Magic item compendium part 5: Rings

Fool's Malady - Visual effects of some predetermined condition, such as a hunchback, or remove visuals of it if you already have it. I have no idea why you'd get this over a hat of disguise or something.

Kyton Ring - Make 100ft. of rusty chain per day (destroyed at end of day), 1/day use as a grappling hook. Consider also the robe of infinite twine for more, permanent stuff but weaker. Chain does have some advantages over rope and is often heavy, so this is probably a suitable alternative.

Ring of Arcane Signets - At will arcane mark. Yup. Upgrade to Profane Seal Signet for 2k.

Ring of Inurement - Constant endure elements, but only one way and flexible from day to day. I guess that's all you need, but it seems unnecessary to have the restriction.

Ring of the Faithful Dead - Constant sanctify corpse, immune to create spawn. The sort of item you hope you never actually use.

Riverclub Ring - Pick up water and use it as a masterwork club. This is silly, but would be fun to use with create water.

Ring of Serene Contortions - +2 untyped escape artist, 1/day true strike. Nice for stacking? The 1/day true strike isn't bad for martials.

Ring of Torag - Resist fire 10 vs first fire damage/day, +1 resistance vs fire. It's only 1.2k, so might be worth it. Maybe.

Dark Life Ring - +2 profane vs channel negative/inflict spells, reduce damage from either by 5 after save. Unusual to see either of these used.

Deadeye's Spotter Ring - +2 perception/survival, 1/day animal messenger. It's usable, if unremarkable.

Ring of Spell Knowledge - Arcane spont casters get new spell known, can change it, power depends on ring, can use cross class arcane spells at +1 level. It's more expensive than a page of spell knowledge, but it means you can basically carry around a spellbook and change it up as you need it.

Ring of Balanced Grip - Proficient with a particular type of improvised weapon and it's considered masterwork. Not especially useful.

Ring of Protection - Gradually increasing Deflection bonus to AC. It's what you get when you don't know what to get.

Bloodletting Thimble - Vampire item. W14 as draining or target of your drain is fascinated for 2 rounds so you can keep draining for free. Quite reasonable at 2k, although obviously useless for PCs.

Ring of Lingering Blood Magic - While bloodraging, 1/round free sacrifice bloodrage round to extend round/level spell by 2 rounds. Useful at low levels or in unusually protracted fights. Pain it doesn't work for regular barbarians.

Ring of the Grasping Grave - Touch undead to make it immune to any negative energy effects 1d4 rounds. Very blah.

Ring of the Sublime - Constant remove fear (that is, +4 morale vs fear). Not bad for 2k.

Ring of Emancipation - +2 disable device/escape artist/Sunder, 3 times ever (then destroyed) shatter. Okay, sunder's not the best CM, but it's super cheap compared to similar effects.

Ring of Feather Falling - Constant feather fall. Can't argue with that for 2k.

Ring of Climbing - +5 climb. Not a flash hot skill, and likely to never be useful. Improved version for +10 if you really want it.

Ring of Jumping - +5 jump. Somehow even less useful than above. Improved version for +10 if you really want it.

Ring of Sustenance - Only need to sleep 2 hours/day. It can be surprising how useful this is. It won't stop you from exhaustion from walking literally all day, but it'll make it so you can walk for 8 hours, do 8 hours crafting and do all the talking you need to in town or dungeon stuff.

Ring of swimming - +5 swim. Okay, this one is one which it might be worth having insurance with. Improved version for +10 if you really want it but there are better swimming items. For 14k you can get a ring of sea striding.

Droskar's Guiding Ring - 1/day charm person. Worship Droskar for half price magic item crafting but 50% chance of it not working. I'm of very mixed opinions about this, since it still takes normal time, but if you're lucky it works out okay for you. In practice there's a 1/4 chance of paying more than you need to. It's worth drawing attention to though.

Ring of Natural Attunement - Can summon leshies with summon nature's ally. Leshies aren't especially strong.

Knight Inheritor's Ring - +1 ring, 1/day wartrain mount/bless weapon, at will prestidigitation to clean self. Bless Weapon is amazing, and for a mere 1,000 over basic ring it is completely worth it.

Profane Seal Signet - +1 ring, at will arcane mark, 1/day Wrath (Which at this CL is +1 morale attack/damage). It's obviously Asmodean, but technically can do any mark. Not especially impressed, but at least the +1 ring bit is useful.

Ring of ferocious action - 1/day when staggered from enemy attack ignore that stagger for 5 rounds. Weakened from 5/day one round and any stagger. Fairly useless now since stagger rarely lasts longer than a round and it's a rare condition.

Ring of Powerful Blood Magic - 3/day swift while bloodraging increase save DC by 1. On any other class this would be good, but this simply makes bloodrager saves semi-relevant.

Ring of Eloquence - 4 new languages known and can speak them even if shape changed, +2 bluff/diplo/intimidate/oratory, deaf spell failure chance reduced to 10%. This is primarily useful for druids so they can keep casting while wildshaped, normally a feat. Although the languages and skill bonuses are nice too.

Ring of Stairs and Stars - constant feather fall, 1/day CL3 magic missile. Just use the ring of feather falling.

Ring of Ancestral Blood Magic - 3/day Bloodragers can expend rage to cast bloodline spell while raging. Obviously depends on your bloodline, but it's not too bad on principle.

Ring of Counterspells - cast a spell of up to 6th level into the ring for automatic counterspell if it's ever cast on you. For 4k, this is a very nice little defence.

Ring of Seven Lovely Colours - +1 ring, 7/day Beast shape 4 into songbird 10 minutes. It's an excellent stealth item with some inherent defence to help.

Red Hound Ring - +1 ring, 1/day Beast shape 1 into celestial dog, 1/day summon celestial dog. It's better and cheaper than similar items, like the cloak of the scuttling rat (although not the deity specific ones), although it's a shape you don't get most of the nice things from the celestial template.

Gluttonous Feasting Ring - All food affected by purify food and drink, 1/day eat 10gp meal for false life. The usefulness of this obviously depends on how much generic leeway you can get with food. A Sihedron Medallion is cheaper and better mostly.

Ring of Maniacal Devices - +5 craft traps/disable device, can make those checks untrained. Potentially useful rogue substitute item. Flat skill bonuses are always nice.

Ring of Rat Fangs - Constant Bite Attack. There are more natural attack items than I thought. Any martial will love this 5k item. This is definitely one of the cheapest constant bites though.

Glorious Flame Ring - 1/day 1d6 fire to adjacent creatures (R14), can expend channel positive to do this. Good grief, this is awful.

Ring of Vengeful Blood magic - 3/day while bloodraging cast a 3rd level or lower spell as an AoO. What? Seems like a good UMD candidate!

Communique Rings - Paired. Whisper messages to the other one at 1 mile range. Of course, message is a thing, which will often be long enough range, and 1 mile is either way too much or nowhere near enough. Guess constant's nice though.

