[Gulnyr]

Yeah, it seems for a skill-based system that it should matter less what the longsword is made of than what maneuvers and tricks the swordsman knows.

This is kind of tangent to the topic, but maybe the material a piece of equipment is made of shouldn't automatically determine its "level." Or, to say it differently, there would not be a distinct hierarchy where one material is always better than another. While adamantium and mithril (or their equivalents) would probably be more expensive and be status symbols, an item created from them wouldn't necessarily be better than the same item made from more common resources (but still could be, of course). That would mean basically that each resource that could be used to create an item would have something favorable about it that put it on par with other materials, making different materials better in certain circumstances. That kind of gets rid of the whole idea that material would determine the "level" of a piece of equipment.