 Shoddy item
Source Villain Codex pg. 116
Price varies; Weight varies
Category Adventuring GearDescriptionA shoddy item is any mundane piece of equipment that has been cleverly but poorly crafted such that its materials and workmanship are worse than expected, but the flaws are concealed. Layers of material are thinner than normal, hasps and hinges are only loosely attached, metals are mixed improperly, resulting in softer alloys, and so forth. Shoddy items are sold for the same price as their well-made counterparts. Manufacturing a shoddy item requires the Craft Shoddy Item feat (see above) in order to successfully conceal the poor workmanship. Shoddy items are never masterwork or made of special materials (though they might appear to be made of a special material), and single-use items can never be made as shoddy items.
Any shoddy item has its hardness reduced by 2 and its hit points reduced by half. Any weapon or piece of armor constructed in a shoddy manner takes damage each time it is used; a weapon takes the same amount of damage it deals in an attack (minus its lower hardness rating), and a piece of armor takes damage identical to its wearer’s loss in hit points from an enemy’s successful attack (again, after taking the adjusted hardness into account). Items other than weapons and armor have a 10% chance to gain the broken condition with each day of use, and if they have a limited number of uses, they have half as many uses as normal. In either case, shoddy items that gain the broken condition can never have that condition removed (even by using magic or if they later recover hit points) without further successful Craft checks and gp expenditure to fix the initial flaws. Shoddy items that are destroyed cannot be recovered by any means, and are useless for anything more than salvaging some of the raw materials. A shoddy item typically costs the same as a normal item of its kind.
A character who succeeds at a DC 15 Appraise (or appropriate Craft) check notices the shoddy condition of an item, but the character must specifically inspect the item to do so.
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