It could be a good idea to put it in as a quest to help a wizard regrow their hands. Even regenerate spell requires the hands to be there, if he lost his hands to a monster, well now you've got an interesting quest to actually regrow the wizards hands.
Spells with Somatic components require use of one free hand. If that hand has been mangled badly - to the point that the character could not wield a weapon in it - then that's a good guage to judge that it can't be used for somatic components. If you're down to one finger and a thumb then it probably isn't usable.
It was in the first book of War of te Spider Queen and Pharaun where said to have unusually log toes, and he spent hours trying to move them into a simple somatic gesture to create a simple spell. I would allow this in game. Basically what the fluff say is that there are some movements that when combines with a connection to th Weave will play it's strads and prrovide the right resonance to get a spesific result, if you have desterous enough toes to do the same motions as you would wit your fingers there is no reason why it should not work.
Yes, the RAW on spell casting says somatic requires the "free use of at least one hand". But mangled hands aren't RAW so I'd actually say introducing lingering injuries without creating accomodations within spellcasting is short sighted (especially with the trend in TTRPG inclusive practices to better represent and accommodate these sort of situations). Lingering injuries are an option presented in the DMG, and the DMG doesn't really specify or provide any rules about being magically disabled on account of lingering injuries. I see this as a conflict between RAW failing to recognize the full and more accurate meanings of the words they employ in their so-called "natural language" expression and challenges presented in the DM's workshop which allows for solutions to said challenges by recognizing what words actually means.
No, mangled hands are not RAW. But the OP specifically refers to cutting off a spellcaster's hands, so it's sensible to assume that in whatever game they are playing there is the possibility of losing a hand, or fingers.
If you have a Lingering Injury that means you cannot use your hand, then that does then impact RAW rulings on somatic components, in exactly the same way that you need two hands to wield a greataxe or shoot a longbow.
The rules are explicit and clear that you need a free hand to perform the somatic components of a spell. The guidance in the DMG says "Spellcasting gestures might include a forceful gesticulation or an intricate set of gestures." So if the spellcaster has no free hands, or no hands, or cannot move their hands because they are tied, or they are all bound up in bandages, or they lack key components like bones, or fingers, then they cannot do the somatic components of the spell. Reasonable interpretation allows for no other conclusion.
If you allow a spellcaster to cast Somatic component spells without using hands, then you should apply the same logic to shooting a longbow and allow the bowman to use his elbows or some such, which is obviously daft.
It sounds like your DMing style leans towards responding to complications via a sort reactionary simplicity by way of easy restrictive mechanical effects you think are RAW; whereas I prefer to address such challenges with a higher degree of sympathy to creative outcomes and heroic potential. I don't know what your players would do with your rulings, but I know mine would find the opportunities I offer entertaining. But rather than just agreeing to disagree, I see in your defense of your practice, where I do believe you sincerely believe you're simply following RAW, I just find two flaws stemming from lack of full consideration and/or leaning into false equivalencies. So I want to push them a bit.
It's not as bad as the designers failure to really understand and more explicitly appreciate the definition of somatic, but your citation of the DMG and I think PHB's elaboration on "somatic" with its "natural language" employment of the word "gesture" once again identifies a failing on the designers' part to consider the meaning of the word they proclaim to use as "natural language." While the primary definition in most dictionaries I have access to does say that gesture applies to "especially the hand or head [<nods>, ahem, <blinks>]" that "especially" is written in the broader context of a definition that describes a gesture simply as "a movement of a part of the body as a means of expression." So we're again back to somatic component read through natural language meaning there needs to be some sort of physical expression in the casting. We could assume, as you're inclined, to restrict the description to the sorta ableist interpretation that hand jiving is essential to spellcasting among lifeforms whose physical "norm" is "handed." I don't disagree hands are handy for the handed. Or we can recognize that it's possible that the natural language mode of the RAW was not shortsightedly written, but written in such a way to encourage or at least allow exploration of physical possibilities supported by the languages. In other words, I do think the designers lean more to enabling rules than old school cross outs of features. The restrictive style is great for DMs who think challenging players entails removing their capacities, boxing them in for some sort of raw experience the DM is proclaiming RAW. Conversely my mode answers the question "maimed" with "yes, and" which I think is more supported by the rules when taken in their holistic entirety (the rules are there to manage imagination, as is the case with all supervision there are good and bad managements styles and the books can't enforce what styles are taken). My mode is also adapted from modes of art teachings where the artist gains insight into their art via removing or stripping away tools to work in a truly raw mode that often engenders creative wellsprings not reached before. I'll touch on that postscript.