Ring of Far Strike - 1/day make melee attack within 30 ft. Works alright for vital strike? More likely you can't be stuffed drawing a different weapon or don't want to actually charge.

Ring of Return - once ever greater teleport to nearest Keleshite admin building, teleports you there if someone tries to take off the ring. Obviously you might want this keyed to... somewhere else. Regardless, it's fairly circumstantial.

Ring of Sacred Mistletoe - +2 handle animal/wild empathy/nature, improve woodland stride, 1/day shillelagh. Happily, the wording on this means you can UMD it for the better woodland stride. It's still unremarkable.

Ring of Sundering Metals - Functions as pre-errata ring of ferocious action, can also spend a charge to make weapon cold iron/silver 1 minute. This is nice largely for the errata removal, but the cold iron/silver bypass isn't too bad. It's still cheaper, easier and quicker to just swap weapons.

Ring of swarming stabs - 2/day swift while flanking 1d6 damage on successful hit. Well, I guess damage is damage.

Ring of Unquenchable Passions - +1 ring, +5 acrobatics, +2 resistance vs disease. This is a Calistrian ring but seems like a slightly odd combination of effects. Unless you particularly want acrobatics, suggest saving a little more for a +2 ring.

Ring of Grit Mastery - Store 2 earned grit in ring for day, 1/day 1 grit for +2 initiative, 1/day 2 grit for bullet shield. Don't see much point in the 1/day bit, particularly for initiative.

Ring of Summoning Affinity - Series of rings that add various outsiders to summon monster lists and a 1/day standard summon monster 3 for relevant creature. It's nice to have variety, I suppose, but I'm not going into detail on summons here. Some are also stronger than other things of their level.

Ring of the Stone Sibling - 1/day make stone double 10 minutes. They do nothing but aid another for your attacks or AC with 50% success rate, but you can move them as you wish. This could be useful. If only so there's another target. Or a very durable trap triggerer. Or a path blocker. This gets more useful the more you think about it.

Ring of culturemeld - +5 diplomacy, gradually learn local language temporarily and get +5 sense motive. Interestingly flexible and good skills, but perhaps a little slow.

Ring of the Godless - gradually increasing luck bonus vs divine spells and increase SR vs divine spells, at will detect magic vs divine only, some uses/day swift arcane sight for divine magic only. Luck bonus is nice, but it's expensive and circumstantial enough that it's not worth its fairly high price tag.

Maintenance Overseer's ring - After 5 days in a city, learn an awful lot about its sewers/basements/&c., basically being a +5 untyped dungeoneering and use dungeoneering untrained, automatic perception check to spot secret doors under a city. Sewers are just one of those classic areas in these games, so might be worth having if you're in one spot for ages.

Ironbound Ring - Two flavours, minion and master (this is the important master price). Master sets instructions, minions know if they're acting against instructions, harder to make them act against it including via magic. Fairly circumstantial.

Ring of Forcefangs - Immune up to 9 levels of force effects, expend absorbed levels as magic missiles. Not a whole lot of force effects, but magic missiles happen. If nothing else, you can charge it yourself and just use it.

Ring of Heroes - Uses the quite broken and optional hero point system.

Ring of Mind Shielding - Immune Discern lies/detect thoughts/alignment detection. A paranoid person's item.

Ring of strength sapping - 1/day swift on successful unarmed strike 1d4 strength damage (F20), +2 strength 1 minute if they fail. Action economy and a good DC make this nice, although the strength bonus is probably irrelevant.

Ring of the Beast - Three flavours: 1/day 10 minutes +4 enhancement fixed physical stat, -2 associated mental stat, +2 enhancement nat AC. Con version is fairly efficient and useful. Definitely martial item.

Society Ring - It's the secret club ring. When you join a society, the ring becomes invisible and nonscryable,  you can detect other club members nearby and communicate with them, +10 to do secret messages, alerts all club members if the ring's taken and shows who has it, do secret handshake for temporary status. It's cool, but obviously an expensive club.

Band of Toxic Nullification - 1/day negate a poison as standard. There are a surprising lot of these items, and while this is the most expensive, it's the least directly impacting your other defences.

Contract Rings - Come in pairs, +10 sense motive vs other, Both accept a lesser geas (no save) when making a bargain. I'm assuming it's a lesser one because it's not permanent and it's intended to bypass the 7HD limit. Otherwise this can be pretty funny when you make some kind of agreement with a random NPC who has to do what you want but you don't have to uphold your end. Circumstantial regardless.

Ring of Force Shield - Heavy shield made of force with no other penalties. That is, you can use it even if you're not proficient. It's not clear if you can enhance it or not, but it has niche use for wizards and things regardless.

Ring of the Ram - Consumable, 50 charges. spend a charge for fairly potent ranged bull rush with some damage or to bash down doors. Spend more charges for more impact. Fairly niche though.

Scholar's Ring - Constant Comprehend Languages, +5 knowledge History, 1/5 days legend lore History only for something you've studied. History did get regulated to background skills for a reason. Still, might be useful, even if it's because it's ridiculously quick compared to most castings.

Ring of Protected Life - Channel +5ft., don't hit one creature with channel (stacks with selective channel), 1/day channel swift but makes ring inert for 1 day. Action economy of the final function makes this pretty reasonable in a bad spot, although channel is relatively bad without some investment.

Rings of Friend Finding - Paired. Status on the other wearer of the ring. I must be getting bored because I read a bit of the description as "Herring of Friend Finding". This is probably only useful when you're split up for ages and don't have sending.

Band of Efficacious Death - Classic poison ring. When taking poison out, tap it up to 4 times/day (all can be on the same poison) for an extra tick of poison. Probably an NPC item, but wow, this is a really good way to get value for money on a strong poison. Typically nearly doubles the duration.

Splendorous Ring - 3/day hypnotic pattern 3 rounds (w13), +2 sacred influence good creatures and -2 influence evil creatures influenced by the effect. For 10k, a DC13 save isn't going to do much, not that this is very good anyway.

Ring of Revelation - Gain a revelation appropriate to your mystery, or an extra use if it has uses and you already have it. Come in various strengths for more potent revelations. Specifically can't UMD this since the errata, which is reasonable.

Ring of Curing - Increase level dependant caps for healing spells by 2. It's useful for heal and CLW and that's about it. The caps on those spells are absurdly high. Skip.

Ring of foe focus - Pick enemy as standard (presumably) and get +2 AC/saves vs them. Stacks with everything, lasts indefinitely, and has no range limit, so it's got some unusual potential. Scrying, amusingly. Less useful for standard fights.

Ring of Ki Mastery - Store up to 2 ki as swift and use them as normal. 1 ki in ring gives +2 vs grapple/trip/repos, 2 ki reduces ki costs by 1 (min 1). This is an amazing monk item for high ki cost abilities like Abundant Step that will be used a lot.

Ring of Seven Virtues - Plot item that's useless elsewhere.

