You can always go into any house, rummage through their drawers, closets, and chests, and take anything that isn’t bolted down. The occupants won’t mind.
And, of course, that armor your halfling picked up is going to fit, no matter that she got it from a giant.
This is actually lampshaded in WoW’s current expansion. There’s a series of quests where you have a young girl tagging along, and you have to take her to visit certain locations — one of which is a waterfall. She says something like, “Ooh, you should check behind it for a hidden cave! Waterfalls always have hidden caves behind them!”
In this case, there is no cave behind the waterfall, however.
You just tore through that steel mecha-golem’s armor with your weaponry but that locked wooden door is impervious to gunfire, rockets, lasers, etc.
That’s one of the things Rift learned from WoW’s experience: their armors included a mix of “chainmail swimgear” and “when I say plate I mean plate” from the start.
Most other games oh yeah, if you’re playing a chick your choice is chainmail bikinis or robes made from ripped curtains.
What’s peculiar about that is the abrupt weather/vegetation changes and the scaling (you run in minutes what should actually take days), but the setup you describe is what’s known as a “mountainous area” in much of the world. You can walk to the next valley This Way or That Way; in order to reach the next valley on the other side you actually have to take a detour through three others… and forget about going over the mountains if your food doesn’t walk itself.