Page 137 under actions.

John

Quick Hands is a +1 Trivial

Shield and Cast: The shield one should be +1 Trivial and you lose your shield bonus until the beginning of your next action. Losing your shield bonus should be enough of a penalty to balance out. Don't do any CTN things.

Two Weapon Casting: This should exist. There is no reason for it not to. TWF is not overpowered or powerful in general. I don't know what the speed cost should be though. Maybe +2. Don't do any CTN things.

Remember all these talents can be done with Quick Draw T3.

Hunh. You know I was told in the Jappa BI that it was speed 2 to drop a shield to the ground. Seemed reasonable to me that its somewhat more complicated to get rid of something with arm straps than to drop what's in your hand. So that's what I've done ... doesn't happen very often for Eisener in combat so its always been a corner case. (He's more paladin-y in his spell casting and usually uses it out of combat).

But you're right it should be speed zero to drop. Boo-yah!

Correct, a 3 talent investment which can also be used in a number of ways and requires high quickness.

IF shield casting makes it into a product it will require 1 talent, shield training, casting ability... Thus a CTN increse, and losing of the shield bonus for X ticks seems like a fair trade.

But quick hands doesn't require a CTN increase. Why the shield one?

Not quite, there is that period of vulnerability due to the limit of 1 trivial per action.

Because with the shield one, you are not dropping the shield. In Quick Hands, it represents you letting go of a two-handed weapon with one hand to cast, and you are just that good. The Shield is strapped to your arm, so you can't just 'drop' it to one hand like you could a two-handed weapon. You are casting with the thing strapped to your arm, increasing the difficulty of casting because of the restricted range of movement. This is also why I don't think casting with two weapons (aside from maybe a gauntlet) works because you can't move your hand to cast if you are holding a sword in it.

The casting with a weapon one makes sense if it's using your weapon movements *as* your somatic component. That's why I think it should require Battle Magi.

John

I am against expanding spell casting with "sword and board."

I like the talent "quick hands" because Nierite priests specifically needed that bone to function with their two handed swords. I am not aware of any other story trope that needs to be served by spell casting from behind a shield. Instead my read is that it is more about the arms race to raise the avoidance of spell casting PCs.

I would recommend casters who want better defenses invest in something like inertial shield, or ebon shield, or various wards ...