Ring of Animal Friendship - At will charm animal. At least animals don't have good will saves, because it's DC11. You'll probably need speak with animals to follow up with this.

Ring of the Iron Skull - +5 appraise to determine most valuable item/heal to determine details of something's death, 1/day find out about a dead creature from body part unless undead/alive. Circumstantial.

Ring of Transposition - 1/day swap places with pre-set other person within 800 ft. I can imagine this sometimes being useful, but not enough for regular usage.

Holdout Ring - 1/day +1 pistol that doesn't misfire with 2 +1 and 1 +2 special ability, spend grit equal to ability to get the ability on the shot. Would like the ability thing on an actual gun. The 1/day bit hurts this a bit too much to use.

Ring of Tactical Precision - +5 Profession Soldier, Aid another/teamwork bonuses given or received +1, give to someone else and they can use one of your teamwork feats with you only. Aid another enhancements are always good because it's so flexible, and lots of teamwork feats are quite strong but hard to use (and this apparently lets you bypass prereqs)

Ring of the Sophisticate - +4 sense motive/local, 1/day locate creature or locate object, always know direction to nearest decent pub. Spells are nice since they're no save and flat skill bonuses are... well. Usually useful.

Decoy ring - When withdrawing/helpless, invisible 3 rounds and 4 illusory doubles that run off or otherwise try to distract from the real you. Allies know where you are. This has to be one of my favourite spells or items, despite not actually being that useful. It really does work a lot better when you do it intentionally. Love it with Parting shot. Couple it with fast healing and you have a recurring boss in the works.

Ring of Energy Resistance - Resist energy one element in increasing potency (12k for 10, +16k for each further 10). Cheaper for a wand obviously, or even a bunch of pearls of power, but these have the advantage of stacking with protection from energy and not turning off. Fire's the easy element choice.

Ring of Blood Calling - 1/day Asmodeans can summon a specific 12HD or lower devil 1 hour (Destroys ring if killed). Don't control the devil, so UMD isn't that useful, and can't really make this. At last, an immediately decent summoning item. Except for the lack of control part.

Ring of Craft Magic - swap spellcraft and relevant craft skill, sacrifice spells for profession/craft bonus. Useless.

Ring of Ectoplasmic Invigoration - Use maker's call to dismiss eidolon, get some temp hp and lesser restoration. Can maker's call to teleport to eidolon and same effects. Better than having it die on you.

Ring of Immolation - free action 10 rounds warm fire shield, broken into round chunks, automatically activates if you're about to take magical cold damage. This would be amazing if it was chill version, but it's still very potent cold defence, and not inconsiderable damage on the fire shield. Recommend.

Ring of Retreat - 1/week teleport to specific elf-gate. Probably want to link this to somewhere more useful. Not bad for extended trips from town?

Ring of the Troglodyte - 2/day be really stinky until you turn it off. F14 Sicken 1 round or sicken -> nausea 1 round. Even if the save's a little low, it's a potentially extremely good debuff that'll trigger often enough to be useful.

Steelhand Circle - Ignore 5 points hardness, 1/day 50% crit/sneak negation. Great for sunderers, less useful for anyone else.

Ring of Chameleon Power - +10 stealth, at will disguise self. Nice flat skill boost and slot efficiency in not needing a hat.

Ghost Battling Ring - This is the fairly dreadful ring of the grasping grave with 1/day ghostly disguise and haste. The haste isn't nearly enough to be worth the effort of this.

Ring of Rulership - Almost absolute dominion of up to three humanoids that are part of your lands, W14 or automatic for stupid people. Save's low, but it does mean you can have fairly dedicated spies. I do like it, but it's difficult to use for many people.

Ring of the Sea Strider - 30ft. swim speed, 1/day quickened dimension door to other bits of same body of water only. Circumstantial, but the quickened dimension door is potentially particularly valuable.

Duxotar's Signet - +2 ring, at will magic mouth with Aroden's holy symbol as trigger, +5 to manipulate crowds and move through crowds easily. This is an unusual item, and seems very NPCy. Still cool though.

Ophidian Coil - Constant bite attack, 3/day bite has scaling DC weak poison, 1/day scent 1 minute but 20% verbal failure chance, constant weak to cold. I'd personally prefer the ring of rat fangs since it has no downside, but this is a slightly better bite because of the poison. Downside isn't huge, but it's there.

Ring of Adept Manoeuvres - Store up to 2 ki, while 1 ki +2 bullrush/trip/disarm, while 2 ki only -1 penalty on flurry of blows. Largely obsolete with unchained monk; use the ring of ki mastery instead for 5k less.

Ring of Resilience - 1/condition when regain grit/panache get a new saving throw to end the condition (even if it normally take more saves). It's not especially easy to get these and can easily be foiled unintentionally by your friends. Nice though.

Ring of Retribution - 1/day immediate explode 10d6 (r14) in 30ft., including self. Need to save for equipment if you die. Despite how bad this seems, it's actually fairly good with evasion. Avoid if you don't have it.

Ring of the Cacodaemon - Holds a soul gem. 1/day speak with dead on held soul, 1/day fear (w16). Difficult to get a soul gem much of the time, let alone of someone useful.

Ring of Water Walking - Constant Water Walk. I'd suggest the ring of the sea strider for a slightly cheaper and better item unless there's some reason in particular you need to be on the surface.

Scavenger's Ring - Walk on the bottom of the ocean and everything's basically as if you were on land. Except for breathing. You can't do that. Solves one of the problems of being underwater at least.

Heavenly Aegis ring - Activate with total defence, magic circle vs evil 10 rounds/day, end with move. While active, drain remaining rounds for holy smite on self (but can remove 10ft. from centre). Activation bothers me. This is just another one of those items where it's a spell you really ought to just use and invest in a pearl of power if you want it used on you as well.

Dungeon Ring - Two flavours, the cheap prisoner's ring and the more expensive Jailer's (Which is this price). Difficult to remove prisoner's ring, Jailer gets status for prisoner's ring and easy to scry on/teleport to prisoners. Circumstantial.

Ring of Perfect Sizing - Resize 1 weapon/suit of armour to your size. Nyargh, why just one? It's very circumstantial though.

Ring of Inner Fortitude - Reduce ability damage/penalties by 2, drain by 1. Better versions exist that increase these (major for 2x and greater for 3x). Doesn't work if you get some kind of benefit from the effect though. This is another item to get if you don't know what to get.

Ring of Spell Storing - Store up to 3 levels of spells that can be cast later, at min caster level. Improved versions exist for 5 and 10 levels. Basically, they're flexible reusable scrolls that anyone can just use. Relatively expensive though at 2000xspell levels^2 (The price of 80 scrolls)

Ring of stony flesh - Consumable, 10 charges. 1/day 1 charge CL11 stoneskin and earthglide same duration (110 minutes!?) but can't do worked stone. Automatically spends 2 charges to prevent petrification effects. This is a ridiculously long duration earth glide, even if you can't get absolutely everywhere.

