The Last Kender.

[Tainted_Scholar]

Just a question, if you came across the last living Kender in a campaign, what would you do? The Kender in question is trying to do some sort of ritual that will bring back over a million Kender, and she tells you this upon meeting you.

[Zanos]

Wouldn't have the opportunity to tell me she had any plans to do so because I would already be dashing her head into the nearest available rock and thinking of the most permanent way to destroy the body and soul when I was done.

[Fouredged Sword]

I would fail to understand the situation because my Gullydwarf paladin cannot count past 2. His horse is the brains of the operation.

[Hackulator]

I would help him out cause I'm not an edgelord kender hater. :smallwink:

[Tainted_Scholar]

I would help him out cause I'm not an edgelord kender hater. :smallwink:

*Her.

Also, you do realise that Kender are the D&D equivalent of Gungans/Ewoks right? Edgelord has nothing to do with it.

[Zanos]

Also, you do realise that Kender are the D&D equivalent of Gungans/Ewoks right? Edgelord has nothing to do with it.
They're so much worse.

[Psyren]

It's a kender, she'll get bored halfway through the ritual.

[Vizzerdrix]

Id kill her, so long as I also got to kill off another race I didnt like. :smallbiggrin:

[lylsyly]

No Ewok haters here, please :smallbiggrin:

I would help her, of course I have a soft spot for Kender. I happen to love the Dragonlance setting and have had a blast RPing Kender in the past, kept the whole party laughing at my shenanigans.

[Hackulator]

*Her.

Also, you do realise that Kender are the D&D equivalent of Gungans/Ewoks right? Edgelord has nothing to do with it.

You understand that the winking face emote exists to imply what came before it is not to be taken fully seriously, right?

However, I don't really hate kender that much nor do I understand why people do.

[Tainted_Scholar]

It's a kender, she'll get bored halfway through the ritual.

Still, why take any chances.

[Keltest]

Still, why take any chances.

Assuming that a kender wont go through with a complicated ritual correctly isn't so much a risk as a certainty.

[Zanos]

Assuming that a kender wont go through with a complicated ritual correctly isn't so much a risk as a certainty.
Yeah, but there's a Kender around either way. That's a problem that needs to be solved.


However, I don't really hate kender that much nor do I understand why people do.
I assume you've read the racial write up that describes them as coked up ADD kleptomanics who "borrow" from their "friends" and "forget" to give it back but it's not stealing because they lie about it, yet at the same time anyone who hates Kender is ignorant because they're the light and love of the world? :smallsigh:

[Tainted_Scholar]

Assuming that a kender wont go through with a complicated ritual correctly isn't so much a risk as a certainty.

Who said the ritual was complicated?

[Fouredged Sword]

At one point my group discussed playing an all kender/gullydwarf party and studiously ignoring all attempts by the DM to get us to pay attention to his plot in favor of derping around the countryside doing small time adventures...

in a mid to high level campaign.

The DM overheard our plot and vetoed it in favor of us actually playing the game he planned for hours.

[Hackulator]

I assume you've read the racial write up that describes them as coked up ADD kleptomanics who "borrow" from their "friends" and "forget" to give it back but it's not stealing because they lie about it, yet at the same time anyone who hates Kender is ignorant because they're the light and love of the world? :smallsigh:

Not that I recall, but I have read all the Dragonlance novels which is where Kender actually exist. They are annoying, humorous, and generally good hearted.

The reason I tend to gently mock people who say they hate kender is they tend to be the same people who think Drow are super cool.

[Zanos]

The reason I tend to gently mock people who say they hate kender is they tend to be the same people who think Drow are super cool.
Oh, I would gladly kill all Drow too. They're pretty awful.

Anyway, this is the racial description people generally refer to when discussing how much they hate kender. Very strong language warning:
http://challengerating25.blogspot.com/2008/12/kendaaagh.html

[Tainted_Scholar]

Not that I recall, but I have read all the Dragonlance novels which is where Kender actually exist. They are annoying, humorous, and generally good hearted.

The reason I tend to gently mock people who say they hate kender is they tend to be the same people who think Drow are super cool.

Read the actual entry on Kender in the rule books, they're every bit as bad as people claim. I would link the 1d4chan article on Kender, which goes over the entire entry with a red sharpie, but there's a lot of swearing in it.

EDIT; I don't care for the Drow really, it's the LA.

[Hackulator]

Read the actual entry on Kender in the rule books, they're every bit as bad as people claim. I would link the 1d4chan article on Kender, which goes over the entire entry with a red sharpie, but there's a lot of swearing in it.

Eh, I take the combined novels as far more important to my view of Kender than one possibly badly written racial entry.


Oh, I would gladly kill all Drow too. They're pretty awful.

Anyway, this is the racial description people generally refer to when discussing how much they hate kender. Very strong language warning:
http://challengerating25.blogspot.com/2008/12/kendaaagh.html

I think Drow being awful might be the first thing I remember us agreeing on lol.

Honestly, I don't find that description that bad. Yes, having a kender in your party is definitely going to be annoying for your characters. I just mostly play in groups where things that are annoying for characters are still often funny and entertaining for players. A BADLY roleplayed kender will suck, because you have to pull of actually being funny, but a badly roleplayed ANYTHING with personality sucks.

[Keltest]

Read the actual entry on Kender in the rule books, they're every bit as bad as people claim. I would link the 1d4chan article on Kender, which goes over the entire entry with a red sharpie, but there's a lot of swearing in it.

EDIT; I don't care for the Drow really, it's the LA.

Well played kender aren't that bad, its just that theyre typically a vehicle for an annoying player to be annoying and hide behind their character.

Frankly I would be grateful. It lets me boot those people on session 1 instead of waiting a half dozen sessions where theyre making everyone miserable in subtle ways.

[Tainted_Scholar]

Eh, I take the combined novels as far more important to my view of Kender than one possibly badly written racial entry.

I'm just telling you how game says you're suppose to play them. They literally take your stuff and lie about it. And I don't mean the "I forgot I took it", I mean blatant and willful deceit.

[Lord Raziere]

say "hey your doing the ritual wrong." modify it to bring them all back as puppies.

then turn the Kender into a puppy.

Thus kender are gone, and now something actually endearing replaces them.

[Zanos]

I'm just telling you how game says you're suppose to play them. They literally take your stuff and lie about it. And I don't mean the "I forgot I took it", I mean blatant and willful deceit.
Yeah, pretty much. This is a creature who constantly steals your stuff then says "Didn't you mean to give this me as a gift" or "I was just holding it for you" and does stupid **** like trigger traps because they're bored. Then the setting tells you that the truly wise among all races recognize that the Kender are precious. Makes me want to shoot the writer.


I think Drow being awful might be the first thing I remember us agreeing on lol.
Could be, I don't really keep a mental index of specific arguments unless they're really long, just people's general demeanor.

On Drow, they are a race of slaving racists that will gleefully backstab you whose culture is explicitly so unstable that only the intervention of a deity keeps them from destroying themselves. They're impossible to work with and bring nothing of value to anyone, even other Evil races.

[Psyren]

Still, why take any chances.

As others have said it's not much of a risk. If you do want a serious answer though, adding 1 million sentients to an ecosystem is bound to be disastrous. That would put it in the gods' territory rather than mine. In short, the judgment is not mine to make. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0866.html)

[Hackulator]

On Drow, they are a race of slaving racists that will gleefully backstab you whose culture is explicitly so unstable that only the intervention of a deity keeps them from destroying themselves. They're impossible to work with and bring nothing of value to anyone, even other Evil races.

Not to mention they are an INCREDIBLY regimented race even though they are naturally chaotic? Also they're evil so they have to be black even though they'd clearly be albino.

[Tainted_Scholar]

Honestly, I don't find that description that bad. Yes, having a kender in your party is definitely going to be annoying for your characters. I just mostly play in groups where things that are annoying for characters are still often funny and entertaining for players. A BADLY roleplayed kender will suck, because you have to pull of actually being funny, but a badly roleplayed ANYTHING with personality sucks.

The difference with Kender is that the description encourages you to roleplay them badly. They're not like Paladins where it's only bad if you're extreme in your roleplaying. Kender are outright stated to steal things and lie about it, thy mess around with dangerous things because they're bored, they blab important information to everyone they meet. If you play a Kender the way the book says, you are going to wind up with an extremely annoying character.


Not to mention they are an INCREDIBLY regimented race even though they are naturally chaotic?

I believe Drow of the Underdark goes into that.


Also they're evil so they have to be black even though they'd clearly be albino.

Okay, let's not go there.

[Zanos]

Also they're evil so they have to be black even though they'd clearly be albino.
I'm not really sure what that has to do with it.

[Fouredged Sword]

On Drow, they are a race of slaving racists that will gleefully backstab you whose culture is explicitly so unstable that only the intervention of a deity keeps them from destroying themselves. They're impossible to work with and bring nothing of value to anyone, even other Evil races.

I don't know. I like Drow. You just got to realize that they are Game of Thrones: The Race. The goal of every ambitious Drow is to end up the head lady of the head house. Therefore they fight within each house over who is head, but are sudden and swift to band together to fight another house. Houses, in turn, band together to fight outside threats (drauger, Illithids).

[hewhosaysfish]

I pick up the arcane texts and/or reagent compenents required for this ritual and wander off with them.

Because having no understand of the concept of ownership cuts both ways.

Oh, and I take the kender's hoopak staff the hoopak staff that the kender is just holding in a manner which is of absolutely no significance and throw it in the river.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I'd channel disintegrate through a thinaun weapon, then disintegrate the weapon, then plane shift the resulting dust into a block of voidstone. Why do you need to ask, isn't it obvious?

(and no, you can't use the soul as a spell component, you'd corrupt the spell)

[Jowgen]

I seriously weigh my options.

I mean, it probably wasn't easy convincing the DM to allow spelljammer material so I could commence a campaign-long genocide of Kender-kind across Kyrnn and all other worlds their infestation has spread to.

After all this time spent on their systematic annihilation... I'd probably have some really mixed feelings when faced with the choice of ending it once and for all, or allowing my crusade drag on as to (re-)murder an extra million of them.

Now all this may sound real hypothetical, but I personally think it would be an inevitable outcome, as I can not imagine ever playing a character whose reaction to learning of the the existence of Kender would be anything other than to resolve to erradicate them.

[Pleh]

It would depend on what character I was playing. Most of my characters would help the Kender out of the philosophy that no race deserves genocide, though I would seek to sabotage the ritual so it would only create thousands instead of millions of Kender.

Helping them live is different than giving them the power to conquer known civilization.

If the kender ends up dying in the effort to clone an unstoppable kender population, I would see that as a consequence of being too greedy, like a man who drowns because he won't give up even a portion of the treasure causing him to sink.

[Tainted_Scholar]

It would depend on what character I was playing. Most of my characters would help the Kender out of the philosophy that no race deserves genocide, though I would seek to sabotage the ritual so it would only create thousands instead of millions of Kender.

Helping them live is different than giving them the power to conquer known civilization.

If the kender ends up dying in the effort to clone an unstoppable kender population, I would see that as a consequence of being too greedy, like a man who drowns because he won't give up even a portion of the treasure causing him to sink.

What if the Kender starts "borrowing" your gear while you're helping her?

[ColorBlindNinja]

Not to mention they are an INCREDIBLY regimented race even though they are naturally chaotic?

Drow are Neutral Evil, actually.

As for the Kender... nuke the site from orbit, no unleash the Death Star on the entire planet.

It's the only way to ensure that she's dead. :smallwink:

[Waker]

What if the Kender starts "borrowing" your gear while you're helping her?

According to their racial description, you are supposed to put your hands on your hips and with an exasperated tone say "Kender!", while the laugh track cues and sfx does the "Wah wah wah". Because how can you not love them?

[Sam K]

I think both Kender and Drow are pretty horrible as they are written. In fact, I would go as far as saying that their mere existance is proof that you do not need any talent as a writer or world builder in order to be a RPG designer :P

But I think the Drow have two redeeming qualities compared to kender:

1. They are supposed to be the bad guys. Their society doesn't make sense. The whole "save against bad writing or betray yourself" is stupid, but they're supposed to be the enemy. Most beholders having split personalities that hate eachother is also pretty dumb, but you don't sit around and psycho-analyze most beholders. You just fight the big ball of eyes!

