Older editions of D&D bring up the idea that some circumstances can cause the items you’re carrying to be destroyed. Rather than track HP for each of your possessions, this was generally handled by having the item make a saving throw under certain circumstances against whatever threatened it; in 1st edition at least, items had their own saving throw categories, distinct from those used by creatures, and with target numbers dependent on the item’s composition.

This approach seems OK except for a few things: first, the amount of dice-rolling and tracking that has to be done can get overwhelming fast (since for a given attack you have to figure out what items might have been affected and then have to go through and make saves for each), and second because it makes certain types of attacks (especially large area physical attacks like Fireball spells) even more devastating, as they’re likely to destroy at least some of your (magic?) equipment as well as injure your character. 3rd edition tried to handle this by only having one item targeted, and then only on a botched save; that’s a bit of an improvement but it comes up rarely enough that its easier to ignore the rule altogether, and since the character has already failed their save it still seems like adding insult to injury.

Here’s another idea: whenever a character has to make a save against something, they can nominate a piece of equipment that could reasonably (defined relative to the campaign setting) take at least part of the attack and thus help protect them from some of the trauma (armor might protect from a Fireball, a Ring of Protection from a death curse, a metal weapon might take the Lightning Bolt for you, etc.). If the DM agrees, the player rolls 2 saving throws; the higher roll is used for the character, the lower roll for the item according to however item saves are handled. If the item fails its save it is visibly ruined (the silver Ring of Protection that falls to a curse may instantly tarnish and even fall away into nothingness, the sword into which the lightning bolt grounds may become a useless lump of metal), but if it succeeds then no significant harm is done.

The effect of this rule is to give a player something for risking their equipment, which means you’re more likely to see items lost or damaged even as the character lives on (though of course it’s possible for both saves to fail…); similarly it encourages PCs not to resort to just blowing up the enemy lest some of their own future treasure be damaged. It also keeps the dice-rolling and accounting limited without hopefully making it so rare that the rule is totally forgotten. The one thing it doesn’t try to handle is keeping players aware of the fragility of their equipment in general – of how a fall into a pit may cause potion vials to shatter, for example.