Ring of the Clean Hands - 10 charges/day for telekinesis effects. Violent thrust 5 charges, combat manoeuvres 3 charges, some awful force whip 3 charges or sustained force 1 charge. Unfortunately, it uses its own things to set power of the effects, which makes it rather less useful (+9 to hit isn't going to do a whole lot by this stage except perhaps as a mirror image popper)

Rings of Bondage - For a pair of master and servant; both understand each other, master gets +6 sense motive vs servant and also status. 1/day master gets lesser geas on servant (w16) or both get to lesser geas at no save. Greater version exists for actual geas (but still has w16 save), master has constant sanctuary vs servant and bestow curse on servant if he attacks (W16 both effects) Fairly circumstantial, but it's quite reasonable for a capturing item.

Ring of energy shroud - resist fixed energy 10, 1/day immediate negate incoming energy damage self only (so other creatures still get hit by a fireball) and get elemental aura of same energy type. Both cool and very strong. For reference, 7.5k more than base ring and 8.5 less than the resist 20 version.

Nethysian Ring of Minor spell storing - Like the minor ring of spell storing by nethys' domain spells count as 1 level lower (min 1st). For reference, that's 2k more than the basic one. Unfortunately, the really good ones are just a little too high for 2 of them, and minimum caster level hurts a little too much. Still, if you're using it for that...

Ring of Arcane Mastery - Magus item. Store 4 arcane pool points. 1 point -> +2 concentration free action. 1 point -> Pool strike at your level. Immediate Reflection arcana stored points only. Woo, budget spell turning! You don't even need to be a magus, so long as you have one.

Ring of invisibility - at will invisibility. Annoyingly, not constant, so you have to reactivate it every 3 minutes, but it does mean you can pass it around the party for bursts of invisibility. At least it's not a command word to activate.

Ring of Phrenic Prowess - Psychic Item. Store up to 4 phrenic points. 1 point -> +2 concentration free action. 1 point -> melee touch for 3d6 nonlethal and stun 1 round NO SAVE. Immediate spend points to reflect that many levels of spells as spell turning. Another surprising budget spell turning item, but this one also has a nasty crowd control option. Again, technically usable by anyone else without UMD so long as you have a psychic to recharge it.

Ring of Plagues - 1/day no action unlimited range major curse (W19) when reduced below half hp. Curse is -4 all saves and contagion (immediate onset). 1/day when killed/reduced below 0 same curse to attacker and 5 nearest allies/attacker's blood relatives, but goes away when you're at 1 or more hp again. Well, this is evil, although a potent defence. Potent enough for even PCs to use.

Ring of Terrible Cost - Charge ring with up to +5 profane bonus by permanently losing 2hp per bonus, immediate use on attack/damage/skill/save and can heal your hp back. Charges can come from other creatures. I'd completely use this on skill checks out of combat. Combat usage? Not so much. Unless you can heal easily. I'd up it to great for a paladin or anyone willing to make other people pay for it.

Ring of Wizardry/Mysticism - Double spells of a given level, excluding stat spells and school spells, for arcane/psychic casters. For level 1-4, 20k, 40k, 70k, 100k. Prepared casters note pearls of power are cheaper by quite a lot, but this gives much more flexibility. Spontaneous casters are ahead on runestones of power by the 2nd level one, but it's not worthwhile for 1st level spells. 4 level casters are rather less well off. (6 level spontaneous casters are even on 2nd).

Ring of Evasion - Evasion. That is all. You know when you want this and when your reflex save is so rubbish you couldn't dodge a baby on a snail.

Ring of X-ray Vision - See through obstacles so long as they're not too thick or have too high Z. Technically unlimited use but start taking Con damage after 10 minutes (1 per minute). It's surprising how much utility there can be in this, because beyond the obvious it's things like seeing secret doors or finding concealed coins (Because of space behind it and seeing through everything but it respectively).

Witness Hunter's Ring - Move action learn if you're being observed, 1/day locate creatures currently observing you, 1/day detect scrying. The other side of stealth items, with increasing uselessness in a party.

Swarmwalker's Ring - 3/day. Summon 1d3 rat swarms 7 rounds (not under your control but don't harm you). Dimension door from rat swarm to rat swarm. Wow, CR2 swarms for 26k. Not being able to even control them for the dimension door is a pain.

The Bloodflame Ring - Gain fire subtype (That is, immunity to fire and vulnerability to cold). Melee attackers take 1d6 fire per hit, immune blood drain, you count as made of metal for rusting grasp &c.. This is... interesting, and two edged. Still, fire's a very common energy type, so outright immunity is quite nice.

Ring of Blinking - Constant Blink. I've never quite appreciated the usefulness of this; the 20% miss chance for yourself just irritates me too much to like the it because I know that it'll feel like it happens 50% of the time instead. I think it might be better when you're not a caster so the miss chance isn't as important, but it's still a good defence.

Ring of the Ecclesiarch - at will arcane mark, +5 diplomacy/religion, double leadership followers and they all get +4 vs enchantment, 1/day prayer/enter image. Unimpressive.

Elemental Ring - Single use. Summon a somewhat cantankerous elder elemental for up to 24 hours that has a fairly limited array of orders it will obey. You can talk to the elemental. This is fairly expensive for a consumable, regardless of its considerable strength, but it will obliterate everything at lower levels. If you're seriously looking at this, consider instead the ring of Djinni Calling for the price of 4 of these.

Planefarer's Band - 1/day attune to an elemental plane 24 hours for ease of doing things on that plane, 1/day get those benefits while on a different plane 10 minutes. I quite like this, and it's a fun thing for the planar campaign I've been wanting to do for a while. It's... still useless for fire (resist 20 won't keep you safe for long against 3d10/round), so get a bloodflame ring if you go there. Regardless, it's a very flexible item.

Ring of Transcendent Spells - 3/day spell DC +2 and caster level for SR only +2. Plus a mythic thing. A top notch caster item, but you should probably grab a good headband first.

Rings of Alien Geometries - 1/day make two interconnected portals within 30 ft. of you for 10 rounds. Cool, but the price and duration put me off a bit.

Ring of Resumption - 1/day immediate on taking damage fast healing 5 until healed damage equal to damage taken or max hp, immune to bleed while this is active. Can regenerate lost body parts if they were lost from the damage. Ironically, I think this is better than the ring of regeneration in certain instances.

Ring of energy dampening - resist energy acid/cold/electric/fire 5, 1/day resist 5 type of damage you just took to all nearby allies. Mythic stuff. Covers everything, but does nothing well. Yep. Skip unless mythic, because it's fairly reliable immunity. Get a major ring of energy resistance instead.

Ring of Refusal - +2 vs enchantment and on things that end enchantments on you, 1/day immediate SR 25 vs one enchantment. Actually very high SR, and stackable bonus.

Sihedron Ring - +3 ring with +3 resistance to saves and constant endure elements. Slot efficiency! Even if it's a touch expensive.

