Modern equipment is truly great and it certainly is a fatigue reducer, but there was a day (before flight and duty limits) we would fly 180 hours a month in aircraft (212, 61, 76A-) that didn't have autopilots. In the Beaufort Sea during the summer (fog time) that sometimes meant 20 ADF/RADALT approaches a day.
Point is, you should be able to hand fly the aircraft all day long doing on limits takeoffs and approaches and the lads in the back shouldn't know the difference.
As someone mentioned earlier 500 fpm climbs and descents and no more than (smooth) rate one turns. In fact, when we got the first Bell 212s with Sperry autopilots when flying an ILS we would turn the VOR/LOC off and use BRG and the manual turn knob to intercept the LOC because the auto capture was too abrupt.
I reckon it doesn't hurt to still be able to actually fly the damn things
