Generally, I trust my players with the items they equip on their characters, but the Gloves of Reconnaissance from Ultimate Equipment gave me pause.
Here's the scene: The PCs (all 7th level) are poking around the outside of a building where they are pretty sure an ambush is waiting inside. There are no windows within reach so they can't easily peak inside. So the sorcerer whips out his gloves, places them on the wall, and asks me what he sees inside. This is where I went, WTF?! and read the entry:
(I'm paraphrasing here, because I just jotted down some notes for this post.)
On command, you can see and hear through solid material no more than 15 feet thick. You may use the gloves 10 rounds per day. The rounds need not be consecutive.
Craft Wondrous Item; clairaudience/clairvoyance
This sounded pretty ridiculous to me. Especially for only 2,000 gp! So I compared it with the Ring of X-Ray Vision:
(Again, paraphrased.)
On command, you can see into and through solid matter. Your vision range is 20 feet with the viewer seeing as though there was normal light. X-Ray vision can penetrate 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, and 3 feet of wood or dirt. Thicker substances or a thin sheet of lead blocks the vision.
Using this ring is exhausting, causing 1 point of constitution damage per minute after 10 minutes of use in a single day. Must be used in 1 minute increments.
Forge Ring; true seeing
The ring has nearly the exact same ability, but for 25,000 gp!
Now, I'm no expert on item crafting, but I know the 10 rnds/day limitation lowers the cost a lot. Plus the ring has a CL of 6 vs. the gloves CL of 3 and the duration is longer on the ring. Still, 1 round is more than enough to look through a wall and see whatever lies on the other side. Do that 10 times a day and the PCs know exactly what lies behind every door in a standard dungeon crawl. This ruins a lot of the fun of the game IMHO. I don't really have a problem with the ring, because if a player is willing to spend that much he's probably at a pretty high level, at which point I'm fine with letting them see through walls. But at 2,000 gp, the gloves are easily available to low-level PCs, which is a problem.
Ultimately, I gave the player an option. He could either have his 2,000 gp back and the item is banned, or we severely gimp the gloves so they can still be used for recon, without perfect x-ray vision. He chose the latter, so now I need to decide what to do. Thoughts?
What about making them usable only 3/day? Also, since the spells listed to craft the item are 3rd level spells, consider increasing the price as if the caster level to create it is at least 5th. I think the Ultimate Equipment is a great book, but I find myself tweaking some of the item costs as needed.
My issue with this item is, as some of the original comments in the RPG Superstar thread indicate, that it makes adventuring less adventuresome. Exploration isn't exploration if you know what you're going to find, and, to me, kicking down the door and seeing the whatever on the other side IS D&D. This item takes that all away.
So, my suggested solution is that the item has, say, five charges. Not charges per day, mind, but five charges period, and when they're gone you have a swanky pair of gloves.
Well, actually the solution in any game I run will be to say, "This item makes gaming less fun, period, and it is therefore banned." But it's not my game. :-D
Ban it and give him his gold back.
He may think he likes what's going to happen but I can almost guarantee that no matter how reasonable a nerf you come up with for them he's going to be disappointed with the result.
May as well retcon the whole deal and give him his gold back or an item worth the same price.
You could use the gloves to spot a possible ambush, or peer into a treasure chest, but not for spying on long conversations, such as generals discussing plans for the next battle.
I think the costs are justified.
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I think it also helps players get around the all too common, 'surprise round you're all boned!' This kind of thing has happened in a number of PFS modules and got really annoying after awhile. With an item like this it helps prevent the constant walking into an ambush. The item is actually really balanced in what it does. It requires you to fill an item slot that could be used to get you a constant bonus (Dueling Gloves) to something that is situational and good only for 1 minute per day.
It requires you to fill an item slot that could be used to get you a constant bonus (Dueling Gloves) to something that is situational and good only for 1 minute per day.
Except that it doesn't because you can just swap out the gloves when you need to. That's why some items require you to "attune" it to your person before you can use the effects.
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.
My understanding is that the gloves of reconnaissance only see through the material the wearer is touching.
Meaning, the wearer touches an outside wall of a house, etc., and if another wall/door/other lies 5' away from that, well too bad because that is all he sees. Maybe the OP's situation had him seeing an entire room because there were no intervening barriers.
Just realized this was started almost 18 months ago...
Game on!
- Corey
Yes, the gloves only let you see through what you are touching. The ring lets you see through stuff you are very close to (20' range). You might manage to see through two thin walls with the ring.
And yes this is an old thread, but it doesn't really matter since anyone looking for info on these gloves will find this thread, so putting up the ideas is still useful.
Eh, I got the gloves a few weeks ago and I hadn't had the chance to use them at all yet, because our group sorceress has the spell Shadow Projection. Kinda makes the gloves seem outright quaint in terms of scouting capability.
15 feet of "solid material." All you need is a rockslide, a trash heap, an entranceway....
At least, that's what my character started encountering everywhere we went as soon as I bought the gloves.
Wow you have a bad GM.
