I am curious as to how DMs or Players take measures to prevent their magic items from being so easily sundered/destroyed? I was hoping Paizo offered an "enchanted items are tougher than normal" kind of ruling with the release of Pathfinder, but the only thing they did was made it tougher to Sunder if someone has high CMD, that's it.
Are there spells, feats, or methods of item creation that allows one to increase hp and hardness of magic items? It seems silly that an expensive Robe of the Archmagi, which is made of cloth (Hardness 0, hp possibly 2 or 5?) can be sundered with any simple attack, even a rusty dagger!
I know the Hardening spell is an option, which means everyone would be silly not to cast that on all their items. But are there other methods of protection?
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Well, as far as weapons, armor and shields are concerned, they do get tougher as they are enchanted. A good deal tougher, actually:
"Each +1 of enhancement bonus adds 2 to the hardness of armor, a weapon, or a shield, and +10 to the item's hit points."
from the corebook Equipment chapter, under Damaging Objects. Still combing through for non-enhancement bonus based items...
A couple of things to consider on this. And they are ALL going to fall into one of two areas.
1st - People good at combat are going to be able to out combat folks that are bad at combat most of the time. There is no way around this without major work.
So how is a wizard going to stop Smasher the King Breaker of All Things? If he allows Smasher to get into smashing position... he has already lost the battle. While Fighter Bob who spent his life wielding his families great sword will have some good ability to prevent his weapon from being broken... and in truth has little to fear from any attacks OTHER then from Smasher or spent his life learning how to break things.
2nd - There are not exceedingly precise rules for sunder, damage, broken, and destroyed equipment in the book for things beyond armor and weapons. So this means there is a TON of DM adjudication needed. Try and think outside of the item HP chart before saying 2 HP damage destroys something.
So in your example of a robe... yes cloth has 2 HP per inch... but does a 1" gash in a robe render it destroyed? Your mother may say jeans with holes in them don't work... but many people prove them wrong every day. How many dagger pokes does it REALLY take to destroy a robe to the point it no longer functions as a robe?
Now to answer your question a little more directly... and again these are my thoughts and how I would run it in a game.
Ways to protect you stuff.
1- Don't get hit. This can be done by increasing your CMD such as going into a defensive fighting mode to gain a dodge bonus. You can also add deflection, luck, insight, etc from other magic protections to CMD. Additionally if they provoke an AOO from the sunder attempt... try and kill them or disarm them before they are allowed to make the roll. A disarmed target will not be able to sunder much at all. Finally they can only sunder items that can be held or worn... but not ARMOR. I would suggest clothes could be viewed as armor and thus not sundered... but that in not RAW.
The problem with this is that things built to sunder are usually going to win. So if a player or DM really wants to get a sunder off there is nothing you can do about it short of walking away from the table in most cases.
2- Make sure the group is not Metagaming. Why is the guy with the rusty dagger trying to cut up some dudes robe? Is it because the DM or player KNOWS it is valuable and more dangerous then the dude himself? Most dudes with rusty daggers that attack folks in robes go for the spine or throat and not his shirt.
If the players and DM in a group find they are really all focusing on breaking stuff maybe have an out of game discussion on if this is adding fun to the group and how they really want to play. By the same token if a player made a character who's stick is breaking stuff... outlawing that style of play is not any more appropriate then telling the party wizard they he cannot cast fly because it makes it to hard for the bad guys to fight back.
3- Create add on enchantments for things that have a flat cost just like the skill bump stuff or energy resistance. They do not exist in core right now, but it should be easy to come up with a value for adding X hardness or Y hitpoint to any item.
It's not usually an issue for the DM, as generally the players want to TAKE the items from evil people, not destroy them.
As a PC, some good things are paying for access to the Ironwood spell if you use a wooden weapon (like a bow especially), getting adamantine weapons as early as you can if you are a frontline melee guy (these are also great for opening doors an other such objects), and generally just being careful.
Bad guys that waste their turns attacking weapons and such don't tend to live as long as they'd like. Usually, it just comes off as a kind of jerk-move by the DM.