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Message: <blockquote data-quote="williambertram" data-source="post: 6030525" data-attributes="member: 6671964">How about this?Much like politics, I personally think both sides of the "fumble" argument I've heard over the years are somewhat unnecessarily polarizing.  There has to be a fun way to balance natural wear and tear on weapons without being obnoxious.Before I explain this, one thing I noticed is that some of the thinner bladed weapons like rapier, scimitar, dagger, etc. have higher crit ranges.  While this isn't universally true, a marginally believable argument could be made that weapons with higher crit ranges might be easier to break.So you roll a natural 1 on your attack, and treat it as a fumble threat.  Then you roll against the weapons crit range to confirm the fumble, just as if you were rolling to confirm a crit (minus any bonus to critical hits.  Just use the weapons natural crit range).  If you confirm the fumble, roll damage.  Next, subtract the weapons hardness (per the Pathfinder "Damaging Objects" rules) from the damage you rolled to determine how much damage the weapon takes.  Subtract the total damage from the weapons HP (also on the "Damaging Objects" rules).  To determine the effects of a damaged weapon, simply use the rules for the "Broken" condition.  Sounds kind of fiddly, but in practice you just use a dice to track the damage and it doesn't really slow the game down much at all, especially when you figure that there is only a 5% chance to roll a 1.  When people throw a fit, politely remind them that both King Arthur broke Excalibur (in Excalibur), Narsil was broken (in Lord of the Rings), and the master sword made by Conan's father (in Conan the Barbarian) was broken.  So even in fantasy fiction weapon breakage does happen.  For unarmed combatants, you could just give them HP damage as if they had sprained a wrist, broken a knuckle, or broken a toe (which does happen to real fighters frequently, even when fighting unarmored opponents).Then for armor damage, you might subtract the armors hardness from total damage (before the crit multiplier is applied) when a crit is confirmed.  Also use the "damaging objects" and "Broken" condition rules just as you did for weapon damage.</blockquote>

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