What's the benefit of using two-handed/dual weapons instead of a shield?

Question

I was reading through the book, and I noticed that there is no weapon quality for two-handed weapons in Legend. Reading through the Weapon Overview section, I found the following:

Weapon Overview - page 163

You can only wield one weapon at a time, and the GM should limit characters to carrying a maximum number of weapons equal to their KOM on their person. You may, however, decide that one weapon represents a pair of weapons in the game world, or even twenty weapons.

From the above, I conclude that dual wielding is treated like wielding a two-handed weapon, at least that's what my intuition says. But I have some questions:

• What is the benefit for using two-handed/dual weapons?
• If there is none, then why would you ever give up that +1 Deflection Bonus to AC from a shield?

Answer 1

That section has been removed from the book as of the “1.0” release.

Mundane shields as a separate item were removed from Legend when the weapon revision went out. Instead of having a separate item, a character can have a shield in one of several ways:

1. Describe it as a part of your armor. There is no mechanical extra bonus for it, but Legend encourages refluffing the mechanical effects you already have to match your character. One guy with Heavy Armor might actually be wearing an enormous full suit of plate, but another might be somewhat more lightly equipped, but carrying a shield. Or whatever.

2. Take a [Guardian] weapon, and call the AC bonus you get from that a shield.

3. Take the Battleforged feat; this grants a natural weapon that you can fluff as a second weapon or a shield. For instance, you could give it the [Guardian] and [Parrying] properties. Note that natural weapons are always treated as being wielded, even if you attack with your regular weapon, so you continue to benefit from passive properties. Battleforged also grants a small (Armor) AC bonus.

4. Take a magical shield.