Kender, on the other hand, were written as a playable race! They are not a plague that somehow got good PR and aquired a LA so they could be played. Someone actually thought that the game would be more fun to play by adding a race who's entire identity is based around sabotaging for the party for no good reason. They are the management consultants of D&D! They bring nothing of value, and leave everything worse than they found it. But supposedly you should allow them into your group for some strange reason which is basically "they look like kids, and kids can't help being obnoxious".

Recap: Drow as written are stupid but you're supposed to kill them. Kender as written are obnoxious and you're suppose to work with them! Clear win for the drow here.

2. Drow can be fixed-ish. If you ignore the worst writing you can play them as Game of Thrones in the underdark, and they work really well. It's not something you couldn't do with another race, obviously, but once you get rid of "betrayal because Drow", make them NE (which is what their society seems to be anyway: lip service to law and order, but quite a lot of outright breaking of the rules when you think you can get away with it) and make Lolth slightly less of a rabid female dog, most of the source material for them work pretty well and they can be useful both as enemies and a background for play.

If you ignore the worst of the writing for Kender, they're still pretty bad. If you ignore ALL the bad writing for them, you have what? Halflings? Gnomes? (PS. Don't get me started on Krynn Gnomes...) If you remove all the annoying, there's nothing left.

Recap: By removing the worst bits, Drow can fairly easily be turned into something that sort of works. Everything about Kender are the worst bits!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying every Kender character is bad. I'm sure that lots of people have made Kender characters that had a personality and were actually fun to RP with, but I am seriously doubting that the character being Kender had anything to do with it.

That being said, if I had to chose between killing off the Kender, or writing that stupid Drow ranger out of existance, it would be a damn hard choice.

[Zanos]

I don't know. I like Drow. You just got to realize that they are Game of Thrones: The Race. The goal of every ambitious Drow is to end up the head lady of the head house. Therefore they fight within each house over who is head, but are sudden and swift to band together to fight another house. Houses, in turn, band together to fight outside threats (drauger, Illithids).
Game of Thrones is (somehow) more stable than most Drow communities.

[Pleh]

What if the Kender starts "borrowing" your gear while you're helping her?

Kleptomania is not worth a death sentence.

I'll probably just buy more gear and keep on with the mission as stated.

If the Kender makes it impossible for me to help by depleting my resources, then I'll walk away if she can't finish the ritual on her own and stick around to finish the sabotage if she can.

If she finds out I'm sabotaging and tries to finish the ritual anyway, I'd have to take more aggressive action, even if that means alerting authorities or Kender enemies.

[Zanos]

Kleptomania is not worth a death sentence.
Really? In D&D I'd kill pretty much anybody who stole from my character. It's medieval-esque after all, stealing is almost certainly punishable by death depending on degree. Considering Kender apparently have no regard for material value, I'm sure they're frequently "borrowing" magic items with several thousands off their allies. And then lying about it. In any case, a great way to lose your hands.

[Tainted_Scholar]

(PS. Don't get me started on Krynn Gnomes...)

Unfortunately, I'm curious. What's wrong with the Gnomes in Krynn?

[Fouredged Sword]

Kleptomania is not worth a death sentence.


Dude, my party once spent like five sessions chasing an idiot who stole our boat because the DM didn't want us to just sail away. It wouldn't be that bad except they sorta just shrugged when someone murdered the mentor of one of the party members and forgot about it to go gallivanting off.

Theft>>>Murder in most parties.

[Pleh]

Really? In D&D I'd kill pretty much anybody who stole from my character. It's medieval-esque after all, stealing is almost certainly punishable by death depending on degree. Considering Kender apparently have no regard for material value, I'm sure they're frequently "borrowing" magic items with several thousands off their allies. And then lying about it. In any case, a great way to lose your hands.

The question being, "what would you do" puts me into the role playing.

I'd probably be a bard, scout/ranger, or cleric. Not the most aggressive of mentalities.

Even if stealing is legally punishable by death, that doesn't make me judge, jury, executioner (much less over the last member of an entire race).

The gods are literally real in this campaign. I think I can forego a little material dependence for the sake of faith, humanity, and enlightened thinking.

I did mention I'm not opposed to killing the kender. I just need more motivation than, "the klepto stole from me".

[ColorBlindNinja]

Unfortunately, I'm curious. What's wrong with the Gnomes in Krynn?

Are those the same as Tinker Gnomes?

I also hear people hate Gully Dwarves, but I don't know why...

[Luccan]

Really? In D&D I'd kill pretty much anybody who stole from my character. It's medieval-esque after all, stealing is almost certainly punishable by death depending on degree. Considering Kender apparently have no regard for material value, I'm sure they're frequently "borrowing" magic items with several thousands off their allies. And then lying about it. In any case, a great way to lose your hands.

A lot of people still play good-aligned characters and a lot of those characters still consider things like mercy and not murdering everyone who trespasses against you to be good.

[Tainted_Scholar]

I also hear people hate Gully Dwarves, but I don't know why...

Gully Dwarves are rarely able to count past two. That should tell you why.

[Zanos]

The question being, "what would you do" puts me into the role playing.

I'd probably be a bard, scout/ranger, or cleric. Not the most aggressive of mentalities.

Even if stealing is legally punishable by death, that doesn't make me judge, jury, executioner (much less over the last member of an entire race).

The gods are literally real in this campaign. I think I can forego a little material dependence for the sake of faith, humanity, and enlightened thinking.

I did mention I'm not opposed to killing the kender. I just need more motivation than, "the klepto stole from me".

A lot of people still play good-aligned characters and a lot of those characters still consider things like mercy and not murdering everyone who trespasses against you to be good.
I'll just point out that adventurers are in the killing profession. And killing isn't non-Good. If you aren't a paladin you don't even have to try diplomacy first. Sometimes even paladins don't have to try diplomacy. The Good deities certainly aren't opposed to it.

I think being an insane klepto that doesn't understand not to take things that aren't there's is going to get you locked up. An entire race of them is going to be seen as a pest. People that come into your village, take ****, and then leave while "forgetting" to give it back are called bandits.

[Hackulator]

I'll just point out that adventurers are in the killing profession. And killing isn't non-Good. If you aren't a paladin you don't even have to try diplomacy first. Sometimes even paladins don't have to try diplomacy. The Good deities certainly aren't opposed to it.

Killing isn't always non-good.

Killing anyone who pisses you off or commits any crime is often non-good.

[Kish]

Just a question, if you came across the last living Kender in a campaign, what would you do? The Kender in question is trying to do some sort of ritual that will bring back over a million Kender, and she tells you this upon meeting you.
Your follow-up question makes it clear you're only looking for one answer.

(Now, if the choice involved having the power to eradicate the idea that D&D somehow has "medieval morality" by default, but only if I didn't help the kender, I'd be much more torn.)

[Grod_The_Giant]

Unfortunately, I'm curious. What's wrong with the Gnomes in Krynn?
If I remember correctly, they're vaguely steampunk-y tinkerers who are always building crazy contraptions that go "boom" in interesting ways.


I also hear people hate Gully Dwarves, but I don't know why...
Gully Dwarves are the universally stupid, dirty, filthy scavager-race, right?

...man, Dragonlance has a lot of terrible "comic relief" races.

[Zanos]

Killing isn't always non-good.

Killing anyone who pisses you off or commits any crime is often non-good.
Eh. If getting rid of a species who steal from everyone around them all the time is Evil, I don't want to be Good.


Your follow-up question makes it clear you're only looking for one answer.

(Now, if the choice involved having the power to eradicate the idea that D&D somehow has "medieval morality" by default, but only if I didn't help the kender, I'd be much more torn.)
It actually has a bizarre system of objective physical morality where moral actions are distilled into the essence of places and beings and contribute to an ongoing cosmic war.

The crime and punishment system is medievalish, though. I wouldn't expect a jury of your peers in most places.

[Luccan]

I'll just point out that adventurers are in the killing profession. And killing isn't non-Good. If you aren't a paladin you don't even have to try diplomacy first. Sometimes even paladins don't have to try diplomacy. The Good deities certainly aren't opposed to it.
[/I]

Well, I was partly referring to your general comment of killing anyone who stole from your character. In the case of Kender, I'm a little iffy. Realistically, they would have been wiped out or learned not do what they do by now. So we're dealing with an odd situation.

[Kish]

Oh, it's worse when they try to make their races carry serious messages (which seems to be their other setting).

Dragonlance elves are culturally racist. Explicitly culturally racist, disagreeing only on whether the inferior races (everyone else) should be avoided or actually Nazi-style eliminated; their primary activity is reflecting on how much better than everyone else they are, and no one in the setting is allowed to even think that elves are not embodiments of good. The closest any character can come is the ridiculous, brain-twisting nonsense that if you're too good it means you're actually evil, which Weis and Hickman present as though it's a brilliant observation which enriches all their readers' lives.

[AvatarVecna]

You understand that the winking face emote exists to imply what came before it is not to be taken fully seriously, right?

However, I don't really hate kender that much nor do I understand why people do.

I may be recalling incorrectly, but my recollection was that the guy who created Kender very intentionally made them a hyperbolic amalgamation of everything they hated about Halflings. Why do people hate Kender with a fiery passion? Because the person who made them did a damn fine job of making them hate-able. Their race - not the individuals, literally the entire species - is explicitly halfway between the worst kind of Chaotic Neutral thief and a blatant "everybody accepts them flaws and all" kind of Mary Sue.

It's an entire race of Chaotic Stupid Mary Sues. By design.

[ColorBlindNinja]

If I remember correctly, they're vaguely steampunk-y tinkerers who are always building crazy contraptions that go "boom" in interesting ways.


Gully Dwarves are the universally stupid, dirty, filthy scavager-race, right?

...man, Dragonlance has a lot of terrible "comic relief" races.

That Death Star idea is sounding better by the minute...

[Zanos]

Well, I was partly referring to your general comment of killing anyone who stole from your character. In the case of Kender, I'm a little iffy. Realistically, they would have been wiped out or learned not do what they do by now. So we're dealing with an odd situation.
Ah, fair. I mean, I personally am not a psycho killer, but I think most people in a traditional D&D fantasy setting aren't going to take real kindly to thieves in general. Most characters that are neutral to evil are probably going to want thieves very dead.


Oh, it's worse when they try to make their races carry serious messages (which seems to be their other setting).

Dragonlance elves are culturally racist. Explicitly culturally racist, disagreeing only on whether the inferior races (everyone else) should be avoided or actually Nazi-style eliminated; their primary activity is reflecting on how much better than everyone else they are, and no one in the setting is allowed to even think that elves are not embodiments of good. The closest any character can come is the ridiculous, brain-twisting nonsense that if you're too good it means you're actually evil, which Weis and Hickman present as though it's a brilliant observation which enriches all their readers' lives.
I don't mind haughty elves setting wise, having something to hate is good. Telling me I can't hate something, though...

[Sam K]

If I remember correctly, they're vaguely steampunk-y tinkerers who are always building crazy contraptions that go "boom" in interesting ways.

That's a very diplomatic way to put it.

You know how Drow can be silly because they have a society that's based on betraying eachother all the time, but somehow it doesn't collapse because of divine intervention?

Krynn Gnomes (which have the tinker gnomes - at least in AD&D, tinkerer was a class that only gnomes from Krynn could take) are like that, except instead of betrayal they have "useless devices that malfunction in destructive ways" and instead of divine intervention they have "whatever". They build steam-, spring- and smokepowder-powered gadgets and weapons that are useless when they work and dangerous to the user when they don't. Everything about them makes them BAD at inventing things! The tinker class (a NPC class which is specialized in building things) take a PENTALY to building complex devices. Their fluff is all about how they make any invention worse by adding "extra features" and "backups", and fix problems by making more useless inventions. They are actually the WORST POSSIBLE RACE for being inventors, yet inventions and gadgets is almost their entire identity. Whatever else they have is that they are annoying to talk to (because they are so smart they can talk about three topics at the same time), their names can fill a book, and their proverbs take hours to recite. Yet they somehow can't remember that too much smoke powder makes things blow up.

