One of my players is thinking about going artillerist but they don't have enough hands to hold a shield, an arcane firearm, and a sword. In going down the rabbit hole of animated shields and dropping items I noticed they could craft a wand sheath that would allow them to use a wand hands-free. However they are a forest gnome and wand sheaths require attunement by warforged.
Would it be unbalanced to allow them to use one they made themselves? I am not concerned with the flavour.
Best Answer
No, it would not be unbalanced
In my opinion, it would not be unbalanced for several reasons:
Firstly, most wands require an action to use. This means that they are either going to make an attack with their weapon or with their wand, they can’t do both in the same turn. This quickly curbs any possible issues about them getting multiple attacks per turn, as it isn’t possible according to the Action Economy.
Secondly, they would be able to achieve a similar thing anyway within the rules. Drawing or stowing a weapon takes an object interaction. It is well within the rules for this character to make an attack with their weapon, use their object interaction to put it away and then, next turn, use their object interaction to draw their wand and their action to use it. All the wand sheath would do is remove the need to expend an object interaction.
So, for these reasons, I feel it would not be unbalanced to allow for the non-warforged character to use a wand sheath.
If you felt that it might cause an imbalance, you could say something along the lines of “because your wand sheath is homemade, you need a free hand in order to use it. However, sheathing or unsheathing a wand into the wand sheath does not cost an object interaction”. What this would mean is the player would have to use their object interaction to put their weapon away before they can use the wand. If you wanted to justify the reasoning behind that, look at this image of a retractable dagger which requires a free hand to use:
Imagine if that blade was a wand and spun the other way so it was pointing upwards relative to the hand. You could claim this is the reason the homemade wand sheath requires your free hand to use it where as the regular wand sheath design (the one used by the warforged) is significantly different.