We kind of have a wear and tear system on weapons for if you hit a tree or rock- it has a counter from 1-10 that is mostly persistant and shatters the item when it's maxed. (heh, my hammer has 6 death tokens!)
For armor, it would most likely happen when something scores a double 20 crit on you (20 primary roll, 20 secondary) Of course lag concerns might make this a little unfeasable with 35 people fighting at the same time. If it could be a script that only started somehow conditionally only on a 20/20, statistically we should be pretty fine. (probability is like 5% of 5% or some such incredibly small number)
Another variant could be that the donned armor would have to make it's own "death token" check when a player died. That way the script would initiate at fairly seldom intervals (hopefully!) and it would make sense that the mortal blow itself was the cause of the damage.
Of course, Higher level armors are likely more durable than lower level ones, so we'd assign some base value and SUBTRACT the item lvl modifier from it when making the check. (like chance % of 20 minus the level req of the armor chance of getting a damage token) That way a copper fullplate would shatter far sooner than an adamantium one. (and uber gear would be pretty safe from longitudinal dmg, fixed rate of 1%)
What would be fun with this would be that armor and weapon crafters could then make money by doing repairs on pre-xisting gear. I wouldn't suggest that they got any special crafting xp for it, else there'd be abuse from players hacking at ore deposits just for practice. On the plus side though, a successful crafting check on the item or armor type would effectively lower the count to 0, or -1 token per success. Also, a failure on the check should add a token, so you really CAN turn a brittle sword into mangled metal by accident.
Also, to make said repairs, one would also need a few ingots of the metal they'd be working with. Leather and cloth armors would need leather and cloth to patch as well. (some raw CNR infusion would be necessary both for realism and to prevent exploitation) Perhaps if one needed 2-3 ingots of iron to patch an iron fullplate, then we COULD allow crafting xp gain from the act. Without raw CNR infusion, I see too many possibilities for "power-fixing" solely for armor/weaponcraft gains.
Helms, Boots, rings and amulets should probably not have to make these types of checks, since if you're trying to block blows with your head, neck, feet or fingers, you'd likely be dead in about one shot anyhow
. Shields, armors and weapons could all use some wear and tear though.
In any case scenario, destroyed armors and weapons should fill your inventory with mangled metal of that type.
Not a TOTAL loss... but unless you're a smith, there's not much you can do with it.
