A masterwork item (whether it is a piece of equipment, weapon or armor) is said to be above the quality standard for the item and hence receive the appropriate bonuses.
Would it be worthwhile to include the opposite in the system: crude items?
A crude item (equipment, weapon, armor etc) would simply represent a substandard version of the item. This way, the system would gain a template to illustrate that certain civilization do not have the same technological level without having to include substandard version of weapons and armor in the list that mainly interest players (directly or indirectly).
Mountain orcs could be wearing a crude breastplate, which may or may not be made of steel (think of hide, bronze or roughly shaped iron) and lizardmen could carry crude javelins. A crude shortsword taken from a goblin may not worth as much as a steel shortsword looted from the bad-guy's guard.
As a DM, I find it important to include sub-optimal options in the books because they do influence the PCs (more often indirectly than directly) but lets face it; I'd rather used the precious editing space for items that the PCs will either use or confront on a regular basis.
'findel
Director of Games
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I attempted to rectify this very problem by adding the "broken" condition that can be applied to weapons, armor, and other pieces of gear. See page 399 of the Beta.
You could take this further I am sure, but I am not sure that the added complexity is needed.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
I know I've used rules for bone weapons in a campaign before that I thought were from the DMG. Just sub bone for 'crap' weapons.
