BOOO! Newsflash, Mr. Tim Cain, Senior Programmer and Designer, swords DO BREAK!
Its understandable if you deemed not worth loosing man-hours properly adding breaking weapons so you can finish PE in time.
There are special medieval sword breaking weapons, heavy iron maces and heavy iron flails etc.. shields and plate armor also can break swords due to inept sword-strikes as you might be very well avare of.
If you decided that you do not wish to bother with managing BROKEN_WEAPON_STATE in your code from a pure programmers standpoint and you do not wish to bother to make DROPPED_BROKEN_WEAPON items disappear, you are destroying fun realism that made Baldurs Gate so great. Simple weapons do break, should break, because that means the character hit too hard - maybe it was a critical hit, then the cracks in the cheap sword spread too far.
Or the character is a beginner fighter, and breaks regular swords often, which is fun to observe!
Also the following is great fun:
1. start a physically strong character with no weapons, just rags on his/her body.
2. Then try to fight bare-handed - yes its hard -
3. Anything you can get from the enemy you can use: a leather armor maybe and a weak sword
4. Then watch that sword become damaged then break in the middle of battle.
5. Watch the weak armor become damaged and then unusable / broken / torn / too much holes, etc..
6. Experience the Ladder of Ascension process until my character has a somewhat better equipment and take on stronger enemies with confidence.
Thank You for reading!