As for your "one handed long bows are daft" claim. Well, uh, yeah, existence of one armed archers in real life aside, I think using martial skills to justify handling of spellcasting is often a false equivalency. If you take away a hand from a long bowman, they're not out of the fight entirely. They can adapt. They can throw daggers, spears, javelins, heck accounting for the personal experience I telegraphed I'd even allow them to use hand crossbows, slings, and maybe full bows with some disadvantage and loading penalties.* They may have built their character around shooting a long bow, but if you take away their ability to operate weapons with two hands, they can still stay in the fight. In no way did I say adapting to one handed or no handedness for a spellcaster would be quick. Adaptation is a word that implies process and work. So I would put some challenges to the spellcasters ability by limiting some of their spell uses, probably doing those arcana checks and maybe even disallowing entirely their apex spells until a permanent solution is developed, maybe the character has to "do the work" to earn the equivalent of 1/3 of the War Caster feat outside of ASI progression, etc. Maybe lean into the phantom limb idea.* But, just like I'm not going to say "nope, no ranged attacks for you" to the longbow martial, I'm not going to say, "nope, no more magic with a /s/" to the spellcaster. Life finds a way.
*I guess a lot of my perspective on this is because I was once temporarily and very mildly maimed. I used to work for an employer whom people who watch a lot of TV and movies probably think has a "star trek" or "jetsons" budget, whereas in reality it was more like the Flintstones (we'll make it play or we can stop it, we may just have to put a bird beak down on the phonograph or put our feet through the vehicle floor). Anyway, because of Flintstones budgeted safety equipment, my hand wrap got caught in someone's padding during a fight drill and after "redding out" from some serious pain and not remembering much else but for some reason wailing on my sparring partner with elbow strikes, when the scenario was called out of role to the tune of a Georgia drawled, "what happened to your hand, son?" I found my left thumb was sort of nonset in a broken corkscrew shape sticking perpendicularly out of the center of my palm (the tendons that kept the bones together in their functional arrangement had been pulled free from their job disrupting the thumb's integrity). It was actually an easy "fix", doctors rolled the whole thing back into place but I couldn't use my hand for a few months. Anyway, long story short, it wasn't pretty but during that no handed period I could still qualify (unofficially, I was technically on light disability) on a timed pistol course of fire one handed including one handed reloads under said time ... and trust me I never thought of myself as a tactical master, very much the opposite in fact. When it was time to rehab my hand I did that out of a clinic that specialized more in physical performing artists than tactical bros but I learned a thing of two from movement artists with amputations about how their gestural vocabulary in many ways speaks to the part that were no longer or never there. Parallelled those anecdotes with my much simpler work in getting my hand to work properly again ... you think about what you want your hand to do ... then you dig deeper and think hard on what everything else your body did in sympathy to that act of the hand, and then activate those sympathies in your body, and in time your hand works again (I preferred that artsy thinking stuff over the prospects of surgery anyway).
So given that experience, which I bring to my table, in a game where there are forces in the metaphysics to be manipulated like the weave and ki, not even mentioning divinity, having an arcanist develop a work around to losing the use of one or both hands is an opportunity to get creative. And it's fun. And at least at my table, players get a lot more enjoyment out of "life and magic find a way" approach that encourages fantastic/heroic imagination than saying "sorry, that magic cannot be wielded ... um, you can headbutt for unarmed strike damage."
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
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It could be a good idea to put it in as a quest to help a wizard regrow their hands. Even regenerate spell requires the hands to be there, if he lost his hands to a monster, well now you've got an interesting quest to actually regrow the wizards hands.
It sounds like your DMing style leans towards responding to complications via a sort reactionary simplicity by way of easy restrictive mechanical effects you think are RAW; whereas I prefer to address such challenges with a higher degree of sympathy to creative outcomes and heroic potential. I don't know what your players would do with your rulings, but I know mine would find the opportunities I offer entertaining. But rather than just agreeing to disagree, I see in your defense of your practice, where I do believe you sincerely believe you're simply following RAW, I just find two flaws stemming from lack of full consideration and/or leaning into false equivalencies. So I want to push them a bit.
