Does anyone NOT hate Kender?

[Arbane]

I played in a game once that was all human characters, except for one Kender. She actually wasn't BAD - she got played like a slightly hyperactive kid, and other character had worse psychological problems than the Kender's ADD.

That said, she was the only one we knew of. If I had to play on a world in which they were a major race, I'd probably feel obliged to play a NE Druid serving the God of Natural Selection and do my best to wipe them out, as there's no way an entire species of slow-breeding kamikaze dumbasses should have lasted this long.

[Tanuki Tales]

That said, she was the only one we knew of. If I had to play on a world in which they were a major race, I'd probably feel obliged to play a NE Druid serving the God of Natural Selection and do my best to wipe them out, as there's no way an entire species of slow-breeding kamikaze dumbasses should have lasted this long.

Apparently they have a Plot Shield that would put Sasuke Uchiha's to shame.

[QuidEst]

Are you kidding? I love the Kender!
…
Actually, I'm kidding. I haven't played with them, but races that actually require a certain personality bug me.

[Friv]

Apparently they have a Plot Shield that would put Sasuke Uchiha's to shame.

I seem to recall that their homelands were brutalized and a lot of them actually did die, leading to various haunted (emotionally) kender drifting across the landscape.


Anyway. I happen to like kender, but the key to playing one is to not be disruptive. Don't crack jokes during every important scene, and try to keep such jokes low-key when you do them. Be annoying to NPCs or PCs once in a while, but not usually. As a good rule of thumb, a single annoying moment per session towards fellow PCs is going to be plenty, trust me. Especially don't ever start being annoying during a scene where another player is really into it, because you will shatter their immersion and that can't be easily recovered.

People have really covered the theft stuff well, but the disruptions are, IMHO, the bigger issue most of the time. It's not stealing someone's tea, it's doing it constantly and making a huge scene out of it.

(I actually played a kender barbarian in 3.5, which was a ton of fun. He had decided that he was the team's resident lockpicker, which he accomplished by means of a greatsword. The door was open, wasn't it? What was the problem?)

[Kish]

Yeah, I like kender, too. They just don't go well with a player who cares about optimization at all, as other people have commented on.

(At least, not in odd numbers; I seem to remember an old 1ed rule that if there are two kender in the party, they'll tend to "borrow" almost exclusively from each other, annoying no one, because when there's another kender around it would take pretty compelling evidence for a kender to think a human, elf, dwarf, or even gnome would have anything comparably interesting in his/her pockets.)

[Melayl]

I love kender. Tas was my favorite character in the novels, too. Although, as Forum Explorer noted, they need to be played "appropriately".

[JadedDM]

I love Dragonlance. But you know what my problem with kender are? They are always played as pale clones of Tasslehoff. Every PC kender I encounter has a hoopak and a topknot, and they basically just quote Tas constantly. It gets boring after awhile.

The same problem with gully dwarves, too. They're all basically just Bupu.

I've always wanted to play a kender fighter based off of Finn from Adventure Time. More emphasis on the fearlessness and innate goodness than the kleptomania. "I am going to kick evil right in the BUTT!"

[The-Mage-King]

I love Kender, as well. They remind me of my family, in terms of attitude and telling random stories.


...Have I told you about the time that uncle Trapspringger and-

[Forum Explorer]

It's not always even the player. I remember one story told on here that had one player as a kender, and another playing an ooze master (or something like that). The kender player was playing it as fluff, but the DM ruled that the kender took an item (spellbook or something similar) of the ooze master's that it should have been impossible to take (it was specially protected so that only the ooze master could retrieve it).

Or the case that personally happened to me, where my character went into a room with a kender, and then I was told I had to check to see what was stolen from me, because I was in a room with a kender, so something was definitely just stolen from me. It's that sort of thing that gets to me.

MrRigger

That just sounds like really bad Dming to me. He's basically railroading another players character to behave a certain way.

[Kiero]

I don't mind kender at all.

On the other hand I hate hobbits/halflings.

[Kurald Galain]

That just sounds like really bad Dming to me. He's basically railroading another players character to behave a certain way.

Yes, well, people do that a lot. I know numerous players and DMs who assume that any character with the "rogue" class will automatically want to steal anything and everything that's not nailed down and on fire.

[DigoDragon]

The problem I see with Kender (particularly with the local group I RP with) is that Kenders seem to have been Flanderized into two-dimensional "little annoying kleptomaniacs".
I don't see Kender that way, as in trying to steal everything the party owns and annoying people to one's own death. I interpret Kenders in a way that can work with a party. My personal guidlines I followed for a good Kender were:

1. I'm curious about the world. It's why I adventure. I stick with the party because I know going off on my own is boring. No one to share the experience with! Adventures attack the largest group possible first so staying with the team maximizes the experience.

