Components wizards and focuses.

Someone told me that a focus is only effective if you use a material component; otherwise, you need a free hand. So if you’re using a staff and tome as your focus, you would have to drop one of them for V,S spells. Umm, well, I don’t care. I’m not going to be checking every spell. So if someone wants me to follow that rule, they’re going to have to babysit every spell I cast, because I’m not doing it. LOL! Some rules are just silly.

Edit: Oh yeah, if you happen to end your turn with a staff and tome in hand, then by this strict RAW application of the rules, you won’t be able to use Shield as a reaction.

Which I find completely offensive from a rules standpoint and discriminatory to wizards. The most iconic things for a wizard to have are a staff and tome, and having them both in hand blocking the most iconic defensive magic is absurd.

While it's technically correct that you need a hand free to cast a spell with V/S components and no M component, and you can't use a hand that's holding a spellcasting focus as that free hand, I've never seen any DM actually enforce this in practice, and I've certainly never enforced it myself. It is a ridiculous rule that should not exist.

However, it is not any worse for Wizards than it is for anyone else. I'm not sure why you're talking about using a "staff and tome" as a focus. A Wizard can use either a staff or their spellbook as a focus, but they don't need to use both at the same time, nor do they gain any benefit from trying to do so.

There aren't any spellcasting focuses in 5e or 5.5e D&D that actually require the use of both hands.

Your not looking hard enough there is a staff of fire lets say and a Arcane Grimoire, of course a wizard would prefer to use both.

This rule is actually even more discriminatory against classes with shield proficiency. A glaring example of this is the Circle of Stars Druid who can cast Guidance and Guiding Bolt only "while holding" their star map. Both spells have no material component, so RAW they can't cast their class spells while holding a shield in the other hand because they need a free hand to cast the spell. It's ridiculous, and I have never seen anyone enforce it (at my own table, one of my house rules is that you can use a focus to cast spells even if they have no material component).`

To be honest in all my time playing I have never seen any table enforce this rule. I mean seriously Wizards of the Coast needs to fully rationalize rules people just wont enforce and just change it already. You can take War Caster but that is a caster feat tax i refuse to pay.

Quote from Deathmolar >>

To be honest in all my time playing I have never seen any table enforce this rule. I mean seriously Wizards of the Coast needs to fully rationalize rules people just wont enforce and just change it already. You can take War Caster but that is a caster feat tax i refuse to pay.

The thing about this particular rule interaction — the thing where a hand holding a focus can cast S/M spells but not S spells — is that it's not at all clear whether it was actually intentional or not. It's not explicitly stated anywhere in the actual rules; it's just a logical consequence of two things coming together. And while it's been called out in official or semi-official stuff like Sage Advice and Jeremy Crawford's personal messages, Wizards also has a long history of refusing to comment on whether certain interactions were intentional or not even when they really obviously aren't (see the 5e Invisible condition, for instance).

Basically, it may be that they didn't actually mean for it to be this stupid, but they have a tendency to double down on stuff like that.

Exactly the type of thing that should be quietly ignored and players that bring it up you don't want to play with.