Just like Kender, they are a race that constantly engages in selfdestructive behaviour and never seem to suffer any consequences for it. At least when dwarves are xenophobic and elves are arrogant, they pay some kind of price.

The only reason they're not as annoying as Kender is that just like Drow, you can easily trim down the horrible and they sort of work. A race of miners and engineers that are progressive and innovative actually make a decent contrast to the pragmatic traditionalist dwarves. But out of the box, they're almost as bad as Kender.

And yeah, Krynn just has a LOT of races that seem designed only to wreck the game.

[Kish]

I don't mind haughty elves setting wise, having something to hate is good. Telling me I can't hate something, though...
You're allowed to hate them. You just have to acknowledge that by doing so, you're hating the embodiments of Good. Which results in the implication that, "Join the Dark Side--our elves aren't ********!" is a major recruiting slogan for Evil on Krynn.

(One of the major villains is an elf who turned to evil. He's ruthless and villainous, of course, but he's also charming, honorable, and thoroughly sympathetic, especially in his hostility toward the mainstream elven societies.)

[Sam K]

With regards to killing people who steal from you:

We live in a society of plenty (and insurance). Beign stolen from is bad, but it is usually an inconvenience, not something that will ruin our lives. And we live in a society where we at least hope that some kind of lawful authority will be able to punish most criminals if they are caught and proven guilty.

Adventurers, even lawful good ones, live completely different lives. There is no insurance: if a valuable magic item is stolen or lost, you're out of luck. If your life ends up depending on having that item, you're out of life. When that Kender pours your only potion of neutralize poison into a pond because "He wanted to see if it would dye the water", it's a bit worse than when some hipster knocks over a Mocha Chai Latte from starbucks (even though the prices of the lost items are probably comparable). Adventurers carry the tools of their trade, and if someone steals/breaks those tools, that carries a very real risk of injury or death. "I was just playing around" doesn't cut it. Add then to the fact that an attack on one person in a adventuring party is often an attack on all of them. If you break the crusaders best weapon, the crusader is less capable of defending other members of the party. Losing the wizards spellbook means the party just lost a major chunk of firepower and utility. Finally, remember that adventurers tend to carry lots of money in portable form. They have a VERY good reason to make sure that people don't think it pays to steal from them.

All this considered, even the most lawful good adventurer may be pressed to dish out some frontier justice to a klepto Kender.

[Tainted_Scholar]

Krynn is starting to sound rather unattractive as a campaign setting.

[Fouredged Sword]

Eh, I really liked the direction some of the authors take Gully Dwarves. There is a really interesting story where a evil dragon is basically cursed to serve a tribe of Gully dwarves. Funny as all get out.

The setting can be a little... stupid though. As in major players just being pants on head stupid.

[Luccan]

With regards to killing people who steal from you:

We live in a society of plenty (and insurance). Beign stolen from is bad, but it is usually an inconvenience, not something that will ruin our lives. And we live in a society where we at least hope that some kind of lawful authority will be able to punish most criminals if they are caught and proven guilty.

Adventurers, even lawful good ones, live completely different lives. There is no insurance: if a valuable magic item is stolen or lost, you're out of luck. If your life ends up depending on having that item, you're out of life. When that Kender pours your only potion of neutralize poison into a pond because "He wanted to see if it would dye the water", it's a bit worse than when some hipster knocks over a Mocha Chai Latte from starbucks (even though the prices of the lost items are probably comparable). Adventurers carry the tools of their trade, and if someone steals/breaks those tools, that carries a very real risk of injury or death. "I was just playing around" doesn't cut it. Add then to the fact that an attack on one person in a adventuring party is often an attack on all of them. If you break the crusaders best weapon, the crusader is less capable of defending other members of the party. Losing the wizards spellbook means the party just lost a major chunk of firepower and utility. Finally, remember that adventurers tend to carry lots of money in portable form. They have a VERY good reason to make sure that people don't think it pays to steal from them.

All this considered, even the most lawful good adventurer may be pressed to dish out some frontier justice to a klepto Kender.

I won't argue some punishment that seems extreme by modern standards can't be done. Just that murder for every theft might be a little non-good. But yeah, Kender are a very poorly written race for what is a co-operative game. That they can't recognize other people see things differently is probably their biggest flaw. That's a lack of empathy with some disturbing implications.

I think you would need to rework them a bit. Give them a society where they own most things in common, aren't as concerned with privacy and make it so most kender don't leave home. To them, a thief takes as a selfish act: no intent to share or return/repay for an item they've taken. Still bad, but not quite the same. They're curious and friendly, but other people don't seem to like them much, so unless they're really curious, they keep to themselves. Their assumption that others are like them means they steal, but others assume Kender have the same definition of thief. They chase Kender out as a rule at this point; at best, people keep their valuables close when a Kender is around. A PC Kender is either going to learn about personal possession and privacy or has already learned. He still tends to borrow things if someone already has it, but actually asks first. Make it so most Kender rogues in the larger world aren't really thieves: they either return what they've stolen or don't take it away at all. They just want to look at it or in some cases, have a single use for the item and bring it back when they're done. Sometimes they leave money or another valued item as collateral. Still Kender-y, but maybe less annoying?

[Forum Explorer]

The difference with Kender is that the description encourages you to roleplay them badly. They're not like Paladins where it's only bad if you're extreme in your roleplaying. Kender are outright stated to steal things and lie about it, thy mess around with dangerous things because they're bored, they blab important information to everyone they meet. If you play a Kender the way the book says, you are going to wind up with an extremely annoying character.
.

If you play as the RPG book says, yes you will. If you play as the story books read? Then not really. Like or hate the stories, you can barely see Tasslehoff does something that messes up the party in the ways described in the RPG. He doesn't go waking up dragons on purpose, or setting off traps, or stealing everyone's money.




And yeah, Krynn just has a LOT of races that seem designed only to wreck the game.

It's like they were books first, and a game second. Dragonlance can be a fun universe to translate into game form, but it didn't start as a game, and thus care needs to be taken in how you'll handle, well most of everything from the books.

But you want to play as a Kender hating race? Play as draconians who literally view them as food.

[Waker]

Krynn is starting to sound rather unattractive as a campaign setting.

Krynn and Faerun are both settings that I'm extremely reluctant to play in. A DM would have to make a pretty solid pitch for me to want to join a group in either campaign setting. I mean, its one thing if they outright say "This is gonna be a silly campaign." But between nonsense and mary sues, I generally pass on both.

In response to the people talking about the difference between the stories and the rulebooks. Even if we all admit that the rules aren't a faithful representation of the race, it doesn't matter. Because when a player wants to play a Kender in most cases, it's probably because they want to play a Chaotic Stupid thief. Sure, there are those of us who have read the books, but anyone can simply check out the racial description and go hog-wild without even realizing there was a Dragonlance novel series.

[Tainted_Scholar]

Eh, I really liked the direction some of the authors take Gully Dwarves. There is a really interesting story where a evil dragon is basically cursed to serve a tribe of Gully dwarves. Funny as all get out.

It's important to realise the difference between a character that you enjoy watching/reading about, and a character that you interact with. D&D players aren't the audience, they're active parts of the story. Characters that you enjoy viewing as a passive audience can be horrible to interact with as an active player. As a result, even "properly done" characters of races like Kender and Gully Dwarves would be obnoxious in an actual play session. Combine that with the fact that most D&D players have a low tolerance for annoying things, and you get people committing genocide on Kender.

The example I use is Sherlock. It's incredibly entertaining watch him be smarmy @&#$, but if I had to interact with him in a campaign... Let's just say the only mystery to solve would be what happened to his body.

[Hackulator]

It's important to realise the difference between a character that you enjoy watching/reading about, and a character that you interact with. D&D players aren't the audience, they're active parts of the story. Characters that you enjoy viewing as a passive audience can be horrible to interact with as an active player. As a result, even "properly done" characters of races like Kender and Gully Dwarves would be obnoxious in an actual play session. Combine that with the fact that most D&D players have a low tolerance for annoying things, and you get people committing genocide on Kender.

The example I use is Sherlock. It's incredibly entertaining watch him be smarmy @&#$, but if I had to interact with him in a campaign... Let's just say the only mystery to solve would be what happened to his body.

I'm sorry, but I feel like your view here is just fundamentally wrong. Just because something is annoying, dangerous or even deadly to your character doesn't mean it can't be hysterical and fun to you as a player.

Also the idea that D&D players have a low tolerance for annoying thing is clearly mistaken, as they play D&D with other D&D players.

[Tainted_Scholar]

I'm sorry, but I feel like your view here is just fundamentally wrong. Just because something is annoying, dangerous or even deadly to your character doesn't mean it can't be hysterical and fun to you as a player.

Would you honestly want a complete jack@#$ character in your group? How about a character that refuses to listen to anything that other people tell them? This things are annoying, to both player and character. You can make them fun to read about, but it's alot harder to make them enjoyable to play with.


Also the idea that D&D players have a low tolerance for annoying thing is clearly mistaken, as they play D&D with other D&D players.

And when a players annoys the rest of the party enough, they kill him and take his gear. Don't claim this doesn't happen.

[Florian]

Krynn is starting to sound rather unattractive as a campaign setting.

The original Dragonlance setting is actually pretty cool and surprisingly coherent for anything done by TSR.

Don´t get fooled by the Kender and Gully Dwarf hate. The basic premise of the setting is that humanity has banded together, fought all other races and achieved dominance over their home continent, reducing the other races to small and scattered kingdoms. In their hubris, they denounced the gods, which in turn withdrew from Krynn for a while.

So non-humans are very rare and don´t play a major role outside of their home countries.

On the other hand, it´s one of the few settings that supports evil characters right from the start.

[Hackulator]

Would you honestly want a complete jack@#$ character in your group? How about a character that refuses to listen to anything that other people tell them? This things are annoying, to both player and character. You can make them fun to read about, but it's alot harder to make them enjoyable to play with.



And when a players annoys the rest of the party enough, they kill him and take his gear. Don't claim this doesn't happen.

A complete jackass character? Sure that can be fun depending on the player. I've played with a lot of characters that were total jackasses who I enjoyed playing with. An OBSTRUCTIONIST character no, those are the absolute worst.

While I would never claim that that doesn't happen, it has pretty much never happened in any game I've played. However, the vast majority of my games have been among friends so maybe that is why. The only time I've ever killed a character in a game where it wasn't a "PVP on from the start" kind of game was when a new character joining the party basically threatened to kill me the first time I met him. Even that was only because I was playing a Sigil faction that has the penalty that you have to just sort of go with your initial thought on things (something like that, I forget exactly), and the first thing I thought when he said that was that I'd just have to kill him first.

[Psyren]

For the record, Dragonlance DID start as a game (a D&D campaign to be precise) before it became novels. But despite its popularity, several elements in it (most notably the quirky races like Gully Dwarves and Kender) are definitely aimed at a specific set of tastes. Kender in particular seemed to be based on how a particular player liked his halfling rogues to act, or at the very least as an effort to distinguish them more clearly from Hobbits. How well they succeeded at that goal is left as an exercise for the reader.

[FreddyNoNose]

It almost calls for a Tom Petty song. The Last Kender:


You can't turn him into a paladin
You can't turn him into an elf
The goods don't like what he takes from their shelves
Well the lawful goods don't like him stealin so much
And he won't play like they say to play
And he don't want to change what don't need to change
There goes the last Kender
Who plays what he wants to play
And says what he wants to say, hey hey hey?
And there goes your freedom of choice
There goes the last kender voice
There goes the last kender
Well some folks say they're gonna hang him so high

[Tainted_Scholar]

A complete jackass character? Sure that can be fun depending on the player. I've played with a lot of characters that were total jackasses who I enjoyed playing with. An OBSTRUCTIONIST character no, those are the absolute worst.

Not just a Jackass character, a complete jackass character. My point is that there's a big difference between characters that are fun to read about and characters that are fun to interact with.