2. Although I'm immune to most forms of fear, it doesn't mean I'm stupid. A large red dragon swooping down on me is a perfectly reasonable excuse to join the rest of my team and duck for cover. Not because the dragon is scary, but because I'm a bite-sized chicken nugget.

3. I'm not a kelptomaniac, I simply lack a concept of "personal property". As an adventuring group we share all our equipment and I will use the items carried by my teammates when it is logically appropriate.
I won't steal the wizard's spellbook just because I can. Why? I have no reason to. However, when the wizard has been knocked down by a ferocious bulette, I will take the wizard's scroll of Benign Transposition and use it to switch the wizard with someone else who can better handle the land shark.


These guidlines work for me and is the reason that one time I played a Kender I was actually liked by the party.

[Ianuagonde]

The only time I played in a Dragonlance campaign, I played a kender. I don't usually play races with 'every member of this race always acts like this', but why not for once?

As others have mentioned, moderation is key. I've played with the other players before, so they had no objection: they knew I wasn't going to be extremely annoying. In-character, they were quickly reassured when they figured out my modus operandi.

-I will not steal borrow the fighter's greatsword. It will tear up my pouches if I try to put it in.
-I will not steal borrow the cleric's shield. It's heavy, unwieldy and it will slow me down so much I can't keep up with my friends. Also, it doesn't fit in my pouches.
-I will not steal borrow spell components. If I do, I can't watch the wizard perform shiny magic, or cast a fly spell on me. Also, sulphur and guano make my pouches smell like gully dwarf.
-I will not steal borrow everything. Everything does not fit it my pouches.

[Ashtagon]

Rather than focus on the "take stuff" aspect of their borrowing, I'd focus on their "just happen to have something handy" aspects. Some time ago, I made a house rule that pretty much amounted to:

You have a pool of "Schrodinger's equipment". This pool has a maximum weight of x lb and a maximum value of y gp. No item produced from the pool can be larger than six inches in its longest dimension, nor can any item be magical or alchemical in nature. At any time on your turn, you can convert some of the Schrodinger's pool into an item that may be useful in the current situation. When you do so, you deduct the appropriate gp/lb value from your pool. You can refill this pool any time you are in a large community. The gp value of items is for tracking purposes only; the actual items produced are second-hand, used, and of no real sale value.

[Jan Mattys]

Rather than focus on the "take stuff" aspect of their borrowing, I'd focus on their "just happen to have something handy" aspects. Some time ago, I made a house rule that pretty much amounted to:

You have a pool of "Schrodinger's equipment". This pool has a maximum weight of x lb and a maximum value of y gp. No item produced from the pool can be larger than six inches in its longest dimension, nor can any item be magical or alchemical in nature. At any time on your turn, you can convert some of the Schrodinger's pool into an item that may be useful in the current situation. When you do so, you deduct the appropriate gp/lb value from your pool. You can refill this pool any time you are in a large community. The gp value of items is for tracking purposes only; the actual items produced are second-hand, used, and of no real sale value.

I think this would be an awesome houserule, even better if kept secret from the other PCs.
They would soon learn to greatly value the kender for his ability of always having the right tool for the job, and they would constantly wonder how in hell can he be so prepared.

Since such a rule is hardly gamebreaking, and is mostly just for fluff and fun, there's no need to have the mechanics for it available to others.
This gives the kender player quite a bit of things to work on. Of course he can still boorow the fighter's whetstone, but that's just because his old and shiny dagger needs a revamp.

/me likes

[Tanuki Tales]

The problem I see with Kender (particularly with the local group I RP with) is that Kenders seem to have been Flanderized into two-dimensional "little annoying kleptomaniacs".
I don't see Kender that way, as in trying to steal everything the party owns and annoying people to one's own death. I interpret Kenders in a way that can work with a party. My personal guidlines I followed for a good Kender were:

To be fair, I don't see much of a stretch for Flanderization of Kender when their fluff in their racial entry practically screams at you to behave in that manner.

[Anarion]

That just sounds like really bad Dming to me. He's basically railroading another players character to behave a certain way.

This totally depends on how it was RPed. Having you roll a d20 to see which item you "forgot" on the way out could be funny. Having your main weapon gone while you hunt down a random Kender just feels bad.

My suggestion for RPing Kender is to ask your players and DM to be realistic with their reactions. If you ever steal something that annoys a player, the character should get annoyed. And if you steal important things, the guards should throw you in jail for the night. Sure, a Kender can escape jail, but after you've done it a couple times it gets boring. Why steal stuff that makes you have to do something boring?

