The way it works now, you only have a chance to lose your item if you are wounded. You want to make it so that there is a chance to lose your item in any battle, if you're wounded or not? That would seem to greatly increase the overall chances that your items would be lost, since most characters fight in far more battles in which they are not wounded, than in which they are.
Wut? Not fighting in a battle makes the armor/weapon degrade faster? That doesn't make any sense at all. Game mechanics still need to make sense.
So, you want people to lose items just from walking around?
"I'm sorry, Lord Marshal, I cannot attend the battle today. It is raining!"
Anyone owning a book would have to check the weather daily to make sure it wasn't raining before they traveled, since they can't, you know, leave the book at home. And I suppose we'd need to add a way for people to check the weather.
This one just doesn't sound like it would add anything that would make the game more fun. Just make people afraid to do anything lest they lose their unique items.
However you are forgetting that with this change, there would be a severe reduction to its degradation. I was thinking that since a severe reduction in degradation without something else being increased (IE chance of loss/destroyed) then it would just never ever even get given a serious review
. The numbers I gave were certainly just made up on the spot but take for example that 1 point of degradation happens per week instead of per day (increases longevity and its potential roleplayability... heck I can think up several roleplays, histories and potential wars that could happen if Uniques were stable and not as it is now). Then to make it pass the whole there must also be a punishment thing, then in battle there should be (see my example for why there actually should be a chance at destroyed/loss) a chance that the item is lost or destroyed, with destroyed being at the most half the chance that lost has. The bigger the battle the bigger the confusion and so the bigger the risk. The smaller the battle, the smaller the risk.
However not fighting in said battle should indeed make it degrade faster, after all armour and weapons and shields left unused can become rusty, etc etc etc. It actually DOES make sense if you think about it. RP wise, your servants are concentrating on getting what you actually need done rather than trifling away at some unused piece of equipment. Noble X is writing a report on Godsaloneknowswhat, Servant A can either do something to help with said report or polish armour etc etc.
Its just an example my dear Indirik, but again something needs to be increased to combat the whole - degrading slower is too good, something bad needs to also be there - in this case, walking around in Cities and Towns, a simple accessory is an easy target for a pickpocket. In a scuffle a ring might simply slip from a finger, and I dare say that a book might be accidently dropped during a ruckus.
And I simply forgot books were useful in battles, simple make them the same as Armour/Weapons/Shields... But again, just an example.