5.5e Simulacrum: what happens to the target's equipment?

I'm trying to understand how equipment is supposed to work with the 2024 version of Simulacrum.

The 2014 spell explicitly stated that the simulacrum was “formed without any equipment.”

That sentence has disappeared from the 2024 version. The new spell instead says:

“It uses the game statistics of the original creature at the time of casting, except it is a Construct, its Hit Point maximum is half as much, and it can’t cast this spell.”

So what happens to the original creature's equipment?

Suppose, for example, I cast Simulacrum on a character who is currently wearing magical plate armour, carrying magical weapons and benefiting from attuned magic items.

I can see several possible interpretations:

1. No equipment is copied.
The simulacrum appears naked/unequipped, effectively preserving the 2014 rule despite the sentence establishing that rule having been removed.

2. No physical equipment is copied, but equipment-derived game statistics are.
The simulacrum has the game statistics of the creature at the time of casting — potentially including its current AC, attack bonuses, spell save DC, etc. — but doesn't actually possess copies of the items producing those numbers.

3. Equipment is copied, including its magical properties.
The simulacrum appears equipped exactly like the original creature. This seems problematic to me because Simulacrum would consequently function as a magic-item duplication spell.

4. Equipment is reproduced, but only as nonmagical copies.
The simulacrum appears dressed and equipped like the creature it duplicates, but magical equipment is reproduced only in its mundane form. A suit of +2 plate becomes ordinary plate, for example, and a magical sword becomes an ordinary sword. No magical properties, charges or attunements are duplicated.

The fourth possibility strikes me as an interesting middle ground. It allows the simulacrum to actually resemble the creature it duplicates without allowing the spell to manufacture additional magic items. The copied equipment could presumably also be considered part of the simulacrum rather than permanent independent objects.

There is also a related question about attunement. If the original creature is attuned to magic items when Simulacrum is cast, is that attunement itself part of its “game statistics at the time of casting”? Or are all statistics and features derived from those items supposed to be removed from the copy?

This seems especially awkward when NPCs or monsters are involved. Their published game statistics can incorporate armour, weapons or other equipment directly into their AC, attacks and other numbers. If such a creature is duplicated, are we supposed to identify which parts of its stat block came from equipment and recalculate its statistics without them?

A concrete 2024 Monster Manual example may make the problem clearer:

Take the Knight stat block. It has AC 18 and explicitly lists Plate Armor in its Gear.

If a Knight is targeted by Simulacrum, the spell says that the duplicate uses the game statistics of the original creature at the time of casting.

So what AC does the simulacrum have?

If equipment is not copied at all, presumably the simulacrum does not have the Knight's plate armour and therefore should not have AC 18. But AC 18 is nevertheless part of the creature's listed game statistics, and the spell gives no instruction to remove equipment-derived statistics or recalculate them.

This seems to create an awkward choice:

- The simulacrum retains AC 18 despite not actually possessing plate armour;

- the DM has to reverse-engineer the stat block and recalculate its AC without the listed Gear;

- or some form of the Knight's equipment must be reproduced along with the duplicate.

The Knight seems like a particularly useful test case because there is no ambiguity about where its AC comes from: its Gear explicitly includes Plate Armor, and Plate Armor provides AC 18.

I'm mainly interested in the 2024 RAW/RAI, rather than how this worked under the 2014 spell. In particular:

Is there a rule elsewhere that establishes whether “game statistics” include equipment, attunements or equipment-derived statistics?

And perhaps more importantly, has WotC ever explained why the explicit 2014 sentence saying that the simulacrum is formed without equipment was removed?

I'm not arguing that the new version necessarily duplicates magic items — that seems like an unlikely intention. I'm wondering whether the deletion means that some form of equipment is now intended to be reproduced, perhaps as mundane copies, or whether the simulacrum is still intended to appear completely unequipped.

Even with the line omitted, nothing establishes the gear as being part of a creature's statistics, and nothing says the gear is copied. That's really all there is to consider. The only viable counter to this would be somewhere that establishes, as a general rule, that a creature's equipment is in fact part of its game statistics.