It's not as bad as the designers failure to really understand and more explicitly appreciate the definition of somatic, but your citation of the DMG and I think PHB's elaboration on "somatic" with its "natural language" employment of the word "gesture" once again identifies a failing on the designers' part to consider the meaning of the word they proclaim to use as "natural language." While the primary definition in most dictionaries I have access to does say that gesture applies to "especially the hand or head [<nods>, ahem, <blinks>]" that "especially" is written in the broader context of a definition that describes a gesture simply as "a movement of a part of the body as a means of expression." So we're again back to somatic component read through natural language meaning there needs to be some sort of physical expression in the casting. We could assume, as you're inclined, to restrict the description to the sorta ableist interpretation that hand jiving is essential to spellcasting among lifeforms whose physical "norm" is "handed." I don't disagree hands are handy for the handed. Or we can recognize that it's possible that the natural language mode of the RAW was not shortsightedly written, but written in such a way to encourage or at least allow exploration of physical possibilities supported by the languages. In other words, I do think the designers lean more to enabling rules than old school cross outs of features. The restrictive style is great for DMs who think challenging players entails removing their capacities, boxing them in for some sort of raw experience the DM is proclaiming RAW. Conversely my mode answers the question "maimed" with "yes, and" which I think is more supported by the rules when taken in their holistic entirety (the rules are there to manage imagination, as is the case with all supervision there are good and bad managements styles and the books can't enforce what styles are taken). My mode is also adapted from modes of art teachings where the artist gains insight into their art via removing or stripping away tools to work in a truly raw mode that often engenders creative wellsprings not reached before. I'll touch on that postscript.
As for your "one handed long bows are daft" claim. Well, uh, yeah, existence of one armed archers in real life aside, I think using martial skills to justify handling of spellcasting is often a false equivalency. If you take away a hand from a long bowman, they're not out of the fight entirely. They can adapt. They can throw daggers, spears, javelins, heck accounting for the personal experience I telegraphed I'd even allow them to use hand crossbows, slings, and maybe full bows with some disadvantage and loading penalties.* They may have built their character around shooting a long bow, but if you take away their ability to operate weapons with two hands, they can still stay in the fight. In no way did I say adapting to one handed or no handedness for a spellcaster would be quick. Adaptation is a word that implies process and work. So I would put some challenges to the spellcasters ability by limiting some of their spell uses, probably doing those arcana checks and maybe even disallowing entirely their apex spells until a permanent solution is developed, maybe the character has to "do the work" to earn the equivalent of 1/3 of the War Caster feat outside of ASI progression, etc. Maybe lean into the phantom limb idea.* But, just like I'm not going to say "nope, no ranged attacks for you" to the longbow martial, I'm not going to say, "nope, no more magic with a /s/" to the spellcaster. Life finds a way.
*I guess a lot of my perspective on this is because I was once temporarily and very mildly maimed. I used to work for an employer whom people who watch a lot of TV and movies probably think has a "star trek" or "jetsons" budget, whereas in reality it was more like the Flintstones (we'll make it play or we can stop it, we may just have to put a bird beak down on the phonograph or put our feet through the vehicle floor). Anyway, because of Flintstones budgeted safety equipment, my hand wrap got caught in someone's padding during a fight drill and after "redding out" from some serious pain and not remembering much else but for some reason wailing on my sparring partner with elbow strikes, when the scenario was called out of role to the tune of a Georgia drawled, "what happened to your hand, son?" I found my left thumb was sort of nonset in a broken corkscrew shape sticking perpendicularly out of the center of my palm (the tendons that kept the bones together in their functional arrangement had been pulled free from their job disrupting the thumb's integrity). It was actually an easy "fix", doctors rolled the whole thing back into place but I couldn't use my hand for a few months. Anyway, long story short, it wasn't pretty but during that no handed period I could still qualify (unofficially, I was technically on light disability) on a timed pistol course of fire one handed including one handed reloads under said time ... and trust me I never thought of myself as a tactical master, very much the opposite in fact. When it was time to rehab my hand I did that out of a clinic that specialized more in physical performing artists than tactical bros but I learned a thing of two from movement artists with amputations about how their gestural vocabulary in many ways speaks to the part that were no longer or never there. Parallelled those anecdotes with my much simpler work in getting my hand to work properly again ... you think about what you want your hand to do ... then you dig deeper and think hard on what everything else your body did in sympathy to that act of the hand, and then activate those sympathies in your body, and in time your hand works again (I preferred that artsy thinking stuff over the prospects of surgery anyway).
So given that experience, which I bring to my table, in a game where there are forces in the metaphysics to be manipulated like the weave and ki, not even mentioning divinity, having an arcanist develop a work around to losing the use of one or both hands is an opportunity to get creative. And it's fun. And at least at my table, players get a lot more enjoyment out of "life and magic find a way" approach that encourages fantastic/heroic imagination than saying "sorry, that magic cannot be wielded ... um, you can headbutt for unarmed strike damage."
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.