While I would never claim that that doesn't happen, it has pretty much never happened in any game I've played. However, the vast majority of my games have been among friends so maybe that is why. The only time I've ever killed a character in a game where it wasn't a "PVP on from the start" kind of game was when a new character joining the party basically threatened to kill me the first time I met him. Even that was only because I was playing a Sigil faction that has the penalty that you have to just sort of go with your initial thought on things (something like that, I forget exactly), and the first thing I thought when he said that was that I'd just have to kill him first.

I've never killed another PC or been killed by one either. But I've never encountered a annoying PC.

[Hackulator]

Not just a Jackass character, a complete jackass character. My point is that there's a big difference between characters that are fun to read about and characters that are fun to interact with.



I've never killed another PC or been killed by one either. But I've never encountered a annoying PC.

If you've never killed another PC, been killed by another PC, or met an annoying PC, based on what experience did you make the statement



And when a players annoys the rest of the party enough, they kill him and take his gear. Don't claim this doesn't happen.

?

[atemu1234]

Krynn is starting to sound rather unattractive as a campaign setting.

TBH some retooling of the race descriptions and it could, at least in theory, be fun. They fall a little bit flat because their race descriptions try to sound too Tokien-y or just sound stupid and preachy. Especially the Kender one. Describing any race as "everyone likes them!" in spite of them having basically no redeeming characteristics is always going to suck.

I'd help her, though, because even if they are... somewhat awful, they're still a race of sentient beings, who shouldn't be wiped out because they annoy people.

[Tainted_Scholar]

If you've never killed another PC, been killed by another PC, or met an annoying PC, based on what experience did you make the statement?

Literally dozens of stories from other people about how they've killed annoying PCs.


Also, if you want to know whether a character would be annoying in a D&D campaign, just imagine having them as a room mate/neighbor/coworker/classmate/anybody else who you would have to interact with regularly.

[Zanos]

There's a difference between characters who are annoying and characters who are actively harmful to your party. In either case, they tend not to adventure with the other characters for all that long.

[daremetoidareyo]

Where in the 19 Hecks were you guys when I posted this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21126817&postcount=38) in the villainous competition a few months ago?!?

-----

Krynn is such a difficult setting to run. They drastically alter the setting in different periods of time and offer all of the classes and races from different time periods in the same rulebook. You shouldn't do that, it really affects immersion in the setting.

[Sagetim]

Just a question, if you came across the last living Kender in a campaign, what would you do? The Kender in question is trying to do some sort of ritual that will bring back over a million Kender, and she tells you this upon meeting you.

I mean, in real life I'd be telling them 'no the **** you aren't' and proceed to use superior size and weight to pick them up and prevent them from completing said ritual. Real life has enough problems it doesn't need to inflate the population size by 1 million when that population is going to consist entirely of under-sized kleptomaniacs who can pass for children. They would flood our prison system with special needs prisoners, because kender don't grow up to regular human size, which means an added expense of having to accommodate their size difference in various ways. Tack that on with their mental disability of being physically wired to steal things from other people regularly, and all the accommodations in the world would not stop most of them from dying to shivvings from angry prisoners whose stuff they have 'handled'. Even so, their existence would be a burden and they would have no real, functional role to play in society that doesn't involve them being eventually arrested for their hereditary kleptomania. Further, if any cross breeding happened with humans, you would wind up potentially introducing hereditary kleptomania into the human gene pool, and that's just a disservice to us all.

In a campaign, my character would probably be blissfully unaware of what a 'Kender' is, not being from Dragonlance. Most likely, any character I play would be curious enough to get the kender to elaborate on what a kender is, moving from an initial attitude of being helpful towards the revivification of an entire dead species, to not only wanting no part of this act, but actively disrupting it to prevent a flood of kelpto shorties from invading his world. This would probably not result in outright murder, however, as most of my characters try to avoid that when it's not in self defense, and for some, even when it is. That said, there is one character of mine who would encourage this action to happen...just not where he is. As a minor noble of Cheliax, it would be in his best interest for a sudden flood of a million hungry mouths and grabby hands to suddenly appear in a neighboring country that is about to declare holy war on his own beloved homeland. Sure, they might eventually turn the kender to their advantage, but in the mean time it would provide a lot of strain on that other country's ability to feed, house, and handle a sudden influx of that many people suddenly popping into being. Furthermore, the dead kender bodies from the mass starvation that would be immanent would provide a lot of raw material for raising an army of undead right on the doorstep of a country that thinks it's holier than thou.

Having answered the question how I thought it read initially, and then how it actually read, I will now actually read the intervening posts.

[lylsyly]

We went from Kender to Gully Dwarves to Gnomes. I guess threads are like kittens, they rarely go where you want or think. :tongueincheek:

In my campaign setting, Gully Dwarves and Duergar are both descendants of a clan of dwarves that delved to deep and discovered an extremely ancient radioactive artifact that changed the original race into two distinct but related races. Of course the Gully Dwarves are basically second class citizens that although not outright slaves nevertheless perform all the truly menial tasks.

[Kish]

And when a players annoys the rest of the party enough, they kill him and take his gear. Don't claim this doesn't happen.
I am not answering any questions about whether I've killed any other players without my lawyer present.

[Psyren]

Where in the 19 Hecks were you guys when I posted this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21126817&postcount=38) in the villainous competition a few months ago?!?

-----

Krynn is such a difficult setting to run. They drastically alter the setting in different periods of time and offer all of the classes and races from different time periods in the same rulebook. You shouldn't do that, it really affects immersion in the setting.

To be fair, DrlCS does specify the timeframe that you're expected to play in if you're using those rules.

Also, a Kender Lich is indeed terrifying.

[Lord Raziere]

Krynn is starting to sound rather unattractive as a campaign setting.

Good your learning.

I mean, elves that persuaded the King priest do all that stupid stuff in the first place? Good Gods who cause a cataclysm because of one guy? three comic relief races that do jack squat? the cosmic morality? Dragonlance is like a study of what not to do in designing a roleplaying setting.

[Keltest]

As far as gnomes go, they are explicitly under a curse, as a species. They used to be humans until they ticked off the local god of smithing/inventing/other creation related stuff, so he made them short, ugly, and gave them a thirst for knowledge and creation without ever being able to really do anything with either of them.

Kender and Dwarves are made from gnomes afflicted by Chaos' power, so may or may not also be cursed as species.

[ColorBlindNinja]

As far as gnomes go, they are explicitly under a curse, as a species. They used to be humans until they ticked off the local god of smithing/inventing/other creation related stuff, so he made them short, ugly, and gave them a thirst for knowledge and creation without ever being able to really do anything with either of them.

Kender and Dwarves are made from gnomes afflicted by Chaos' power, so may or may not also be cursed as species.

Chaos? Like the one from Warhammer 40K? So that's why Dragonlance is the way it is! :smalltongue:

[daremetoidareyo]

Chaos? Like the one from Warhammer 40K? So that's why Dragonlance is the way it is! :smalltongue:

Dragonlance was a fun setting in 2e, when it was limited to a single timeline, somewhere right around the re-emergence of dragons and draconians.

Then TSR wanted to make a card game based on the dragonlance franchise, and had the original authors re-cataclysm the entire world in the dragons of summer flame novels. The entire setting has not resurged in prestige or gameplay quality since.

[Pleh]

I'll just point out that adventurers are in the killing profession. And killing isn't non-Good. If you aren't a paladin you don't even have to try diplomacy first. Sometimes even paladins don't have to try diplomacy. The Good deities certainly aren't opposed to it.

Sure, and modern police officers are often granted authorization to use lethal force.

Who you are killing and why still kind of matters.

I don't think most good deities will agree that murdering innocent hobo commoners is justified merely by the virtue of being an adventurer by trade. The hobos still kind of have to commit some kind of evil act or obstruct some necessary and/or good work before their exists justification to chop them to bits.

Now, in the case of theft, voluntary theft is different than compulsive theft. We don't try children in court as if they were adults even when they commit the same crime. We don't sentence as harshly against a perpetrator if it can be proven they lacked mental capacity to sufficiently regulate their own behavior (insanity or handicap).

Kender are like children, why judge them like they ought to know better if they literally can't? Why kill them for failing to do something they are actually incapable of doing?

Defending yourself is different. If in the act of protecting or retreiving your possessions, they initiate violence, nothing can be wrong with defending yourself.


I think being an insane klepto that doesn't understand not to take things that aren't there's is going to get you locked up. An entire race of them is going to be seen as a pest. People that come into your village, take ****, and then leave while "forgetting" to give it back are called bandits.

There is a difference between robbery and burglary. Bandits are robbers, accosting people with violence to steal their livelihoods. Kender are more like burglars, taking unattended items. Theoretically, they have only curiosity, not greed, and no concept of monetary value, so they tend not to take coins or gems (or maybe one coin that looks different than the others), but might be fascinated by a worthless nicknack.

You could honestly play a Kender rather as the opposite of a financial liability. With no concept of monetary value, they love shopping at the market, where the merchants offer to trade and could make tremendous profit by selling junk to the kender.

[Zanos]

There is a difference between robbery and burglary. Bandits are robbers, accosting people with violence to steal their livelihoods. Kender are more like burglars, taking unattended items. Theoretically, they have only curiosity, not greed, and no concept of monetary value, so they tend not to take coins or gems (or maybe one coin that looks different than the others), but might be fascinated by a worthless nicknack.

You could honestly play a Kender rather as the opposite of a financial liability. With no concept of monetary value, they love shopping at the market, where the merchants offer to trade and could make tremendous profit by selling junk to the kender.
Kinder specifically are never happier than when their hands are in someone else's pockets. They are by no means only stealing unattended items.

Their concept of no monetary value doesn't work like that either. They don't not steal expensive stuff, they just don't have a bias towards it. They steal it just as often as useless stuff though.

And adventurers tend not to carry a bunch of garbage around.

[AvatarVecna]

And and adventurers tend not to carry a bunch of garbage around.

Other than the Kender, of course.

[Zanos]

Other than the Kender, of course.
Only until they can find something to feed it to.

[Calthropstu]

Kender seem like a lot of fun to play in a non-serious game. I wouldn't allow or play them in a serious adventure. While I loved the misadventures of various kender in the novels, playing them/with them in a serious adventuring party seems unhealthy.

[Svata]

Krynn and Faerun are both settings that I'm extremely reluctant to play in. A DM would have to make a pretty solid pitch for me to want to join a group in either campaign setting. I mean, its one thing if they outright say "This is gonna be a silly campaign." But between nonsense and mary sues, I generally pass on both.

Faerun isn't so bad, especially once you leave the Sword Coast. Don't get me wrong, there are aspects of the setting that I absolutely despise, that I hold a burning, passionate hatred for, (looking at you, Wall of the Faithless) but overall it's... Fine. Not spectacular. Not awful. Just... fine.

[Florian]

Faerun isn't so bad, especially once you leave the Sword Coast. Don't get me wrong, there are aspects of the setting that I absolutely despise, that I hold a burning, passionate hatred for, (looking at you, Wall of the Faithless) but overall it's... Fine. Not spectacular. Not awful. Just... fine.

Hm... ok, please do explain this: That setting is very clear on how divinity works and how it´s connected. What´s the appeal of playing an atheist when you can always, any time, contact divinity?

[Svata]

Not an atheist, necessarily. Maybe a character who doesn't think the gods deserve his worship, as they're (for the most part) mildly incompetent douchenozzles. Maybe one who thinks the gods are just leeches, draining power from the masses. Not that either of them would necessarily be RIGHT, mind you. I just don't feel that being jammed into a wall and left to rot until your soul dissolves is fair punishment for, well, anything.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Not an atheist, necessarily. Maybe a character who doesn't think the gods deserve his worship, as they're (for the most part) mildly incompetent douchenozzles. Maybe one who thinks the gods are just leeches, draining power from the masses. Not that either of them would necessarily be RIGHT, mind you. I just don't feel that being jammed into a wall and left to rot until your soul dissolves is fair punishment for, well, anything.
It makes even the good-aligned gods kind of mafia-y. "You're gonna worship someone. Now, I ain't saying it's gonna be me, but if you don't worship me, I ain't gonna be responsible for the consequences, ya know? Even if it ain't me, me an' the other gods, we're all family. And ya ain't gonna disrespect my family."

[Gildedragon]

What I'd do with the last kender?
Drop her in Sigil. The multiverse deserves her race
>:3

Actually sigil would probably keep the K too distracted by marvels to get with the ritual.

