Cool Lists. Could put his up as an table (xls or ods) somewhere? So that it's searchable.
Thank You!

@Rikitoy

If you have high craftsmanship and the armorsmith trait, your best bet is to combine a fauld with chainmail (or, if you lack the slots during character creation, a fauld with leather armor or a gambeson is also decent) for minimal penalties. Best helmet is an aventail with a bascinet, but the cerville(?) helmet is the best combo option you can get at character creation.

Assuming no custom crafting,you're gonna have to make some pretty significant trades of protection vs stat loss, the nobleman's armor is probably the best ratio of protection to lowest stat loss, the mail armor is also decent, but neither comes close to crafted armor. As for helmets, the chapel de fer or italian bascinet provide okay protection with minimal stat loss, but frankly, if you're going this far into a run and you're not just trying to scrape by on a random character, you should be custom crafting.

What are the best armor and helmet with no penalties?

My crafting level was max crafting (25) or slightly above (30), from what I remember.

What level of crafting were you at?

Feel free to let me know of any errors or omissions.