[Kish]

Why steal stuff that makes you have to do something boring?

Because "playing a kender who thinks of himself/herself as ever stealing anything" is "playing a kender badly," and thus playing a kender whose behavior becomes in any way different because the kender genuinely, sincerely decides, "I am avoiding stealing from this person" is playing a kender badly?

[Giggling Ghast]

I like dead kender, especially when they're stacked up in piles. Does that count?

[Beowulf DW]

I always found Kender endearing, in the 'official' novels anyway. Even when things are at their darkest, they manage a brave face and plunge ahead.

Though, the books where they lost their immunity to fear were interesting too.

That was the War of Souls, right? I felt really bad for them. To suddenly have an emotion like that forced on you. How do you deal with that when you've never even understood the concept before?

[Vovix]

Rather than focus on the "take stuff" aspect of their borrowing, I'd focus on their "just happen to have something handy" aspects. Some time ago, I made a house rule that pretty much amounted to:

You have a pool of "Schrodinger's equipment". This pool has a maximum weight of x lb and a maximum value of y gp. No item produced from the pool can be larger than six inches in its longest dimension, nor can any item be magical or alchemical in nature. At any time on your turn, you can convert some of the Schrodinger's pool into an item that may be useful in the current situation. When you do so, you deduct the appropriate gp/lb value from your pool. You can refill this pool any time you are in a large community. The gp value of items is for tracking purposes only; the actual items produced are second-hand, used, and of no real sale value.

That is actually a feat in Pathfinder: Well Prepared. It allows halflings to do just that.

[Icewraith]

One of our buddies, who hadn't actually read any of the dragonlance novels at the time, played a kender based off the description. One of the other group members had read a few of the novels, and spent many of the sessions laughing hysterically in the corner at how well the character was being played without having read most of the books.

I ended up writing a wall 'o text regarding this unique character.

Spoiler

Show

Granted, we had the only Kender in the known history of the universe with JUST ENOUGH patience and talent (and a love of fire) to study wizardry. This meant that if he was bored there was a fairly even chance that he'd go looking for trouble in "classic" Kender mode OR he'd sit down on the ground and use illusions, produce flame, light etc. and work on his spellcasting. The way his attitude towards magic and the way he got his abilities wasn't quite Sorcerous enough to be a Sorcerer, the only accomodation we really had to make I believe was that his spellbook magically followed him around so he wouldn't forget it.

The idea was that generally speaking it's almost impossible to stop Kender from getting into whatever objects are immediately at hand, if there's a Wizard academy in the area and the Kender (1) stays in the area and (2) sees the apprentice Wizards conjuring fire as a form of practice and (3) considers Fire to be the ultimate shiny, he might figure out how to replicate what the Wizards were doing since Wizardry is by definition reproducible by anyone with enough practice. Once this conceptual barrier is crossed, the Kender has access to an ever-shinier set of shinies he knows that he can figure out how to create, at this point "forgetting" how to Wizard would be like "forgetting" how to pick pockets- Kender forget all sorts of things but they don't forget important and personally interesting knowledge (three billion stories about Uncle Trapspringer, for instance), nor do they forget "how" to pick pockets. The end result is a sort of combined "rule of funny" and "rule of kender" applied to magic, and somewhere in the multiverse it had to happen at least once.

The only real objection to a Kender Wizard is whether or not they have the ability to get over the first hurdle.

The DM was completely against this whole idea originally, but I guess someone convinced him to give it a trial session and that went off so well RP wise he couldn't bring himself to disallow it.

He didn't usually forget about fires he started and wander off to do something else because fire was the ultimate shiny for him, so we avoided most of the destruction you'd expect from a fire-focused character who was also a Kender. There were still hilarious shenanigans- rp and in combat, only now they could be magical too, which worked well with a caster-heavy campaign.

The only real downside to the character was the player found him so exhausting to play, doing it "right" required exorbitant amounts of coffee. Eventually he had to retire the character, but not before he developed a habit of flying towards interesting-looking places while on fire. He turned up in a much later campaign as a joke and then accidentally gained minor divinity when he flew over a large island chain during an auspicious ceremony and its inhabitants started worshiping the fire in the sky as a deity in its own right.