On the salesman for kender idea: it's called Etsy

Oooh idea of a cure for kender kleptomania: pinterest

[Pleh]

Kinder specifically are never happier than when their hands are in someone else's pockets. They are by no means only stealing unattended items.

Their concept of no monetary value doesn't work like that either. They don't not steal expensive stuff, they just don't have a bias towards it. They steal it just as often as useless stuff though.

And adventurers tend not to carry a bunch of garbage around.

Didn't see that here (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kender_(Dragonlance))

But again, pickpocketing is hardly the same as an armed raid. It's not fair to compare it with banditry.

And the OP isn't requiring that you adventure with the kender. Just asking what you would do.

Maybe I'd take a vow of poverty and make the problem moot.

[Lord Raziere]

Chaos? Like the one from Warhammer 40K? So that's why Dragonlance is the way it is! :smalltongue:

Good!

*Fires up the Flamer*

time to burn the these short Tzeentch heretics then! and Kender to, they're clearly Khornates with how little fear they have.

[Zanos]

Hm... ok, please do explain this: That setting is very clear on how divinity works and how it´s connected.

What´s the appeal of playing an atheist when you can always, any time, contact divinity?
Well, that requires a 5th level cleric spell last I checked, but in general...

There isn't any. Most settings contain the provable existence of deities. I don't see how that's a problem. There's no reason a setting should have to justify the logical existence of atheists.

I'm an atheist for realsies but I never really found this to be an issue in a fantasy game where you can chat them up. Saying deities don't exist in Greyhawk or Faerun just makes you a moron.

I guess you could refuse to worship them or insist there's nothing special about them other than their amazing powers. But even if they aren't "divine" calling the mortal with amazing powers like complete control over reality anything other than Sir is probably not a great idea.

[hamishspence]

I guess you could refuse to worship them, or insist there's nothing special about them other than their amazing powers.
That's the standard approach of the Athar.

Which leads to some hilarious moments in the Finder's Bane novel (Finder has siphoned off his divinity in order to enter Sigil, and is calling himself Jedidiah, priest of Finder, for the duration)


"In the meantime, since Sigil is full of portals, as you say, it would be useful if you could discover for us a portal to the astral plane."
Holly looked to Bors.
The Shattered Temple," the Sensate paladin said. "The Athar give tours featuring dead gods."
Holly chuckled. "The Athar are mostly disillusioned priests. They spend their time trying to prove the gods aren't divine. Amusing, no?"
"Hilarious," Jedidiah replied, rubbing his temples with his fingertips.


"Welcome to the Shattered Temple, headquarters of the Athar," the man greeted them in a gruff voice. "I'm Adenu, and I'll be your guide." Adenu turned and led the pair up the stairs toward the temple. The steps were uneven and scorched, and where there were breaks in the stone, wild grass had taken root. Their guide continued his speech, his eyes half closed, as if he were reading it from the back of his eyelids. "On this tour, I’ll be showing you all the darks uncovered by our leaders, darks which prove the wisdom of the Athar's teachings - the gods are charlatans, beings of false power and false promises."
Jedidiah began to chuckle.
Adenu shot the older man a chill look.
"I'm sorry," Jedidiah apologized. "I'm not laughing at your philosophy. It's just that the irony is killing me."
"Irony?" Adenu asked.
"It's not important," Jedidiah replied.

[Sagetim]

Well, that requires a 5th level cleric spell last I checked, but in general...

There isn't any. Most settings contain the provable existence of deities. I don't see how that's a problem. There's no reason a setting should have to justify the logical existence of atheists.

I'm an atheist for realsies but I never really found this to be an issue in a fantasy game where you can chat them up. Saying deities don't exist in Greyhawk or Faerun just makes you a moron.

I guess you could refuse to worship them or insist there's nothing special about them other than their amazing powers. But even if they aren't "divine" calling the mortal with amazing powers like complete control over reality anything other than Sir is probably not a great idea.

I mean, this is where being Agnostic comes in, isn't it? But to get us back to the topic of Kender: There are apparently no solutions to their problem. Except maybe a loophole of reincarnating them into being ANYTHING else so that they lose the racial feature of being a kleptomaniac. But that requires a pretty decently leveled druid, and dying. And Dungeons and Dragons settings tend not to have a firm grasp on psychology, or ethics beyond 'this is what my god said, so it's the right thing to do'. Probably the weirdest part about dnd settings is that you could make a science out of alignment. There are rules, they are testable, and while there might be specific circumstances under which the general rules do not apply, that's not particularly more complicated than real world physics, where we have macroscopic rules that work just fine in general, and then need new rules (quantum mechanics) to deal with things on an increasingly smaller (more specific) basis.

So what am I getting at? Well, when goblins murder people and take their stuff because that's what goblins do, you don't have a bunch of people clamoring that goblins should be reformed, you have a lot of people stabbing goblins and taking Their stuff. In Pathfinder, goblins are specifically incapable of being reformed, and thus players are expected to kill them to put a permanent end to the problem and danger that their existence poses to everyone else. Kender have a permanent problem about them as well, in that they steal things and lie about it. It's not as direct as stabbing you in the spleen and eating it in front of you, but if a kender takes the wrong thing at the wrong time, it can do more than just inconvenience someone, it can get them killed. Be that starving because the kender stole someone's planting seeds and they were unable to get more, or be it because the kender 'borrowed' a dagger that they needed to solve a goblin problem. The end result is that kender are still a real danger to every other race around them. And in some ideal setting with unlimited resources and time to handle the problem, you could implement a variety of solutions. But you generally don't have that in dnd (even as a mid or high level wizard). Generally speaking you have a limit on how much time or resources or both that you can devote to any given problem, and killing the kender who is literally incapable of being anything but a danger to those around them due to the intrinsic nature of their being is going to be the viable solution most often.

Now, departing from that. Are there alternate solutions that we could utilize to solve the kender problem? I understand some people are a fan of trying to permanently kill them (by the way, if you disintigrate a Thinuan weapon, it would break the weapon and free the soul, not destroy the soul, what you want is a truenamer to make a weapon temporarily into Thinuan so you can use a null error to cause the thinuan weapon to cease to be without breaking).

I think a druid could do a lot of good if they were to gradually kill and reincarnate kender as anything else. Because once they aren't kender, they no longer have a racial ability forcing them to steal things without their own consent. No longer cursed by their very existance to chaotically redistribute objects, they can lead productive lives as whatever they happen to come back as. Be it man, beast, or squirrel.

Another potential solution that comes to mind would involve using the demiplane power (or spell) and dropping Kender there that you happen to find. With a large enough demiplane to live on, some water, and some food to grow, I think they could be quite content to steal eachothers shoes and other nick nacks until they eventally die of old age. Nothing is stopping them from breeding further on the demiplane, save it's size, but that's a problem you leave for the kender to figure out on their own. If they can't figure out how to not make more kids so as to have enough food to go around, that's really not something you need to fix for them.

[daremetoidareyo]

Maybe kender Society is perfect and the rest of the humanoid races got it all wrong

[Fouredged Sword]

Eh, they always seem to me to be more idyllic looking from the outside than from the inside. I always read Kender as lacking much of a sense of self. No fear, no concept of other people's emotions... They sorta drift though life simply reacting to any situation they find themselves in. They ACT like they are people, but how much of that is just reacting to the actual thinking beings around them? Put a bunch of them into a pile and you get Kendermore, a city where people just do the first thing that comes to mind. Build a road though someone's house? He will just become an innkeeper! Kender are interchangeable. They are not sapient as far as I can tell, except for maybe a few individuals who have grown into it though contact with actual beings.

[ATHATH]

I'd cast Mind Rape on her in order to make her not perform the ritual, no longer have those annoying Kender mental traits, and find out more about this ritual that can bring back over a million dead people at once.

[Kantaki]

I would help her.
The chaos that inevitably results from this should be fun to watch.
Besides, the little guys will make the most adorable zombies once they loose their entertainment value.
My Rent-a-corpse shop will make a killing. Literally.:smallamused:

[Tainted_Scholar]

Now, in the case of theft, voluntary theft is different than compulsive theft. We don't try children in court as if they were adults even when they commit the same crime. We don't sentence as harshly against a perpetrator if it can be proven they lacked mental capacity to sufficiently regulate their own behavior (insanity or handicap).

Kender are like children, why judge them like they ought to know better if they literally can't? Why kill them for failing to do something they are actually incapable of doing?

Except Kender aren't children, they look like children but they aren't. Additionally, children are still punished for committing a crime, Kender aren't, even when they do it repeatedly.

Saying that we shouldn't punish Kender for stealing because they can't help is a really bad reason. You could apply the same logic to fiends.

"It's not Tougaur the Baby Eater's fault that he ate all those babies, he can't help it. He's not like normal people, he's the literal embodiment of chaos and evil. He can't not eat babies."

A bit more extreme than pick-pocketing admittedly, but this line of reasoning is horribly flawed.

[atemu1234]

On the whole 'Flat-Earth Atheist' thing, most of my characters have a neutral disposition towards deities - they don't worship one, let you if you want to, and acknowledge their existence - but no, they don't want your pamphlet and they don't waste time on it.

[Keltest]

Except Kender aren't children, they look like children but they aren't. Additionally, children are still punished for committing a crime, Kender aren't, even when they do it repeatedly.

Saying that we shouldn't punish Kender for stealing because they can't help is a really bad reason. You could apply the same logic to fiends.

"It's not Tougaur the Baby Eater's fault that he ate all those babies, he can't help it. He's not like normal people, he's the literal embodiment of chaos and evil. He can't not eat babies."

A bit more extreme than pick-pocketing admittedly, but this line of reasoning is horribly flawed.

Kender ARE punished when they commit a crime. Or when they don't, for that matter. Kender aren't welcome in cities, period. If they get caught, whether or not they've actually done anything yet, they get thrown in jail, then herded out of the city come dusk when traffic dies down. That they get in again anyway is more a testament to the logistical nightmare that is trying to track them all down more than a general acceptance of their shenanigans. Heck, some of the larger cities will threaten criminals with being thrown in the kender cells if they misbehave.

The only exceptions are when another group (say, an adventuring party) accepts responsibility for wrangling their specific kender.

[Pleh]

Except Kender aren't children, they look like children but they aren't. Additionally, children are still punished for committing a crime, Kender aren't, even when they do it repeatedly.

Saying that we shouldn't punish Kender for stealing because they can't help is a really bad reason. You could apply the same logic to fiends.

"It's not Tougaur the Baby Eater's fault that he ate all those babies, he can't help it. He's not like normal people, he's the literal embodiment of chaos and evil. He can't not eat babies."

A bit more extreme than pick-pocketing admittedly, but this line of reasoning is horribly flawed.

Fiends absolutely can choose not to eat babies. They possess sufficient awareness to make the choice to not eat a particular baby (or set of babies) if doing so increases the chance to do more evil in the long term. They can even pose as angels to further their goals, which requires a large amount of restraint, even if temporary.

My understanding is that kender are kleptos, which makes their theivery compulsive. They can't choose not to steal to improve their larger agenda because they largely lack agenda. They take pleasure in the act of "borrowing", but kleptomaniacs are by definition lacking self control. While you could make a deal with a fiend, demonstrating they have self control, even if they only have evil motivations, kender might agree not to steal, but they will not be capable of stopping themselves.

But even if your campaign setting has fiends compulsively evil, the fiend is a rabid, bloodthirsty wolf and the kender is just a stray dog. While neither can be reasonably held accountable, the stray dog doesn't need to be killed. It's a nuisance, not a threat. The crazed, rabid wolf can only at best be never seen and at worst will maim or kill someone.

The kender doesn't deserve to die, not by default. If it's nature prevents it from receiving the help it needs, that's just natural selection.

We don't get to decide to commit genocide just because we can't stand living with them. Let them have their own cities far away.

[Zanos]

The book description of the Kender definitely displays them as a threat, because it's extremely clear that they always have their hands on stuff they know is dangerous but can't help their curiosity, and they go fishing in the pockets of their adventuring companions, which is a terrible idea, because then they think a wand of scorching ray is a toothbrush and try to clean the teeth of some peasant.

