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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9616992" data-attributes="member: 7006">My biggest issue with 'hand economy' has always been that the penalties associated with having to "juggle" items for those classes with weapons / components etc. has never been commensurate with the bonuses you get when you finally accomplish what you wanted to do.For example... you have two paladins, one who has a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other and the second who has a two-handed weapon.  Then when it comes time for the paladin to cast a spell, the two-handed weapon wielder gets to just take a hand off the weapon and cast, while the other one has to drop their weapon on the ground or sheathe their weapon etc. in order to get a hand free to cast... and then has to use actions after the fact to get their weapon back in hand.  But does the +2 AC bonus that paladin gets from the shield (while simultaneously not getting the bonus to damage that a 2H weapon gives) offset the action economy penalties they have to go through in order to cast?  Usually not at all-- the balance between the two is +2 AC vs extra damage from 2H-- and thus the sword and board paladin is getting penalized in their spellcasting for no reason whatsoever.So any attempts at trying to introduce some genuine sort of 'hand economy' has to take these issues into account, for instance giving casting bonuses to the sword and board character that goes through the problems of swapping weapons for open hands etc. that the 2H weapon character doesn't go through.  Otherwise... you are basically just going to find every player just taking the easiest path and forsaking the more difficult ones.  You'll get everyone using 2H weapons and no one using shields because the economy just isn't worth it.It could be done... but it would involve a much more detailed design that really delves into the true mechanical balances between one-handed weapon alone, two one-handed weapons in both hands to dual-wield, one-handed weapon and shield, two-handed weapon, which spells have somatic components, which of those somatic components can be accomplished with a hand holding something, what are the needed material components, which material components have to have an open hand to be brought out and presented versus a material component that can be attached or emblazoned on an already-presented object (or indeed a weapon already in hand being the material component) so on and so forth.  Because at the end of the day... I think most players will just take the easiest route more often than not.  And whatever roadblocks get thrown up in defense of 'hand economy' will get worked around in the easiest way possible.  Because usually it isn't worth it.Hand economy is like spell components themselves, encumbrance, and tracking rations/ammo/light sources.  There are some players out there who find those "puzzles" to be compelling... but most of them don't want to bother, they just want to kill things and play the game.</blockquote>

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