Ring of Freedom of Movement - Constant freedom of movement. There's a lot to be said for not being grappled or paralysed or hindered by difficult terrain.

Ring of Delayed Doom - Consumable, 10 charges. Spend a charge as immediate to delay effects of a failed save by 1 minute. Fail a save against a wail of the banshee? Not a problem, you're still in the fight. Dominated? Not for a minute you're not. This is an excellent high level consumable. This aspect probably cannot be overstated; at 5k a pop, it'd better be saving you from a substantially nasty effect you can subsequently prevent (with deathwatch, for instance, or just killing the guy) or you'd be better off just dying and coming back.

Ring of Fear Reflection - Morale bonus vs fear based on how many saves you've made, max +5, when +5 successful saves bounce the fear effect back on source. Drops to +0 if you fail a save. Suggestion: Charge it up yourself with some doom spells or something beforehand. Seriously though, the ring of the sublime does this better for 2k, except for the reflection part.

(Things from here on are competing with a +5 deflection or major ring of inner fortitude for reference)

Ring of Friend Shield - Paired. At will shield other with other ring as recipent, no range. This is an interesting item.

Ring of Psychic Mastery - 1 extra psychic spell/day for 1-4th levels. 10k cheaper than individual runestones of power, or the same price as a 5th level one. Consider it if you'd be buying these anyway.

Ring of Shooting Stars - Only functions at night. A stunning array of cantrips, a small number of times per night, plus when inside/underground 1/night faerie fire. A couple of 1/night weakish and easily saved against electrical damage things. The only actually potentially useful thing is 3/week shooting stars, which can be released all together (12 B if hit, 24 fire in tiny radius r13) but they arguably use a r13 to hit at all. Which at this stage is laughable. Try a major crown of blasting for cheaper, regular and reliable damage.

Ring of Continuation - Makes personal spells of 10 min/level last all day. A rare reasonable errata changed this from any personal spell. It's still quite good, even if it's just for constant barkskin and using a different neck item

Spiritualist rings - 3/day speak with dead/spectral hand, weapons gain ghost touch, +4 sacred or profane vs positive and negative energy. Ghost touch? Unless you're using loads of weapons, just put it on your sword for cheaper. The rest of the stuff (speak with dead for instance) tends not to be so urgent someone can just cast it for you, or just kind of bad in general.

Ring of Telekinesis - At will telekinesis. Super expensive, but can't go wrong. Try the ring of the clean hands for a cheap alternative.

Ring of regeneration - Fast healing 1, automatically regenerate damaged organs. Only works for damage taken while wearing it. I really feel like this is quite overpriced.

Ring of Spell Turning - 3/day 9 levels of spell turning. A high level ring to get when you don't know what to get.

Ring of the Shadow Victim - 1/day touch a weak dead person to make a lesser simulacrum of them who helps you (but they don't have any special memories). Lasts 7x length of ritual you did to make it (which can be from a day to 1 round) and has all their gear (which also vanishes when they pop). I like this, but also don't think it's particularly useful outside of certain situations.

Ring of three wishes - 3 times ever wish. If you possibly can, just get someone to cast it for you instead, which is about 40% cheaper. Or for another 5k, get a ring of djinni calling, which does the same thing much more (you just really shouldn't do this in combat)

Ring of Djinni Calling - 1 hour/day have a specific pet djinni. If it's killed this is useless. Obviously this is an excellent source of wishes. Just for safety, don't try to use this in combat.

Ring of the hidden Psyche - extra spell slot/day 1-4th level for psychics. If you die, possess the ring and can use greater possession (w23) on anyone who wears the ring. Difficult to tell it's this ring. Nifty little backup plan?

Ring of Splendid Security - +5 deflection, +5 resistance, SR22, change fashions. It's cheaper than it could be, and slot efficient, but I wish it didn't have the SR. Not that it's bad SR, it's just that's most of the price and by the time you're looking at buying this it's not very good (Might work 25% of the time at absolute best)

Ring of Elemental Command - Come in elemental flavours. Elementals  can't attack or approach, do better against creatures from relevant plane in fights only, talk to things from the plane, variety of relevant spells, often at will. Minor saving throw penalty. Okay, it's 200,000. That's a lot. Most of it's coming from at will higher level spells. While there's a degree of slot efficiency, it tends to be better to sell it and just get the things you need instead.

Wracking Rod - 5/day cure light wounds, but F16 or sickened 2d4 rounds. Advantage is that everyone can use this if necessary, but it's 3 wands worth (150 days).

Rod of the Thriceborn - Metamagic rod in disguise. targets roll 3 times and take middle. And can't use reroll effects? It's an odd fish this one, but considering it's kind of like a take 10 it's not too bad if you have reliable DCs. Very cheap.

Rod of Giant Summoning - Another metamagic rod in disguise, a +1 one. Summoned creatures gain giant template. Seems pretty decent off-hand. Technically usable with other rods.

Aerialist's Rod - Performs various circus-like acrobatic functions: a balancing pole, a tightrope and a trapeze. Usually gives +5 bonus to acrobatics while held for its related functions. If nothing else, this is a fairly compact grappling hook.

Chastising Rod - Compulsion DCs +1, things that save take 1d6 nonlethal and are sickened 1 round. Good, cheap, and makes even failed spells do something. What more could you ever want as an enchanter?

Immovable Rod - Activate it for something that doesn't move, even against gravity, unless you put an awful lot of weight on it. It's weird how useful these can be.

Refocusing Rod - 1/day occultists can transfer mental focus without losing any. Can also use the rod as an implement. Considering this is a 7th level feat, it's not bad.

Utilitarian Rod - It's a large variety of generic items, most notably which are a pain to otherwise do are a bridge, an automatic drill, a portable ram, a 50 ft. ladder which anchors in the floor or ceiling and a 10ft. brace/jack. I was going to say the traveler's any-tool does this better and cheaper, but some of those things are particularly unusual.

Recondite Rod - Metamagic rod in disguise, but works with other rods. Overcast spells (i.e. Cast mind thrust 1 as mind thrust 2), but not to best in the group. Perhaps not the strongest effect, but still nifty.

Rod of Thunderous Force - 1/day prone and deafen 1d4 rounds all in 20 ft. (f19). The world must be ending, it's a cheap reusable item with a decent save and effect!

Backbiter's Focus - 3/day curse weapon (W16 magic weapons only) to deal half damage to wielder on strike for 7 rounds. It's pretty funny that nonmagic weapons don't get a save. Surprisingly, it's another relatively decent save for a comparatively cheap reusable item, and more than that, a lot of the targets it's likely to hit will have poor will saves.

Rod of Mortared Walls - 3 uses/day. Makes cement for a 10ft. square wall. Levitate rocks of up to 450kg (~a 50cm cube) 1 at a time for 10 minutes. On stone floor, grow a neat 10ft. square brick wall over a minute. Okay, the last one is good enough to make this acceptable. The second one sometimes? I'm just not hugely impressed with this after the last two quite good items.