They might not be "malicious" but they're definitely a huge threat.

[Eisfalken]

Ah, if only I could take all the kender and drow in the multiverse, and deposit them into the nearest hole of nothing in the Negative Energy Plane, so that we would be done with all of them forever and ever...

No, really, kender are annoying. They're used as an excuse for players to basically be total a-hats to the entire table, DM included. Never mind the fact that theft is such a rage-button crime in antiquated societies that thieves were habitually maimed and/or executed (depending on how valuable the thing they stole was): as if that wasn't bad enough, the players who tend to gravitate to kenders often just don't give an eff if the other players mind the way they play the game, to say nothing of the fact that the DM spends 99% of the time constantly making secret Pick Pocket checks because they literally can't stop picking pockets even a few scenes.

Then there's the frickin' drow, aka Edgelord Supremes. We can't just play regular outcasts from any other society, oh, no. We need to be the darkest of the dark at the table, which apparently means let's play Another Redeemed Drow Trying To Do Good Instead Of Evil #2,409,701,394,887. Because that's what keeps popping up for the past... 30 or so years now. Oh, and it's totes cool that YOUR drow is using two weapons, because they're katanas instead of scimitars, and instead of a ranger you're some other fighter subclass so you can get cool stuffs.

You know what would completely blow by withered heart? To see someone play a drow bard who had an outgoing personality and a good attitude about life. Holy Geek Jesus, I would probably orgasm on the spot to see someone legitimately do that at a table even one session. A drow guy (or girl) who is genuinely glad to get away from the Underdark where everything sucks, and spend all their nights playing songs and/or singing, getting drunk, hitting on anyone they think they might like in bed, going to plays and operas like some kind of fop, and otherwise just really living it up. And when one city gets too boring, they just move to the next. Ran out of money? Cool, let's round up the boys and go kill us some dungeon meat for lunch money! Basically the exact opposite of every other drow that forces me to choke on my drink when I hear the same vomit that was regurgitated in high school once again thrown up all over again 30 YEAR LATER! (Which is the really infuriating part. Some of you think drow have only been edgelords for a while? Naw, son: they been edgelords longer than some readers here have been frickin' alive.)

There's a line between trope and cliche, and both kender and drow have fallen into a deep pit of feces for decades now. I give drow a slight pass because it's not actually the fault of the race design: fanboys/fangirls turned drow into garbage, just as they did to Raistlin (aka Magic Edgelord) back in the late 90s. But kender have never been cool, not really; they are a poorly-thought-out race that was added the same way Ewoks made it into Star Wars, and I'd rather have an entire party of tinker gnomes in the party than even one kender.

I'd rather have Ewoks in a D&D game than kender, for that matter. They'd be the equivalent of Tucker's kobolds with a little magic to give them a boost here and there...

[Lord Raziere]

We don't get to decide to commit genocide just because we can't stand living with them. Let them have their own cities far away.

We're not talking whether our characters can stand them.

We're talking whether we as players can stand them, and thats far more important. Kenders don't exist, they are not alive, they don't have feelings, they are just an annoying concept that shouldn't have been made, and therefore prime targets for killing in game.

and this is coming from the guy who wants orcs to have more societies and not be evil sometimes, so.....yeah, its bad when even the guy who loves playing things like orcs and goblins doesn't see any potential in kender and wants them destroyed.

[Florian]

You know what would completely blow by withered heart? To see someone play a drow bard who had an outgoing personality and a good attitude about life.

Golarion uses a take on Drow that actually made the race interesting again, at least to me.
The "twist" here is, that´s it´s an elven racial flaw that spiritual corruption can always trigger transformation into a Drow, any time, any age.
On one hand, that makes Drow society a dark reflection of regular Elf society, as those that flip-out, power-trip or get ape-s**t crazy will experience the transformation and flee their elvish homeland towards a Drow colony, at the same time, natural-born Drow do not automatically suffer from any taint and are in fact regular Elves.

It used to be a major setting plot that the surface elves fought a fierce and secretive war against the Drow, based on the believe that all Drow are automatically corrupted and must be eradicated, until they managed to capture the first major city and found out that this wasn't the case. Here´s two descriptions of two major NPC the players can come in contact with:

"Telessel Neirenar (CG female drow ranger 9): After Telessel’s recent death in a Razmiri skirmish, a
well-meaning druid reincarnated the elven scout. In a cruel twist of fate, however, Telessel returned
to life in a drow’s body, despite having no previous corruption staining her soul. In the difficult days
thereafter, only her faithful unicorn mount’s companionship kept Telessel from suicide. After learning
of her fate, the Lantern Bearers sought her out; now Telessel aids the organization, helping redeemed drow acclimate to surface life. Her unusual genesis has intrigued several of the Lantern Bearer’s leaders, and many hold up her reincarnation as a drow as evidence that drow are, themselves, not intrinsically evil, and that given the right conditions and options, they can be saved."

"Sabriune Misraria (CN female drow rogue 5/swashbucklerACG 10): Forced to flee her subterranean
homeland when her heretical views on the worship of the demon lord Nocticula nearly got her
executed by her own mother, Sabriune finally found a new home in the Council of Thieves after
spending several years living in the shadows of the strange surface world she now calls home. The
renegade drow makes heavy use of disguises and go-betweens, keeping her true identity known to
only a select few. A lover of the arts, Sabriune launders the Council’s ill-gotten gains via civic works
and artistic patronage; meanwhile, her agents spread rumors of the Council’s role in these works to
sway public opinion in the syndicate’s favor."

[Kantolin]

Honestly, my biggest problem with Kender is that they encourage bad players to be bad players.

I've played with a friend who played a kender, and it was fine. They stole randomy things from the party and also from some people we met, generally it was for amusement, it was harmful a few times and plot-important a few times (Once they ended up with a Trap the Soul gem that had a soul in it which sparked some interest). If anything, the fact that the kender was earnest about helping made him /less/ obnoxious than the problems many PCs can cause through merit of, say, being an orc or insisting on throwing charm persons around all over the place.

But I've then played with people who pull the 'I'm a kender and thus it's okay for me to be a jerk' card, and the kender race encourages those people a lot, and that is frustrating.

I mean... yeah, I have some logistics problems with 'entire race of kleptomaniacs', but I can put that aside if the player of a given kender (and I suppose the DM) isn't a jerk about everything. Since I mean meh, dragons can fly somehow, kender can be a race of thieves that are okay about it. Some deity did it or magic or something. Or maybe my historian was doing studies into the kender race and just cannot figure out why they are the way they are.

Anyway, the actual question. From a /conceptual/ view, I can't see most of my characters encouraging genocide. I also, admittedly, can't see about half of my characters being okay with overlooking: '...wait, you're going to create a million people? What are they going to /eat/? Where are they going to live? Are you creating them from nothing - is this some huge drain of souls or something? We're between two kingdoms, are /they/ okay with this? Are they trapped or something and being freed or is this really something from nothing here?'

(Frankly, Drow are similar to Kender in that they aren't intrinsically problems to me, and I don't at all mind the 'all drow are actaully chaotic good' countertrope either. Half my group uses swords because it's what heroes do, and other tropes. But drow /also/ have this annoying tendency to encourage bad players to be bad players for some reason, grumble)

[Coidzor]

The obvious answer here is to accept that I am damning my soul with a sin that no amount of Sanctify the Wicked can scrub clean while magically brainwashing me in a magic gem for a year.

Then tranquilize the Kender for transport, study and alter the ritual as necessary to ensure the location of where the Kender are generated is a desirable one for my purposes, and then smuggle it into the headquarters of the Harmonium and arrange for them to have to deal with 1 million Kender spontaneously generating inside of them.

Hmm. Actually, who does most deserve a good Kenderbombing?

[Florian]

The whole "Kender hate" starts to amuse me. It´s a subtle thing, but a good reminder to be self-aware of the creative agenda which is the root of why we have fun with RPGs. Conceptually, they work remarkably well with any system that promotes the Drama CA, voluntarily creating a crisis and then reaping the gains by solving it, like Fate or SaWo.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Honestly, my biggest problem with Kender is that they encourage bad players to be bad players.
This is honestly a really good point.

[Florian]

This is honestly a really good point.

Not really, or at least, not without providing a metric to explain that assessment.

Looking at the original Dragonlance, the roots and how things developed, it is very easy to see that each and every character seems to have been developed around providing the maximum of (intra-party) tension. This is why and how we have "heroes of the lance" that cover the full alignment spectrum and still manage to work together as a coherent team.

This is a rather good example on how optimal "drama play" ought to work.

[Fouredged Sword]

The primary good god in that setting likes to wander around as a senile old wizard and fireballed his own funeral.

That should explain everything wrong with Dragonlance once you think it though.

[Pleh]

The book description of the Kender definitely displays them as a threat, because it's extremely clear that they always have their hands on stuff they know is dangerous but can't help their curiosity, and they go fishing in the pockets of their adventuring companions, which is a terrible idea, because then they think a wand of scorching ray is a toothbrush and try to clean the teeth of some peasant.

They might not be "malicious" but they're definitely a huge threat.

By this logic, we should exterminate all humanoid races capable of mastering the skills of arcane spellcasting. Clearly, they can't keep their hands off stuff they know is dangerous, but can't help their curiosity and/or powerlust. They go diving into the dungeons of legendary creatures and other powerful beings, which is a terrible idea, because then they end up accidentally unleashing otherworldly horrors and bringing back ancient cursed relics.

Or worse, they just become Wizard King and rule with Bigby's Iron Fist.

In case I'm not being clear, "this race is dangerous" applies to just short of literally EVERY creature ever introduced into D&D and cannot by itself be a justification for exterminating an entire race.

"This race is intolerably dangerous" may be more reasonable to argue, but it's a subjective argument. Dangerous to whom?

If you say, "everyone" I call hyperbole.


We're not talking whether our characters can stand them.

We're talking whether we as players can stand them, and thats far more important. Kenders don't exist, they are not alive, they don't have feelings, they are just an annoying concept that shouldn't have been made, and therefore prime targets for killing in game.

and this is coming from the guy who wants orcs to have more societies and not be evil sometimes, so.....yeah, its bad when even the guy who loves playing things like orcs and goblins doesn't see any potential in kender and wants them destroyed.

OP asked a question that implied I should consider what my character would do, not what I would do (since it is not possible for me to ever myself encounter a Kender under any circumstances; they are fictional). It doesn't matter what I as a player think of them, but what my character ought to be thinking of them.

Medieval morality and law was harsh, but I usually play characters that would be deemed heroically progressive for the time.

And often my DMs run morality more similar to our own than trying to make us work with backwards historical justice systems.

But feel free to metagame all you like. Your answer is as valid as mine. I'm just saying that I wouldn't.


I've played with a friend who played a kender, and it was fine. They stole randomy things from the party and also from some people we met, generally it was for amusement, it was harmful a few times and plot-important a few times (Once they ended up with a Trap the Soul gem that had a soul in it which sparked some interest). If anything, the fact that the kender was earnest about helping made him /less/ obnoxious than the problems many PCs can cause through merit of, say, being an orc or insisting on throwing charm persons around all over the place.

But I've then played with people who pull the 'I'm a kender and thus it's okay for me to be a jerk' card, and the kender race encourages those people a lot, and that is frustrating.

I mean... yeah, I have some logistics problems with 'entire race of kleptomaniacs', but I can put that aside if the player of a given kender (and I suppose the DM) isn't a jerk about everything. Since I mean meh, dragons can fly somehow, kender can be a race of thieves that are okay about it. Some deity did it or magic or something. Or maybe my historian was doing studies into the kender race and just cannot figure out why they are the way they are.

Anyway, the actual question. From a /conceptual/ view, I can't see most of my characters encouraging genocide. I also, admittedly, can't see about half of my characters being okay with overlooking: '...wait, you're going to create a million people? What are they going to /eat/? Where are they going to live? Are you creating them from nothing - is this some huge drain of souls or something? We're between two kingdoms, are /they/ okay with this? Are they trapped or something and being freed or is this really something from nothing here?'

