I'm reading The Iliad, and in the battle scenes many soldiers, after killing an enemy, try to strip the armor off of their fallen foe. This often leads to their own death, as a flying spear or rock can kill them, but it seemed important enough to risk it.
I understand that we don't know much about the Trojan War (if it even happened), but presumably Homer is referencing a practice that was common in wars back then. Was this a common practice back then? Did the common soldier not have armor, or was their armor so cheap that any time they had a chance to get a new set they tried to? Was it to collect tokens of all the men they slayed?
Stripping the armour of men you killed in battle was standard practice for the elite in the early Archaic period. It doesn't just feature heavily in Homer; there are also loads of depictions on vases of killed enemies being dragged away to be stripped in the middle of battle.
The point of this was not to get better armour like in a videogame. The point was that killing a man in battle was a way to show your own status and prowess; the expensive and prestigious armour of your fallen enemy was your prize, which was yours to take home and display and gloat about. A fragment of the Archaic poet Alcaeus has the author brag about how his entire hall shines with captured bronze. The desire to claim the prize of killed enemies' armour was so strong that men in Homeric battle scenes constantly risk death to obtain it. The most intense fighting in the Iliad happens when those who want to strip a dead body clash with those from the other side who try to drag it safely out of the victor's reach.
The interesting thing is that at some point in the late Archaic period (probably around 500 BC), the stripping of the enemy dead became a collective process that happened when the battle is over. The spoils were no longer hoarded by individuals, but simply sold, except for a part (usually a tenth) that was publicly dedicated at a sanctuary (and one suit of armour that was nailed to a post on the battlefield to mark the victory). Bragging rights for victory moved from individuals to the community as a whole, and the practice of stripping a man right after he was killed disappeared completely.