Rod of Ice - 1d4 cold as melee touch. 1/day cone of grease. Aaand somehow things are getting worse with price.

Inviolate Marker - Immovable rod that bestows curse (W16, -6 str) to things trying to move it and projects a banner or crest from each side. Used to mark territory boundaries apparently, and moves to the surfaces if buried. Requires 2 people to activate. For adventuring purposes, just get 2 immovable rods for the same price, although there's a certain degree of novelty with this.

Rod of Writhing - An old 3.5 item that doesn't have a pathfinder equivalent usage due to changes to polymorph spells.

Rod of metal and Mineral Detection - At will detect any kind of nearby metal. Obviously gold is your go to. However, not so valuable I'd go out of my way to get it. Unusually, it could work as an invisibility detector if you know they have metal?

Rod of Cancellation - Single use (unless it doesn't work). Permanently destroy a magic item (W23). Or a sphere of annihilation or wall of force. DON'T. DESTROY. THE. LOOT. Unless you really need to. It might be worth having one at high levels in case of emergency.

Rod of Grasping Hexes - 3/day double range of regular hex. I don't believe range is a problem witches notoriously have, but why not for those times when it is?

Rod of Interminable Hexes - 3/day Double length of hexes that last more than 1 round. Cackle works wonders, but sometimes you do actually need to do other things as well, and cackle doesn't work on everything.

Rod of burning blood - Magic weapon only really. +1 cunning light mace (cunning gives large confirmation bonus based on skills). Charge it with unholy water (at 20gp a pop) and spend charges for 1d6 fire/unholy damage on hit or 5 charges for r17 burning hands (but half damage is unholy). Interesting as a budget flaming weapon (over 350 uses before actual flaming's better). Cunning I think is growing on me despite my initial misgivings, although it's still a pain it's a light mace.

Conduit Rod - Electricity resistance 5, +1 CL for electricity, 1/day teleport to somewhere within a cast electricity spell free action. Oh, I love this. Electricity isn't a hugely common energy type, but this is both good and cool if you're using it.

Grounding Rod - 3/day push it into the ground for electricity resistance 5 all nearby creatures and CL check DC16 to cast electricity spells in same area. The less useful brother of the above item, since electricity hasn't become any more popular in the last 3 lines.

Rod of Spellsight - Ignore magic cloud/fog/mist/&c. effects for vision. Nyargh, you have to hold it. Try a Goz Mask for 4k less and is just on and generally better.

Rod of the Wayang - DC of shadow spells +1, 1/day 1 minute flip negative and positive energy effects.  Any DC booster is alright, but it's an annoyingly small series of spells. Energy flip is occasionally useful vs undead.

Rod of wonder - variety of random effects. If you're bored or game and your GM is dumb enough to let you, this is potentially infinite money. Not suitable for combat use, for reasons of unreliability in both effect and DC. You might maybe be interested in the 2 size category reduction 1 day if you're a pure caster though.

Rod of Animal Training - +5 handle animal and untrained, 3/day charm animal. Suggest talisman of beast training instead for an automatic success on it instead.

Rod of subtle menace - +1 light mace. Use intimidate instead of diplomacy information gathering only, +4 intimidate (or +8 if you're small). Thug rogue, anyone? More realistically, not that useful.

Rod of the python - +1/+1 quarterstaff. Turns into a snake. Moses, we have your staff. Blah.

Trap stealer's rod - +4 disable device, +4 crowbar, disable a trap by 5 or more to take the trap with you for a day and put it somewhere else (it goes back to its original location afterwards). I like it. Not sure how well it would work, but I like it.

Rod of the Uraeus - +1 light mace, +2 resistance reflex, +5 sense motive. 2/day 30ft. line of poison (r13) blind and paralysis 8 rounds (F13 each round to negate both). Lawful users only. These seem to like being light maces. Shame the DC's so bad, because that's fairly nice poison.

Rod of Balancing - +10 jump, immune prone, half falling damage, +4 dodge when fighting defensively rather than +2. Argh, why do you have to hold it for fight defensively when it doesn't count as a weapon? Guess that makes it 1H no shield or unarmed with kicks. Not a bad tripping item with that in mind.
Comically, this is described as an incredibly light metal bar but still weighs 2.5kg.

Rod of Escape - +5 CMD vs grapple, immune to pin. +5 escape artist nonmagical inanimate bindings. Has a funny image of how it works. Quite reasonable.

Rod of Flame Extinguishing - 10 charges/day. 1 charge for basically any nonmagical fire. 1 charge counter a small area fire spell or 2 for a large area. 3 charges for 6d6 to fire subtype creature on melee touch. Fairly circumstantial (Although I should get one for my current campaign where we've had a bizarre number of large fires to put out)

Rod of Gripping Smoke - +1 ghost touch light mace. 3/day make fog spell count as difficult terrain when cast. 3/day move make fog try to grapple/steal/disarm. Most unusual, but cool. Move action for the grapples is great. Problem I have is that you can't see through the fog to target them...

Rod of Ruin - 3/day break medium sized nonmagic items. Not impressed; buy an adamantine hammer or something for cheaper and noisier effect.

Sapling Rod - +5 survival, you and allies get woodland stride, portable tree that grows Cure moderate wounds or lesser restoration "potions". Woodland stride is circumstantially useful and it's nice that it's everyone. I'd definitely get this in a wilderness campaign. Probably not anywhere else.

Sceptre of Divine Provenance - +1 heavy mace, spend extra channels for increased channel distance. At last, not a light mace! Shame it's a useless actual effect.

Rod of Beguiling - +5 bluff/sleight of hand/Cha checks to command charmed people. +5 perform for distract and 5 levels higher for fascinate/suggestion performances. That is, about +2.5DC for those performances. Might maybe get people to use those sometimes.

Rod of Nettles - +1 light mace. Does no damage: instead on touch 1d3 dex and 1d6 rounds sicken (F13 halves and negates respectively), no save on a crit. 1/day grow nettles for same effect in area. Interesting. Nettle growing is fairly reasonable crowd control. Makes an uncomfortable full attack, particularly with 2 of them.

Rod of Tangling Ectoplasm - 3/day in small area R14 or entangled 10 rounds. 18k for DC14? No thanks.

Rod of the Viper - +2 heavy mace. 1/day poison the head every hit for 10 minutes: 1d3 con 6 rounds F16. Weapon quality has improved slightly. To an extent, with it on every hit, the DC matters rather less, since things will fail sooner or later.

Rod of Minor Curses - +1 light mace. 3/day on hit bestow a weak curse (W14), or two if it's a crit. Curses are just a bit too weak to bother with: -2 str, -1 ability checks/saves/skills or 20% stagger chance, all 5 minutes.

Rod of the Devoured Dawn - +1 heavy mace. Darkvision 30ft., 1/day hypnotic pattern that dispels light effects in its area (which is impressive for a concentration spell). Rod swallows things on a crit. There have been some cool weapon rods, but this is a definite favourite so far, even if it's not quite so useful. I just love the imagery of this. The rod of the river snake is just the old 3.5 version of this.

