I'm developing a 2d isometric game (typical Tolkien RPG) and wondering how to handle character/equipment combinations. So for example, the player wears leather boots with chain-mail and a wooden shield and a sword - but then picks up plate-armour instead of chain-mail.

I'm using Blender3D to create objects, environments and characters in 3D, then a script runs to render all 3D meshes into 2D orthographic tile maps. So I can use this script to create all the combinations of character equipment for me, but there would be an explosion in terms of the combinations required.