Do mages really need to use their hands in order to cast spells?

I immediately thought of that thug on seeing the title of this thread. Let's keep in mind that he is just a thug, and a non-mage at that. His supposed knowledge of anything related to magic should not be given any merit. Now, if he described the best way to shank someone in a back alley, then I might listen. In addition, my read of the scene and the dialogue itself is that he was portrayed as an ignorant lowlife, committing violence based on brute animal fear of mages and some fact he thinks he knows about them.

As for the question at hand, depending on your own dialogue option, Cassandra can also mention that fact, so I think it's petty clear that that is part of the lore and not simply PC braggadocio. I can't cite a lore source for this info, but it's my impression that staves are simply used as a focus, to increase the power output of any given spell, but a mage does not need one to cast. In addition, there is also the benefit of using it as a melee weapon, as we've seen in DA2 and DAI.


For the meta view, I personally think that the staff flourishes are combat filler in DA2 and DAI to provide the player with something to do while waiting for cooldowns and/or mana regeneration and that, in a "real" scenario (read: a non-game fantasy story environment), a mage wouldn't bother unless they personally had an affinity for using their staff in that way. Mages are incredibly overpowered, from both a lore and game combat perspective, so one of the ways that developers use to curb this is to have excessive spell cooldowns and mana cost so the player can't continuously pump out spell after spell and wreck everything; it was quite possible to do this in DAO with just the standard leveling and gear available in the game.

If we're going to consider the use of hands from a story perspective, I can see a couple of scenarios that would leave many lay-people with the impression that hands are required.

The first is that, when a young mage is first starting to learn the technicalities and intricacies of spellwork, it might be helpful to use their hands as a guide for spell direction, similar to using a gun: shoot where you point. There are probably many many magic users who aren't very skilled who never move beyond using their hands as a guided crutch. It's important to remember that, while we've met many powerful and skilled mages on our Thedosian adventures, as we have with melee fighters, those characters should be regarded as an exception, not the rule.

The second is simply personality and preference. Consider this exchange between Solas And Dorian:

Even if he doesn't need to cast with his hands, I can see Dorian using them anyway in the same manner in which people "talk with their hands"; it's just part of his personality to do so. I'm sure he could be more discrete if the situation called for it, such as casting a sleeping spell on a distant target if the group is sneaking about.