I didn't realise this until towards the end of Act 2, having brought with me the baggage of assumption from playing other, similar games, such as Kingmaker, WotR and PoE.
I don't have to tell you that this massively helps squishies get access to off-hand item bonuses, while also being particularly useful to Druids, who don't get access to very many decent blunt 1-handed weapons to use Shillelagh on, outside of staves.
This is probably not news to a lot of posters here, but the game doesn't explicitly tell you this either, so I'm hoping this helps others with the same incorrect assumptions as me.
