5e matte finished plate armor
So I had a silly argument come up on my table. I had a clever paladin player who decided to spend some extra gold dull his armor in a matte finish, this was seen as dishonorable by his order as you gotta keep your gear nice and shiny for helm so it earned him a reprimand.
while the party was sneaking about the paladin laid down in some bushes to hide in preparation for an ambush. The silence spell was also cast by the wizard.
The paladin argued that the stealth penalty for wearing plate was effectively nullified, there was no sound from the metal plates rubbing together, and there was no reflective surface for light to bounce off of. So naturally I approved.
Unfortunately this did not sit well with the rouge. He was adamant that rules as written there should be no way to nullify the stealth penalty. He argued that if we delve too much into realism we could have "peasant railgun scenarios" or other weird edge cases which could bog down the game. "its just not a good precedent to set for the future health of the game" he said. I totally understood where he was coming from because ive played in games where the dm opened too wide of a door for shenanigans like this and it caused them to get overwhelmed with a particularly crafty party.
For now I decided to approve of the armor ruling as effort was already spent on making it happen but to leave all other shenanigans up to a party vote, allowing me to veto anything if need be.
This fortunately got settled but I am curious how others would handle this situation.