Suzerain Scepter - +5 nobility/diplomacy, 1/day CL7 good hope, double leadership followers, constantly radiate bless for any leadership people/pets/charmed people/summons and any morale effects you make increase bonus by 1 for those people. Like the idea of charming your party just for the +3 heroism spells. Regardless, if you have a pet or summon things, it's worth considering.

Fiery Nimbus Rod - +1 flaming burst light mace, on crit or 1/day on hit, faerie fire 1d4 rounds and while on fire take 1d10 extra fire damage every hit. Most of the price is of course from the +3 weapon, which isn't... fabulous on a mace. It's a nice extra effect though for a melee heavy party. Bit of a shame it's fire damage.

Rod of malrion - 1/day surround target with 4 CL7 walls of fire, walls don't move and last 1 minute, can focus inwards or outwards as normal. It's saveless and somewhat intimidating damage to just drop (8d4/round with a small square and 2d6+7 if they don't want to deal with that)

Rod of Enemy Detection - 3/day point to nearest enemy within 60 ft for 10 minutes, concentrate full round to pinpoint location and says how many are in range. Not sure how useful this really is beyond the obvious detection of invisible things.

Famine Rod - 10 charges/week. 1 charge ranged 2d6 and gain half as temp hp for 1 hour. 3 charges to increase to 4d6 damage. Unimpressed with this for the price and usage.

Overflowing Rod - Kineticist item, one of few! 3 levels higher for elemental overflow. More than just an attack and damage boost, it's quite possibly a large stat boost as well. Get when possible.

Rod of Perilous Pits - Cast a 3rd level spell into it. Next pit spell manifests that spell at the bottom at cost of increased casting time. I'm sure there's some way of cheesing this, but haven't found anything that undeniably works yet. Regardless, it's not a bad way of converting a touch attack into a save and giving it good range, and it's basically a quickened spell for damage.

Rod of Splendour - +4 enhancement charisma while carried, look fancy, 1/week make a really nice tent with food for 1 day. This is cheap for a slotless charisma item. In fact, it's about the same price you'd pay for the slot sharing headbands, which makes it a reasonable alternative to a headband for charisma if there's something else you wanted in that slot.

Rod of the Alicorn - 3/day cure light wounds, 1/day cure moderate wounds, 1/day neutralise poison. Yawn. Get a wand instead, and there are plenty of poison removal items that just work, like the ring of toxic nulification.

Rod of Withering - +1 light mace. No damage, just 1d4 str and con damage on touch, with drain on a crit (f17 negates). Unlike the slightly cheaper rod of nettles, this doesn't always do something, which makes it rather worse despite the slightly higher DC. By the time you can afford this, DC17 isn't going to do a whole lot even on a full attack.

Fossilising Rod - 1/day when animating skeletons make them fossilised (slower and less nimble but hardness 8). Solid necromancer item; this is a huge strength boost, even if nonsentient undead are semi-obsolete by this price.

Earthbind Rod - +1 light mace, +4 CMD vs most things so long as on stone/earth, 3/day on hit entangle things on earth/stone 1d4 rounds (F18). Save DC is rubbish and barely worth using as a weapon.

Pyroclastic Spike - 1/day 30ft. line 2d6 fire (R16 half), one round later 2d6 fire automatically from river of fire. Prone in the line or held in is 10d6 fire. River of fire lasts until you remove the spike. Remove spike to cool instantly and entangle, escape with R16. In the right area, it's only a move action to start this off, which can make a decent item for a tripper. However, I really can't see this used much in combat by PCs. Makes a nasty dungeon room though.

Rod of the Aboleth - +1 corrosive light mace. 1/day on hit 1d4 con damage (f18), 1/day on hit aboleth's lung (w13), 10 rounds/day in round chunks 60ft. swim speed. Good grief this is awful. Not much's going to fail those saves on a 29k item.

Liberator's Rod - +1 merciful light mace, continual flame on it, at will touch creature to give it new save vs charm/compulsion/possession 1/effect. 1/day break enchantment. Not especially impressive.

Rod of Hindered Healing - 60 ft. radius aura halves magical healing (w16). Like that's going to happen much, regardless of low save.

Witching Rod - +5 survival for dowsing occult unlock, 1/day control water or speak with dead or stone shape. The unlock is a fairly trivial DC, and none of those spells are impressive enough to warrant 31k.

Rod of Voracious hexes - 3/day target 2 creatures with one hex. Sweet!

Rod of Thunder and Lightning - +2 light mace. 1/day each 2d6 extra electric on 1 hit, 200ft. range lightning bolt 9d6 (r16), +3 light mace and stun one round (f16) for one hit, shout. 1/week combine the lightning bolt and shout (shout hits everyone near the lightning bolt) and lightning bolt is somewhat empowered. Cool and flavoursome, but the saves are a little low to be useful for the price.

Booming Sceptre - +1 thundering light mace, +5 intimidate, 1/day shout. Everyone in a mile can hear you speak regardless of noise levels. And so, rock and roll was born. The last effect is probably what you're after here.

Rod of Delumination - at will put out lights. spells/items/creatures get w15 to not be affected. So long as the source hasn't expired, can put light back again, too. This seems really terrible, and I'm not sure it'd be used or bought at a tenth of the price.

Rod of negation - 3/day CL15 greater dispel magic for items only on ranged touch attack. Shame it's not one level higher. Cheap, all things considered, although it's a shame it's not that one level higher for 4 items. It will usually hit something due of the nature of items.

Rod of steadfast resolve - +2 light mace, nearby allies get +2 morale vs fear or +4 if human, 1/day immediate reroll on failed save vs emotion. If you really care, just invest in a ring of the sublime. More likely you're able to give everyone heroism now anyway making it moot and you can get a real weapon instead.

Ivory Baton - Automatically take control of a construct as if you were its creator. Can do this for up to 300HD of constructs for up to 500 minutes total before the rod's used up, multiple constructs accrue time together (3 constructs for 1 minute -> 3 minutes). No save. Control breaks if you attack it or give it an obviously harmful command. Expensive, but completely worthwhile to have one.

Coldwarp Key - +5 craft with metal. 3 charges/day, 1 charge for metal only fabricate, 2 charges while underground for major creation to make base metals and instantaneous duration. This is one of the things where fabricate should really be a focus because you can just make anything metal with this. However, assuming reasonably that's not what's intended, by this point you should really just have everything metal you really need.

Fool's Sceptre - +5 comedy. 1/day daze 2d6 rounds then shaken 10 minutes (w15), 1/week short casting time legend lore for a specific creature and giving details on their thoughts if they're quite close (W15). Hah, I love this item. It's hilarious enough I'll make it okay even though the saves are rubbish. It's a very fast legend lore though.

