Sure-Strike Matches

For when your flint and steel don't work.

As of recent, a strange company has sprung up selling a single and much-loved product across several of the well-known lands: Sure-Strike Matches. This consists of a small paper box, about two and a half inches square, packed full with one hundred two-inch red-tipped sticks of an unidentifiable wood. When the red end is scraped along the abrasive surface on one side of the box, it bursts into flame and provides a half-inch sphere of fire.
The reliablity of this has proven immensely popular, especially since completely immersing the matches in water has shown no hindrance of the ignition effect, with only three drawbacks. One, due to the box's paper construction, people have often reported accidentally igniting their whole stock in one go. Secondly, the matches don't stay lit for very long, and have an annoying tendency to burn your hands when they burn down. And finally, since only Sure-Strike knows how to make them, they're not easy to get and absolutely impossible to craft.

Item type

Tool

3.5e SRD

Sure-Strike Matches

Tool

Varies

These matches provide 5-foot radius of light and 10-foot radius of shadowy illumination. Striking a match is an attack action, but using it in any way- whether to light a fire, illuminate a shadowed inscription, or what have you- is a free action. A match can only be used in one free action per turn, like lighting a candle, unless the source of another free action is less than two inches away (like another candle in a three-pronged candlestick), in which case a second may be taken. The user then gets the option to extinguish the match. The match can be left lit for another turn, and used in the same way, but at the end of that turn it will burn down and cause 1 point of fire damage, this damage is negated on a successful reflex save (DC 5) or if the holder has a natural armor bonus of 1 or more.
Also, if the matchbox is caught in the radius of any fire spell when not empty, it immediately bursts into flame and does 1 point of fire damage to the holder for every ten matches inside the box, this damage is halved on a successful reflex save (DC 10).

Type	Damage	Damage	Range
None	1	Fire

Cost: 100 gold per box
Weight: 1lb