Hello folks. Recently, I've liked to muse about a system relating to the wearing/degradation of items. At this stage I'd be curious to hear some wider feedback (and, possibly, further ideas) regarding such a hypothetical system.
Essentially, I've thought about a system that aims to be non-intrusive and to promote interaction with the various crafting professionals. When an item wears out, it wont be rendered unusable; Instead it might gain a minor negative effect, such as -1 AB or -1 AC. This would be fixable by a crafter for either a fixed fee, or a fee that scales with the item value.
An item being worn out wouldn't be a common occurrence. It might even take as long as a month even if the item is in continuous, daily use and several times longer if it's only used rarely. Therefore, new characters and characters during the NCE would not face item degradation at all.
The primary goal would be to offer wood, leather and metal crafters an occasional, but continuous job to fill.
What I described above are my own personal ideas on the subject and no system like this is currently in the works, but I'd love to hear some feedback and alternate ideas regarding this! Questions such as if a NPC could offer the service at a greater price than PCs and so are completely open to me.