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I've got a party of 5 level three players. In an upcoming session, they might be facing a monster with plate armour. The (humanoid) monster's CR is one, but RAW his plate armor is worth 1,500 gp.

I'm not worried about players selling this armour - I'm happy to follow the advice given in official sources and say it's not in good enough condition to sell. I am concerned, however, about my party getting a fighter/cleric with an AC of 20. I generally understand item cost in 5e as an indicator of what items should be available at particular tiers of play, with strong parallels to item rarity. It feels unwise to give my players something this precious this early in the campaign.

Would giving my players plate armour at tier one make them stronger than the encounter difficulty calculations for 5e assume them to be?

Lovell
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    To clarify, are saying you are considering giving them the plate armor, but you want to know if it will cause balance problems? Because as written, it seems to me like you are assuming "an upcoming NPC has plate armor which means I have to give them plate armor". – Thomas Markov Sep 13 '21 at 20:53
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    Isn't that a contradiction? If the armour isn't in good enough condition to sell, is it really going to be in good enough condition for a PC to use? – Allan Mills Sep 13 '21 at 21:36
  • @AllanMills I’ve got lots of items in my home the work just fine but are not worth anything at market. None of them are armor so it’s not exactly analogous, but “not good enough to sell = non-functional” is definitely not a general rule, in my experience. – Thomas Markov Sep 13 '21 at 22:44
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    IIRC the rule in Adventurer's League used to be that you could use gear looted from NPCs for the duration of the session, but not afterwards, unless it was listed as Treasure. Also, I don't think that this question is a duplicate - it's not asking when PCs should gain access to Plate Mail, but if there would be game balance implications of them getting it early. – nick012000 Sep 14 '21 at 05:48
  • @nick012000 It was close voted by OP. – Thomas Markov Sep 14 '21 at 09:12
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    I've had this happen in my campaign at a similar level. My answer (taken from reality) is that the cost of plate armor isn't the metal that goes into it, it's the cost of smithing/tailoring it to fit a particular wearer. Basically what they'll get is an ill-fitting (unusable until made to fit) suit of armor that's really only worth about 1/4 of that 1500 gp price. And the cost to make it fit is the other 75% of that 1500 GP. – Σ of eDπ Sep 14 '21 at 16:48
  • @SumofeDpi I said much the same thing in a previous comment that was removed. I can only imagine that someone thought it was 'answering in comments' but cannot say for sure. – Kirt Sep 14 '21 at 21:15

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