A weapon’s burden notes how many hands it takes to wield it. Weapons are either one-handed or two-handed. When you take a weapon, you’ll also fill up a number of hands equal to its burden on your character sheet. If your character can’t bear the burden of a weapon because their hands are already full, you can’t equip it.

You’re welcome to create a character with any number of hands or have your character wield a weapon using something other than their hands. However, when tracking burden, each character mechanically has two appendages capable of wielding weapons.