The character actually embodied the principles of fire perfectly- impetuous, unpredictable, volatile, potentially destructive, yet also a source of light and means of prolonging life, representing creativity, fearlessness, relentless cheerfulness, energy, and acquiring useful and useless knowledge of everything. And by everything, I mean EVERYTHING, including having been chucked out of or escaping from most of the upper and lower planes in the process of being curious about, for example "how Hellfire works" or

"what's actually IN the Sacred Book of Holy Fire? Is it different from regular fire? Can I make my fire holy fire? How holy is this fire? Oh hey, a holy tree of fire! Look, I was just borrowing the Sacred Book of Holy Fire, it's not the end of the world. It was just sitting there surrounded by angels who weren't even LOOKING at the fire. Also there were like fourteen of those neato exploding glyphs, but I disabled those so you don't have to worry about them hurting anyone. Can you talk to squirrels like my druid buddy? So being the guardian of the Sacred Book of Holy Fire must be pretty cool, can YOU tell me what's inside it? Well if you never looked how do you know it's the right book? Tell you what let me have it and I'll make a copy of it in case you ever lose the original, and I'll make a copy of that in case I lose the copy of the original, and then a couple copies so you can have them on hand for people to read while you guard the original book, and..."

*Insert the sound of a Kender being punted through the Celestial gates by an angry Solar*

If the character ever amasses enough power to grant spells, I imagine a CG base alignment granting Fire, Chaos, Travel, Luck, and Magic would be appropriate.

Note to self- that's actually a really sweet domain setup.

[Ashtagon]

That is actually a feat in Pathfinder: Well Prepared. It allows halflings to do just that.

Ehh. Paizo would have had to make that feat before 2007 to have been first.

[a_humble_lich]

I remember playing a game a long long time ago where at least one of the characters were kender (I think there were two). It was a short light game and the kender worked quite well as I remember (in particular I remember the kender trying to steel the minotaur's loincloth.)

While I think many people have given good advice on how a kender can be well played, kender (and similar characters) are like evil PCs--don't do things to make the other players mad. A well played kender should make the other party members annoyed with you, but be sure that you don't get the other people at your gaming table annoyed with you. And what counts as annoying can vary greatly on the players and the game style.

[Cerlis]

*replies in quote*

The problem with kender is that they behave like player characters.

• They loot random shiny stuff which doesn't belong to them (not that they understand "ownership" except as it relates to them anyway).
  
  
• They ignore whatever dramatic moment is unfolding around them to poke random things.No, they are facinated by dramatic moments. Unless you are talking about something boring like a lore dump or ceremony
  
  
• They expect everyone to be nice to them, always, no matter how much they misbehave. They dont misbehave. Most races fail to empathize with a species that has such a short attention span. you make it sound like they deliberately get into trouble.
  
  
• They manage to succeed at tasks which should be well beyond them, but events just happen to create a scenario where they win through all the same. Tasselhoff maybe. but thats why he is a legend. Only other decent Kender i know of is the necromancer, and his greatest accomplishment was persuading a God, He didnt accomplish much. And from what i hear in the lore about most barbarian races killing kender on sight, and the horrible travesty that killed thousands of kender, i'd hardly say this statement is accurate at all

Seriously, can you imagine if there was an actual race which behaved the way player characters do? And if they were small and easily filled with holes by sharp objects, yet inexplicably not filled with holes by sharp objects?

No wonder everyone hates those guys.

From what i saw from threads like that, people hate people who Misplay Kender, not Kender.

I love every aspect of em

[Ashtagon]

Back on topic...

Character creation ideas from the movies! The character of Tasslehoff Burrfoot was a combination of Harpo Marx and Margaret O'Brien, child actress, from the movie musical Meet Me in Saint Louis. If you watch her in that movie, notice her eyes and the expression on her face as she tells the most outrageous lies. I always saw that expression on Tas's face.

So that's how to role-play a (particular) kender. Straight from the author.

[Tyndmyr]

This totally depends on how it was RPed. Having you roll a d20 to see which item you "forgot" on the way out could be funny. Having your main weapon gone while you hunt down a random Kender just feels bad.

My suggestion for RPing Kender is to ask your players and DM to be realistic with their reactions. If you ever steal something that annoys a player, the character should get annoyed. And if you steal important things, the guards should throw you in jail for the night. Sure, a Kender can escape jail, but after you've done it a couple times it gets boring. Why steal stuff that makes you have to do something boring?

Because you don't understand the concept of "stealing"?

[Roderick_BR]

My friends and I actually like Kenders. We only hate them in-character

[Ravens_cry]

Even in the fiction, which I generally like more than as a setting for role playing, Kender could get tiresome.
I don't care if your species has kleptomania in the genes, you steal from party, you get strung up like like a ham.

[Yukitsu]

Kender make me want to make some in game camps and Godwin's law myself.