocked by 1' of stone, 3' of wood or dirt, a thin sheet of lead, etc. This is in keeping with the tradition that scrying spells are blockable. The gloves ignore that limitation, making it nearly impossible to a GM to negate the gloves when called for.
2. The ring is sight only, the gloves are sight AND sound.
3. Only 2,000 gold for the gloves. Yes the running time on the ring is 10x longer (after that you take constitution damage) but that means you can either buy 10+ sets of gloves for the same cost as the ring or, and more likely true, you will only need 2-3 sets of gloves.
These gloves should never have been allowed in their current form. While conceptually neat, the CLAIRAUDIENCE/CLAIRVOYANCE spell just isn't powerful enough to explain what the gloves do.
My house rules for my home game if anyone cares:
1. The gloves are limited in the materials they will penetrate as per the ring of x-ray vision.
2. Only one set of these gloves will work for any one individual in a 24 hour period. So you cannot buy multiple gloves and use them to get around the 10 rounds / day limitation.
3. The first round of use tells you if there is a room on the other side and if so it's shape and size. The second round allows you to determine rough outlines of shapes in the room and garbled sounds if any. The third and later rounds allow you to see and hear as if you were standing on the other side of the barrier.
4. Use of the gloves is disorienting. After each use the character is dazed for one round.
5. The gloves are creating an invisible and ethereal sensor on the other side of the wall / door / barrier. As such it is detectable the same way other similar scrying sensors are and falls under the same rules and limitations.
