An Eldritch Knight with sword and shield is not going to free drop the sword in order to cast a spell and then use his one interaction to draw another sword from a "real world" perspective, that's just using game mechanics to enable the result of still being armed for opportunity attacks, etc. Instead, I would say the EK would briefly put the sword in the shield hand, cast the spell, and swap the sword back to the open hand. This might minimize the value of Warcaster (but it still is useful for Shield spell, etc.), but I prefer actions to reflect reality more, and dropping swords constantly does not reflect that.
Similarly, the Thief gets to pick locks as a bonus action at 3rd level. Let's say the Thief is armed with two daggers. An anal GM might require the Thief to either free drop or use an interaction to stow the dagger (or both!), then require an additional interaction to retrieve the thieves tools, then use the bonus action to pick the lock, then use another interaction to put the tools away, then use another interaction to retrieve the dropped or stowed dagger, which is impossible in a round, and makes the ability to pick locks as a bonus action basically worthless. So instead, I would say the Thief could stow a dagger under his arm as a free action instead of dropping it as a free action, then later retrieve it as his one interaction, and as part of the action to pick locks, would be able to retrieve and stow the lock picks, thus allowing Thief to pick locks as a bonus action and still have his Standard Action available for use.
I base the foregoing Thief interaction off of the initial concept of reflecting game actions reasonably and comparing to a Wizard's typical turn, as follows. A Wizard can cast a bonus action spell and a standard action spell in a round, but I am not going to micromanage the Wizard such that he may have to use interactions to (a) open his spell pouch for material components, (b) find and retrieve the applicable components, and (c) close his spell pouch. I consider all that subsumed in the action to cast the particular spell. So similarly, for a Thief, I consider the retrieval and stowage of the thieves' tools to pick a lock as part of the action taken to pick a lock.
Otherwise all this stuff gets overly micromanaged and reasonable actions can't be taken (i.e., actually taking just the bonus action to pick a lock) and people are encouraged to take unreasonable actions (like dropping swords all the time).
However, I do still monitor some level of interactions.
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