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As an alternate to using weapons as Bonded Items, I've been toying around with the concept of Weapon Familiars and, I have to say, its worked out surprisingly well. I'm posting the (current) iteration of those rules here for comment, critique and hopefully adoption into some of your campaigns.
I wanted to keep the weapon version of Familiars as close to the original base version as possible. At present I'm not allowing for archetypes (though that could certainly be an expansion of the house rules at some point). Flavor-wise, this could be seen as a spirit summoned into an item, and thus transferrable as a character acquires a more powerful weapons. These rules could also apply to shields or other objects with relatively minor adjustment.
House Rules: Weapon Familiar
Intelligent Weapon: Intelligence as per Familiar
Hit Dice & Hit Points: as per Familiar
Natural Armor: Increases Hardness instead, as per Familiar
Saving Throws: uses Familiar’s base save bonus or Master’s as per familiar; instead of ability modifiers the weapon’s effective enhancement bonus is applied to all
Skills: Cannot perform skills (see Aid Master); uses Master’s skill ranks; instead of ability modifiers the weapon’s effective enhancement bonus is applied to all
Alertness: grants the Alertness feat to it's Master when wielded
Weapon Sense: replaces Empathic Link; the wielder can always sense exactly where his weapon is (distance and direction), provided it is within 1 mile. Its Master may use the weapon or its location as a target for Scrying and similar divination spells and effects.
Deliver Touch Spells (@ 3rd): as the Magus’ Spellstrike class feature
Speak with Master (@ 5th): gains Telepathy 100’ (with Master only)
Spell Resistance (@ 11th): gains Spell Resistance as per Familiar and grants it to its Master as well when wielded
Scry on Familiar (@ 13th): as per Familiar
Aid Master: replaces Improved Evasion, Share Spells and Speak with Animals of its Kind; When wielded, the weapon may attempt to Aid Another (Master only) once per round on its Master's turn.
@ 1st level - Attack roll vs. AC 10 using Master’s BAB and its own enhancement bonus (if any) to grant +2 to one attack that round or +2 to AC vs. one attack.
@ 5th level - Skill check vs. DC 10 using Master’s skill ranks and its own enhancement bonus (if any) to grant +2 to any skill check.
Now this might technically a nerf when compared to a straight up Familiar - after all, it can't effectively scout for you, can't benefit from Archetypes or Familiar feats, can't make attacks, can't provide Flanking, can't perform skills on its own, doesn't have its own senses and doesn't provide that initial bonus that all Familiar's provide, but it does offer a number of unique abilities in keeping with its theme and concept and thus far no one has seemed to mind.
A few quick definition clarifications:
When wielded = when in hand and able to be used.
Effective enhancement bonus = total enhancement bonus, i.e. a +1 Flaming Keen Longsword has a +3 effective enhancement bonus. A Weapon Familiar can have no enhancement bonus at all.
These Familiars are dissimilar from Pathfinder's rules for Intelligent weapons, as the weapon's alignment matches it's Master's, it has no Ego, speaks no languages, reads no languages nor does it Read Magic and the it only shares its Master's senses.
One idea I'm currently toying with is the idea of an Improved Weapon Familiar feat which effectively makes it function as a Bonded Item on top of its other abilities.
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Isn't the direct equivalent of a familiar as a weapon a black blade? (see: black blade magus, blade adept arcanist, maybe steelbound fighter.)
While it might not come up much I think your weapon familiar should have Wis & Cha, even if they're flat 10s.
Spellstrike as per magus works with non-magus spells, right?
Dot
Isn't the direct equivalent of a familiar as a weapon a black blade? (see: black blade magus, blade adept arcanist, maybe steelbound fighter.)
While it might not come up much I think your weapon familiar should have Wis & Cha, even if they're flat 10s.
Spellstrike as per magus works with non-magus spells, right?
I can't really consider that a direct equivalent - its not nearly as pervasively available as a Familiar and it uses a completely different set of rules than familiars do. This was put together to be a literal replacement for them on a more or less one-for-one basis.
I don't see why we couldn't give them WIS and CHA scores, but its never come up before - what scenarios might those be?
That was the plan, yes, though naturally it would still be spells with a range of touch...
Say someone tries to communicate with the weapon telepathically to interact with it. Or someone casts a spell on it so that it can choose to interact with someone. I'm fairly certain the people I game with face to face would try this. Or it gets caught in some area intimidate check - there are several ways. Some idea of its stats might help.
It might be worth mentioning about the magus spells - magus multiclass & VMC Magus both only allow spells from the magus list with spellstrike (without the broad study arcana anyway).