Rod of Absorption - If held, automatically absorb up to 50 levels of incoming single target spells/spell-likes, can expend absorbed levels to cast spells without using slots. Destroyed once absorbed all levels and residual power used up. Double value on a spontaneous caster; runestones of power are expensive! Regardless, this is an exceptionally valuable item to have.

Rod of Flailing - +3/+3 dire flail, free two-weapon fighting, 1/day +4 deflection and +4 resistance. Shame it's not a weapon that people are actually proficient with and anyone proficient with it will already have two-weapon fighting.

Rod of Potent Hexes - 3/day double damage/healing of a hex. Thing is, there aren't actually any hexes that this works on. Other than healing? Like all of these hex rods, they don't work on major or grand hexes. So despite its hefty price and nice sound, this is actually pretty useless.

Gravitic Force Rod - Once activated, 100 ft. radius of double gravity. Halves move speed and carry capacity, drops fly manoeuvrability 2 steps (i.e. max -8 fly) and flying creatures need a DC25 fly check or fall. It might not seem like much, but this will usually put a low strength character into medium encumbrance. Combined with a quickened ray of enfeeblement, and regardless of whether they save or not, they're basically immobile. The fly check will crash nearly anything, apparently. Double-edged sword, obviously, so take your own precautions.

Rod of Rulership - You are Lord and Master over average intelligence people. 300HD of people at most obey you as if you'd dominated them, W16 negates if over 11 int, no save otherwise. 500 minutes total use before destroyed. Obviously the save's fairly terrible, but it's enough to get most nobodies in town to play your game. And a decent bunch of creatures, too.

Rod of Security - 1/week send up to 200 people to a paradise demiplane depending on how many people go (up to 200 days for 1 person), taking the rod with you (and everyone turns up safely near where they left). Not that it's bad, but I don't see it being especially useful.

Rod of Well-deserved Rest - +1 light mace. 3/day sleep on hit (w14). 1/day tiny hut. heal at double rate naturally and good hope for an hour after you wake up. Obviously not actually a weapon. And actually awful for prepared casters who spend an hour doing spells before anything else, or even for anyone in a group with one. I think this is actually awful.

Rod of Shadows - +2 light mace. See in darkness, 3/day CL8 deeper darkness. See in darkness is fairly circumstantial, but at least you have the tools to use it with this.

Rod of Razors - +3 keen adamantine halberd, has reach but also hits nearby foes. 5/day full attack as if it was a longbow. Technically nonmagical. On the one hand, it's 30k more than the basic thing. On the other hand, it covers some of the high level horrors fighters might have to face like antimagic field and disjunction, plus the age old problem of hitting things next to you with a reach weapon and what to do when you can't hit things in melee.

Rod of Mind Mastery - Constant CL7 nondetection, 3/day detect thoughts, 1/day immediate discern lies. Nnng, the saves are so low and the nondetection is low caster level. At least discern lies is good an an immediate action.

Rod of lordly might - Couple of 1/day low save negate spells. +2 light mace or +1 flaming longsword or +4 battleaxe or +3 short/long spear or lance, equivalent to drawing a weapon. Portable ladder, which works well for opening doors apparently, and also a compass and tells you how far from the surface of the earth you are because why not? This is... quite a lot of stuff. I'm not completely sure why you'd get this, considering it's mostly a weapon and you can get 2 +4 weapons for this price (or a +6 one for another 2k), other than perhaps not having someone who can make anything better.

Sceptre of Heaven - +1 evil outsider bane morningstar. +2 dispel evil spells/cast by evil outsiders, at will bless weapon, 1/day spear of purity. Wear the expensive crown of heaven to give it holy and 1/day holy smite/word/sword. At will bless weapon is awesome, but this really is excessively expensive. It's probably at least okay if you have the crown.

Rod of Abrupt Hexes - 3/day quicken hex. This is incredible, particularly since you can combine it with the other hex rods. Scary with the rod of Voracious hexes for 4 hexes/round.

Lava Rod - +2 club (Not a mace? Odd). 10 rounds/day +2 flaming burst club. 3/day 30ft. cone 13d6 fire (r20) and 1/day same effect but can delay it up to 5 rounds. You'd really like it to be flaming burst the whole time for this price, but I suppose a 1/day delayed blast "fireball" isn't too bad.

Nightmare Rod - +2 heavy mace, stagger 1 round on crit (w15). 1/day on hit phantasmal killer (DC16), 1/day nightmare but you don't need to trance if they're not asleep. Constant fear immunity. Well, at least the last bit's okay. Honestly, for 80k you want a save that won't just be immediately made.

Rod of dwarven Might - Improve most dwarf racial stuff by +1. Draw weapon action to swap between +1 returning light hammer or +3 Dwarven Longhammer or +4 dwarven Waraxe or +2 light/heavy crossbow. Hey, they're not awful weapons for once. Not going to deny it is again an overpriced gimmick, but at least you get +1 to all saves out of it.

Rod of revolution - It's a rod of rulership, except it's wisdom based whether you get a save, your minions rage and you kind of just point them where to attack. It's an extra 22k. Worth it? Maybe not. More useful? For adventurers maybe. Particularly the type that can afford this.

Rod of Alertness - +1 light mace, +1 initiative while held. Various at will detection spells, notably see invisibility. 1/day detect enemies in 120ft. and prayer on allies in same area 10 minutes. 1/day CL11 animate objects around itself, but animates only small objects. Other than the see invisibility, blah.

Dolorous Rod - At will activation. When active, take 1d10 damage and F20 or permanent negative level. Everything in 120ft. takes -2 to nearly everything no save. Mythic things stop weaker mythic things doing mythic things. Okay, so no save is good. Bad bit is not being able to filter out the important people, like yourself. Or your allies. Backlash is bad enough it might struggle to be used at half the price.

Hollow Rod - It's a greater maximise rod that only works for kineticists. It's been mentioned unofficially that you could do other similar rods for other metamagics by the same scale. Not like kineticists have that much else to do with money. And hey, now your gather power's just on a composite blast instead.

Caduceus Rod - +5 alchemy, +1 attack/damage with alchemical items. 5/day one of: wake up sleeping things in 40 ft. & sleep immunity 1 minute, change a prepared alchemist extract, kill all dying creatures in 40 t. (f19), empowered breath of life one target in 40 ft., slightly better deep slumber in 20 ft. and exclude some targets (f19). Well. Technically the empowered breath of life at range is cheap, and it is actually quite good. It's an awful lot cheaper than a resurrection or two, anyway. Never going to take the place of a wand of infernal healing/CLW for healing, but it'll do for not being dead.

Sceptre of the Arclords - 1/day any 3rd level or lower spell. 1/week 70% chance of limited wish 20% chance of proper wish and 10% chance of less fun stuff. 10% chance of less fun stuff with daily usage as well. Yes, yes, wish and limited wish are good and strong, but it's 1/week, and there's a decent chance of less fun stuff. It probably didn't really need to be this expensive. But hey, cross-class spells work with daily usage, so that could be interesting.