I always wear just enough to be barely comfortable, with no extra. With a #20 gas fired crucible furnace, I usually used a plastic face shield like in the 1st photo but, a few times, it got hot enough to wrinkle. I always used heavy furnace gloves, mittens usually - they last longer than the finger type. Maybe 5 or 10% of the time, when the furnace and crucible were really hot and the crucible was pretty full, I used a hot sweaty aluminized jacket. It was needed, but I hated every minute when I had it on.
I only used charging tongs to load, unload, and to pour the crucibles. I melted daily for several years with this furnace and 3 or 4 times I grabbed the side of the crucible and, when I started to lift it, I tore a big chunk out of the top side of the crucible. This happened a couple of times with brand new crucibles - the hot crucibles felt spongy when I gripped them with the tongs. Could have been a storage problem. The other 2 times, the crucibles were too thin, but I tried to squeeze just 1 more melt out of them.
The worst furnace I've ever owned was an electric muffle furnace I bought for fire assaying. What I hated about it was that the door opened to the side. When you opened it, you got the full brunt of the inside of the yellow hot door plus the blast from the open furnace itself. It was impossible to open the door without singing some hair. I finally learned to open the door a crack, just wide enough to sneak the tongs in. If I every buy another assay furnace, it will be one with a counterweight, where the door moves up and down and you never see the inside of the door. I've had several of that type made by Cress and they are great. I also had a Johnson 142. They are great but you need to buy a muffle to go with it. I'm thinking the 2 huge DFC gas fired furnaces I started with had up and down doors were the best I've ever used
I've always felt that wearing too much safety equipment is just as dangerous as not wearing enough. When you're over encumbered with safety equipment, you're more likely to screw up, in my experience. Same when dealing with chemicals. The only time I remember dropping a beaker was when I was wearing wet gloves. I have never worn a respirator. I did wear a SCBA once when an earthquake in LA knocked about 1000 bottles of chemicals off the shelves of a lab and into the aisles. Everything broken, all mixed together, and some areas were smoking a little . The Scott Airpak was needed.