(Frankly, Drow are similar to Kender in that they aren't intrinsically problems to me, and I don't at all mind the 'all drow are actaully chaotic good' countertrope either. Half my group uses swords because it's what heroes do, and other tropes. But drow /also/ have this annoying tendency to encourage bad players to be bad players for some reason, grumble)

+1 this. We all know how to play in a cooperative manner versus making a game of frustrating our play mates. Based on what I've read about Kender, the intent was more the former scenario than the latter.

But here's the kicker: the OP didn't specify if the Kender in question was a PC or an NPC. I was presuming an NPC based on the fact that it is the more likely scenario, but it could just as easily be a fellow party member with a personal side quest.

We can whine all we want about how badly kender are played and how much better the system would be without them, but that is a question for world formation rather than an ethical scenario. if they are bad for the game and story, they shouldn't be in it to begin with and the scenario shouldn't be taking place. If we have them in the game, the hope is that they are being used in accordance to honor rules.

And if the DM or PC is just playing the jerk card, it won't matter what you do with the kender. The game has already broken down. No matter what choice you make, it won't fix a game that wasn't put together right to begin with.

Remember that this is presuming a world where bringing millions of kender back from the dead is still possible, so even killing this last kender is no guarantee that someone else won't just bring them and 999,999 other kender right back with them.

Never try to fix an OOC problem with an IC solution.

[Zanos]

By this logic, we should exterminate all humanoid races capable of mastering the skills of arcane spellcasting. Clearly, they can't keep their hands off stuff they know is dangerous, but can't help their curiosity and/or powerlust. They go diving into the dungeons of legendary creatures and other powerful beings, which is a terrible idea, because then they end up accidentally unleashing otherworldly horrors and bringing back ancient cursed relics.

Or worse, they just become Wizard King and rule with Bigby's Iron Fist.

In case I'm not being clear, "this race is dangerous" applies to just short of literally EVERY creature ever introduced into D&D and cannot by itself be a justification for exterminating an entire race.

"This race is intolerably dangerous" may be more reasonable to argue, but it's a subjective argument. Dangerous to whom?

If you say, "everyone" I call hyperbole.
You're confusing potential to be dangerous with the actual thing. Arcane spellcasters have the potential to be dangerous. So do people with swords. Kender are just straight up detrimental to society.

Also, wizards that hunt for cursed relics and delve into Ancient Powers Beyond Their Understanding(TM) are Evil and usually hunted for it.

[Psyren]

Hm... ok, please do explain this: That setting is very clear on how divinity works and how it´s connected. What´s the appeal of playing an atheist when you can always, any time, contact divinity?


Not an atheist, necessarily. Maybe a character who doesn't think the gods deserve his worship, as they're (for the most part) mildly incompetent douchenozzles. Maybe one who thinks the gods are just leeches, draining power from the masses. Not that either of them would necessarily be RIGHT, mind you. I just don't feel that being jammed into a wall and left to rot until your soul dissolves is fair punishment for, well, anything.

This is actually how "atheism" works in Golarion. There is in fact a whole nation of them (Rahadoum, which outlaws all divine spellcasters and follows "The Laws of Man.") They know gods exist - it's empirically provable after all - but they don't consider them worthy of man's worship, and believe that their internecine politics and perverse incentives of favoritism are holding Golarion back and causing more problems than they solve. (I personally would find it very interesting if it turned out that they were the ones behind the A.I. superdeity that is running the show in Starfinder.)

There's a passage about this stance in Faiths and Philosophies:

"On Golarion, "atheism" usually denotes the belief that those beings commonly called "gods" are not worthy of the authority and reverence bestowed upon them by others. Atheists rarely doubt the existence of deities, and generally acknowledge that deities are very powerful beings, but deem them no more than that. Instead of gods, they tend to revere ideals such as goodness or freedom, philosophies such as the Prophecies of Kalistrade or diabolism, or nothing in particular. Though some scholars argue that the term "atheist" is incorrectly applied to these people - preferring terms such as "dystheists" or "misotheists"* - such distinctions are lost on a generally religious society, and most accept the more common term."

[Zanos]

Yeah that's pretty much how "atheism" works in Faerun too, except the Myrkul mafia comes to break your legs after you die.

[Waker]

Guys, with all this talk of what a good character would do, you fail to miss the context of why the last kender is doing a ritual.
Now throughout the multiverse, there are multiple instances of successful races spreading across multiple worlds. Humans, elves, dwarves, even artificially created races like Warforged can be found in several worlds. Through either the will of the gods or plucky exploration, races can and do proliferate across the multiverse.
The Kender however exist only on the world of Krynn. Why is this? One could posit that by general agreement the majority of gods in other realms, even in places like Eberron where their existence isn't proven, just outright refuse to allow the Kender infestation to spread, so no gods create new Kender. Furthermore traveling across planar boundaries is dangerous, especially when you long for the sweet embrace of death, demonstrated by your race's tendency to randomly poke things because "I was bored."
What of the Kender on Krynn though? The most logical explanation was that the other intelligent races of the world gathered together to counter the threat posed by the Kender. They warred with their conscience over "what was right" as their minds lied to them and said that Kender were their friends and were precious. Eventually they found the source of the problem; the gods themselves. In order to purge Krynn of the Kender, the assembled races of the world needed to first commit deicide and lift the geas that made them regard the Kender with fondness. After great losses they succeeded and could finally turn to the extermination of the Kender.

So when the OP describes "the last Kender", he's talking about someone who is, with malice and forehought, attempting to plunge the world into chaos and ignite another war. Even if you don't destroy the Kender, you cannot let the ritual be completed.
Assume the entirety of what I just said was in blue text.

[Pleh]

You're confusing potential to be dangerous with the actual thing. Arcane spellcasters have the potential to be dangerous. So do people with swords. Kender are just straight up detrimental to society.

Also, wizards that hunt for cursed relics and delve into Ancient Powers Beyond Their Understanding(TM) are Evil and usually hunted for it.

Kender are detrimental to our society, but not necessarily to any society. They'd probably do fine in a purely communist state where everything already belongs to everyone, including the kender.

Kender that are played at maximum levels of munchkin are problems, yes, but my point is that this is ubiquitous to creatures, not special to kender. It's a feature of munchkins, not necessarily Kender.

The fact that there are far fewer "right" ways than "wrong" ways to play them just means you always portray them as the "right" kind, because the "wrong" kind are unhelpful to game and story and you don't use them.

Just like truenamers, right Jormengand?

Also, sure, wizards that Look For Trouble usually find it, but not all wizards start down the path to world dictator with the intention of winding up there. Sometimes things take a rapid, dark turn.

[Malroth]

I'd planeshift her to the lower planes in an attempt to have the million kender skew the blood war in favor of law. The sudden loss of a million chaotic souls combined with their sudden theft of any weapons, magic items, artifacts, Larvae, orders from superiors, secret codes etc is bound to disrupt quite a few battles.

[Gildedragon]

The problem is that if one kills this last kender one gets a kender ghost. And if one thought that a standard kender was a pain... An incorporeal telekinetic kleptomaniac is a goodly amount worse

[tiercel]

Honestly, my biggest problem with Kender is that they encourage bad players to be bad players.

This.

Not only does the kender racial description encourage bad players by giving official rules cover for obnoxious play, it tells other players that they are the bad players if they don't COMPLETEWY WUV KENDER FOREVAR.

It is as if the race were specifically designed for passive-aggressive play.

[Lord Raziere]

The problem is that if one kills this last kender one gets a kender ghost. And if one thought that a standard kender was a pain... An incorporeal telekinetic kleptomaniac is a goodly amount worse

Nothing a good ol' fashioned exorcism can't fix!

[ExLibrisMortis]

Kender are detrimental to our society, but not necessarily to any society. They'd probably do fine in a purely communist state where everything already belongs to everyone, including the kender.
Wait what? You think a communist won't be upset because their house keys have gone missing? Maybe you think communists don't lock their doors? You are way out of it [communism]...


For reference, communists are regular people, and they have regular people attachments to objects of small value, regular people ideas about proper and practical use ("wow shiny" is not a proper or practical use of keys), and regular people ideas about home invasion—despite the fact that "communist" is basically a slur in some parts of the world.


tl;dr kender are detrimental to society. Communist or no.

[Zanos]

I think Pleh was thinking of more some kind of shared commune, rather than communism.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I think Pleh was thinking of more some kind of shared commune, rather than communism.
That seems unlikely, given the use of the phrase "communist state". In any case, my arguments apply to all variants of communal living, barring the extremely rare Vow of Poverty-style communes. Nobody likes it when, say, the hinges for the new front door go missing because some random passer-by decided they were shiny and good for taking. Property of all they may be, these hinges still have "proper and practical use", as I called it. That is, they're meant for the door, so bloody well use them for the door, don't go taking them places.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Then there's the frickin' drow, aka Edgelord Supremes. We can't just play regular outcasts from any other society, oh, no. We need to be the darkest of the dark at the table, which apparently means let's play Another Redeemed Drow Trying To Do Good Instead Of Evil #2,409,701,394,887. Because that's what keeps popping up for the past... 30 or so years now. Oh, and it's totes cool that YOUR drow is using two weapons, because they're katanas instead of scimitars, and instead of a ranger you're some other fighter subclass so you can get cool stuffs.

You know what would completely blow by withered heart? To see someone play a drow bard who had an outgoing personality and a good attitude about life. Holy Geek Jesus, I would probably orgasm on the spot to see someone legitimately do that at a table even one session. A drow guy (or girl) who is genuinely glad to get away from the Underdark where everything sucks, and spend all their nights playing songs and/or singing, getting drunk, hitting on anyone they think they might like in bed, going to plays and operas like some kind of fop, and otherwise just really living it up. And when one city gets too boring, they just move to the next. Ran out of money? Cool, let's round up the boys and go kill us some dungeon meat for lunch money! Basically the exact opposite of every other drow that forces me to choke on my drink when I hear the same vomit that was regurgitated in high school once again thrown up all over again 30 YEAR LATER! (Which is the really infuriating part. Some of you think drow have only been edgelords for a while? Naw, son: they been edgelords longer than some readers here have been frickin' alive.)

I've always wanted to play a Bard, this sounds like a great character concept.


Not really, or at least, not without providing a metric to explain that assessment.

Looking at the original Dragonlance, the roots and how things developed, it is very easy to see that each and every character seems to have been developed around providing the maximum of (intra-party) tension. This is why and how we have "heroes of the lance" that cover the full alignment spectrum and still manage to work together as a coherent team.

This is a rather good example on how optimal "drama play" ought to work.

The Dragonlance Campaign Setting book outright encourages Kender players to be lying, kleptomaniac, obnoxious twits.

[hamishspence]

In 3.5, yes. Was it that bad in 1st/2nd edition, when Dragonlance was introduced, though?

In the Forgotten Realms Finder's Stone novels, Olive Ruskettle the handling thief, has many of the worst tendencies of Kender without actually being one (stealing spellbook from wizard guarding the caravan she's in, which is subsequently attacked by a dragon, that kidnaps her, for example. Stealing from the warrior that rescues her, halfway through the rescue. Putting on magic items before trying to find out what they do. And so forth)

When an actual Kender turns up much later in the books (having gotten from Krynn to Sigil somehow) he's more altruistic, and in general nicer, than she was - so his Kender habits manage to not be quite as grating.

[ColorBlindNinja]

In 3.5, yes. Was it that bad in 1st/2nd edition, when Dragonlance was introduced, though?

I have no idea; but we are posting in a 3rd edition forum, so I though the 3.5 Dragonlance Campaign Setting was relevant.

[hamishspence]

True, but:


Looking at the original Dragonlance, the roots and how things developed, it is very easy to see that each and every character seems to have been developed around providing the maximum of (intra-party) tension.

it's worth thinking about how Kender were before 3.5, too.

[ColorBlindNinja]

True, but:



it's worth thinking about how Kender were before 3.5, too.

That doesn't change the fact that the book that defines their race 3.5 encourages you to play them badly.

[daremetoidareyo]

In 2nd edition the mechanics of handling weren't so focused on acquisition and more about what a lender might pull out of their pocket. Much of the fluff was the same, and the race attracted nuisance players but I think the pc empowerment aspects of 3.x subculture amplify that nuisance.

