grr bards. hmm... I'd like to tip on the SK, but not sure, I dropped my starting SK armor from another char. But for Pally, though SK can work too... just harder, I'd go to CB and farm belts and pads, sell them until you have around oh 500pp or so (edit gee forget how much it cost to raise to plate), maybe a little more for final plate suit cost (it's about 150pp to banded for sure). Use the armor crafting guide and work up to fine plate. You can buy all the mats off vendors, I mean for sheet metal, just being faster than smelting. Or slower and smelt everything yourself but save plats a little, at least thru banded.
Of course the hard part with any evil race is area faction. But you could always go for bandit sashes or whatever, things that sell at low level, I just pref CB for quick plats at low levels.
Also, beyond fine steel plate, you could go with cultural armor down the line, open for an option anyway. Starting as a human is really good for that imo, way more armor choices for crafting. Anyway if going the crafting rout it's something to look into ahead of time before selecting race and deity if you think you may ever go past banded or fine plate.
ps out of those choices though, I'd go with SK. And don't rule DE out
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edit: and really, you could do CB to the point of getting a full banded set, pretty easy. Then go to NK and do the gypsy camp quest turning in the lightstones and selling back rewards. That'll get ya plats easy to finish off smithing for full plate. From that point you might only need to worry about hunting down STR stuff to add in, rings etc.