Wear and Tear

Before Elrond could reforge Aragorn's famed sword Andúril, it had to break during combat. Yet, most TTRPGs don't model wear and tear on gear at all, unless the party comes under attack by a rust monster or something similar and the rules explicitly prescribe it.

Most don't bother with it because they don't want to keep track of numerous modifiers and conditions on their gear. But, like with most things in RPGs, you don't need to make it realistic. You don't have to tell me how different weapons handle differently when damaged. Players just need something to remind them that their precious stuff might break.

Use notches to represent this wear and tear. I lifted this idea from old articles over at Last Gasp Grimoire and Necropraxis, but I heavily simplified the mechanical effects. A notch always equals a -1 modifier, regardless of whether it's on a battle axe, a sword, or plate mail.

If your sword suffers a second notch, it breaks. If your armor suffers enough notches to reduce its effect to +0, it sunders. That means there isn't too much tracking.

Two knights trying to sunder their opponent's armor

How does your gear suffer a notch? When you critically fail when using your weapon, or you opponent critically succeeds in smashing your armor. Natural 1s and natural 20s. Simple. It happens frequently enough to come up, but having your sword break during battle would be pretty rare (would require two critical failures).

That's about it. You can extend this to other gear as well, though I'd probably just have a rope or pole break on a critical failure, instead of having it accrue notches.

I did add some rules about how to fix notches - specifically, anyone proficient with a whetstone can hone notches out around a campfire. Armor and shattered swords require a full smithy, though.