[ColorBlindNinja]

In 2nd edition the mechanics of handling weren't so focused on acquisition and more about what a lender might pull out of their pocket. Much of the fluff was the same, and the race attracted nuisance players but I think the pc empowerment aspects of 3.x subculture amplify that nuisance.

Can you quote some of the fluff for Kender in 2nd edition?

Because 3.5 says things like, "Kender are never happier than when their hands are in the pockets, pouches, or backpacks of those around them."

The book also says that they know what thieves are, but apparently have no concept of physical boundaries. Edit: So which is it? That seems contradictory!

Perhaps worst of all: "It is said that nothing on Krynn is as dangerous as a bored Kender or as terrifying as hearing a Kender say, "Oops!"

[Tainted_Scholar]

I have no idea; but we are posting in a 3rd edition forum, so I though the 3.5 Dragonlance Campaign Setting was relevant.

Pretty much, I've read some of the Dragonlance novels and the Kender in the one I read wasn't actually annoying at all. But we're talking about the Kender from 3.5 specifically, so we're going with the entry on Kender from the Campaign Setting.

[Waker]

What's up with all these people playing Devil's Advocate here? Hell already has a lawyer and his name is Red Fel.
The defense of Kender as not being that bad or talking about how they are different in the books is completely, 1000% not pertinent to the discussion. If someone complains about that in a game based on a movie, the main character keeps burning down orphanages for profit, no one cares how he was portrayed in the movie. We're griping about the game. So even if you think Tasslehoff was great, our complaints about Kender are based off the racial description in the Dragonlance Campaign book.
And those racial descriptions basically tell you to roleplay that guy. The following quotes are stolen from the link Zanos posted earlier, since I'm at work and not near any of my books right now.

While kender have a modicum of instinct for self-preservation (...) their propensity to act on impulse at the expense of common sense makes them reckless in dangerous situations - a volatile addition to addition to any adventuring party. Boredom is the kender's arch-nemesis, to be conquered at any cost. It is said that nothing on Krynn is as dangerous as a bored kender or as terrifying as hearing a kender say, "Oops!"...
It's when a kender is bored that a kender is most feared. A kender who can't find anything interesting to do determines to do something interesting, often with dire consequences...
Kender cannot keep secrets to save their lives and happily blurt out intensely personal information about themselves or anyone else.
I grouped all this together for a reason. Basically it is telling you that in character if you get bored you are encouraged to be a disruptive little git. One of the other players in the middle of a delicate negotiation and you are outraged to not be the center of attention? Yell out that you farted really loud!
Or is the party trying to avoid a confrontation with an army and are attempting to sneak around? Little did they know that you love chicken. Leroy Jenkins!
All bad behavior can be attributed to being bored, which is good roleplaying!

The unquenchable curiosity of kender drives them to investigate everything - including other people's personal possessions. Kender appropriate absolutely anything that catches their eye. Physical boundaries of notions of privacy are both alien concepts to them, while the monetary value of an object means nothing to them. (...) Kender are never happier than when their hands are in the pockets, pouches, or backpacks of those around them...
Kender do not consider such appropriation to be thievery as others understand it (kender are as contemptuous of thieves as the next person). Kender term this "handling" or "borrowing" (...) Kender are at best bemused and at worst outraged at being accused of theft or pick-pocketing. Kender always give perfectly reasonable explanations for just about every accusation leveled at them...
Kender also have the inexplicable need to make air quotes whenever they explain they weren't stealing.
Fixed the description on Kender's view of theft. Remember though, when you steal from the party or important NPCs, its not your fault. Its just what your character would have done.

the sight of a grieving kender can (...) reduce even the most cold-hearted person to sympathetic tears...
The truly wise of all races know that kender are the innocents of the world and that the world would lose something precious if kender were ever to leave it..
And that's the cherry on this crap sundae. If the rest of the party gets fed up with your disruptive, thieving antics, then they are bad roleplayers cuz everyone loves the Kender.

TLDR version: No one cares about Tasslehoff. The game tells you to play Kender as a Chaotic Stupid jerk.

[ColorBlindNinja]

What's up with all these people playing Devil's Advocate here? Hell already has a lawyer and his name is Red Fel.
The defense of Kender as not being that bad or talking about how they are different in the books is completely, 1000% not pertinent to the discussion. If someone complains about that in a game based on a movie, the main character keeps burning down orphanages for profit, no one cares how he was portrayed in the movie. We're griping about the game. So even if you think Tasslehoff was great, our complaints about Kender are based off the racial description in the Dragonlance Campaign book.
And those racial descriptions basically tell you to roleplay that guy. The following quotes are stolen from the link Zanos posted earlier, since I'm at work and not near any of my books right now.

I grouped all this together for a reason. Basically it is telling you that in character if you get bored you are encouraged to be a disruptive little git. One of the other players in the middle of a delicate negotiation and you are outraged to not be the center of attention? Yell out that you farted really loud!
Or is the party trying to avoid a confrontation with an army and are attempting to sneak around? Little did they know that you love chicken. Leroy Jenkins!
All bad behavior can be attributed to being bored, which is good roleplaying!

Fixed the description on Kender's view of theft. Remember though, when you steal from the party or important NPCs, its not your fault. Its just what your character would have done.

And that's the cherry on this crap sundae. If the rest of the party gets fed up with your disruptive, thieving antics, then they are bad roleplayers cuz everyone loves the Kender.

TLDR version: No one cares about Tasslehoff. The game tells you to play Kender as a Chaotic Stupid jerk.

Yep, this is exactly what I was talking about, thanks for the additional quotes.

The fact that everyone supposedly love Kender seems rather Sueish to me, but whatever.

[Zanos]

The fact that everyone supposedly love Kender seems rather Sueish to me, but whatever.
Yeah, that's pretty much the final nail in the coffin. If you make a race that's absolute garbage nobody really cares if the setting admits it and permits other characters to hate them for being gits, it's only when you tell people they're explicitly closed minded for hating garbage that you invoke ire.

[Fouredged Sword]

Yep, this is exactly what I was talking about, thanks for the additional quotes.

The fact that everyone supposedly love Kender seems rather Sueish to me, but whatever.

Rorex is litterally blessing them to keep them from being slaughted.

[Gnaeus]

I would kill the Kender as soon as possible. If the kinder was a PC I would kill the Kender as soon as possible and hold a grudge against the Kender's player. If I was DM and for some reason couldn't massively overkill the Kender, I would strip spells from any Divine caster of any alignment that didn't kill the Kender, and probably never give them back unless he died by their hand.

[Kantolin]

But here's the kicker: the OP didn't specify if the Kender in question was a PC or an NPC. I was presuming an NPC based on the fact that it is the more likely scenario, but it could just as easily be a fellow party member with a personal side quest.

You know, that actually would change things... a little.

Since that puts a personal aspect on things, and thus a bit more of a selfish aspect on things too. So if I'm playing a 'Meh, whatever gets me paid' or 'Meh, whatever gets me to the [goal of the game/character]' in general...

...well, uh, then it depends a lot on how that /particular/ Kender has been acting in advance.

If that particular Kender is a thief, but then is generally positive and tries to help and is categorically 'not a jerk', then most of my characters would be more okay with this ritual.

If that particular kender is a giant jerk in the 'Sorry I'm a kender you have to let me get away with this', then heck no, your race is apparently a race of jerks go away.

I mean don't get me wrong, it's then possible (And probable in several cases) that I could have a big picture character of 'Just because /this/ Kender is [this way] doesn't mean other kender won't be [that way]', and the aformentioned logistics, but a PC Kender I've been traveling with for awhile is likely to color opinions about her race, whether or not that is a justified reaction.

I mean, if the character was say a dwarf, and was a giant jerk to everyone and never was positive and then tried to get more dwarves around, a good chunk of people would say 'no, screw you, you're a jerk and nobody wants more jerks around' in absence of reason to believe otherwise. Or a human. So long as 'this is the only [race] you've ever seen', they have great incentive to be paragons of friendliness. See also: Diplomats. ;)

The one last catch:


All bad behavior can be attributed to being bored, which is good roleplaying!

Really, this is the crutch of it. I've played in games with kenders who do not carefully go out of their way to wreck everyone else's fun, and thus I'm more inclined to have a middle ground than people who haven't.

I mean, I rather find it annoying that kenders encourage bad play, but a player is never /forced/ to wreck everyone's fun unless the DM makes them. You can be a kender and talk about shiny rocks and silvery baubles and how does this water clock even work without stealing the wizard's spell component pouch mid fight or something. It was entertaining when we found a crown of brilliance, the GM described it gloriously, and everyone stared for a moment then the cold hearted mercenary character picked it up and just handed it to the Kender with a 'this is clearly yours' in a moment of awesome, haha.

You can even have a scene where the kender just ends up with a gem with a soul in it, and that leads to a lot of plot stuff happening, which itself leads to the kender risking his life to try to get the party out of the hole he indirectly put them in, and that can be neat just like when orcs attack your party and were going to let people go with a beating but someone elected to play an elf in orc country so now they're going to eat the prisoners and thus the stakes are risen due to no fault of the elf.

But you can also have scenes where the kender steals your moneypouch because lol they're kender, and they then go to a store and somehow get enough understanding of property to buy magic items /they/ want from your money, and I've also played with /those/ kender, and that's just frustrating and the real reason why people don't like kender. Bad players.

So bah.
Bah I say!

[Tainted_Scholar]

...well, uh, then it depends a lot on how that /particular/ Kender has been acting in advance.

The Kender is going to be acting exactly the way the Dragonlance Campaign Setting entry describes them.

[tomandtish]

Just a question, if you came across the last living Kender in a campaign, what would you do? The Kender in question is trying to do some sort of ritual that will bring back over a million Kender, and she tells you this upon meeting you.

I would take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.


My understanding is that kender are kleptos, which makes their theivery compulsive. They can't choose not to steal to improve their larger agenda because they largely lack agenda. They take pleasure in the act of "borrowing", but kleptomaniacs are by definition lacking self control. While you could make a deal with a fiend, demonstrating they have self control, even if they only have evil motivations, kender might agree not to steal, but they will not be capable of stopping themselves.

It's even a little more than that, since your average kleptomaniac is aware they are stealing. When done right, Kender usually aren't even aware they are pocketing the things they pocket.

They pick up the old book. It looks interesting. Then this other thing looks interesting, so they go to put down the book. It ends up in their pouch, but as far as they remember they put it back on the table. Tanis's ring slips off his finger into my hand when I shook hands with him? I'll have to give it back to him (but later, because we're busy right now).

Remember two things: One, the majority of stuff Tas had in his pouches he had no idea how it got there. Two: Any time he was written as consciously choosing to take something from someone (rod of time travel from Cameron, the protection amulet from Tanis), he always knew he was doing something they wouldn't approve of, and felt bad about it, but was doing it (or believed he was) for their own good.

On the rare occasions I ran Krynn games, Kender PCs were usually TOLD what had ended up in their pouches at the end of the day. Usually minor stuff of no significance. If it was anything that could have impact on another PC, I'd roll the checks to see if it was noticed when it happened.

So the end of the day might be "Hmm.. You have a letter in your pouch that looks like it was written by Tainted Scholar's wife, a really shiny rock (the flashy but relatively worthless gem they picked up the day before), and a vial of Grimjaw's hangover potion".

[Kantolin]

The Kender is going to be acting exactly the way the Dragonlance Campaign Setting entry describes them.

Well like... okay, I'm getting the 'Kender are always bad!' vibe, and sure. But to also use Zanos' link and focus on some negative stuff...



While kender have a modicum of instinct for self-preservation (...) their propensity to act on impulse at the expense of common sense makes them reckless in dangerous situations


Reckless in dangerous situations? We /have/ a barbarian in the party that is more likely to be reckless in a dangerous situation in a way that is much more problematic than a kender.



Boredom is the kender's arch-nemesis, to be conquered at any cost. It is said that nothing on Krynn is as dangerous as a bored kender or as terrifying as hearing a kender say, "Oops!"."


Half the people I have ever played with do things because they are bored. 'Hey I'm bored, let's go see if there are any dungeons to delve' is fine.



"The unquenchable curiosity of kender drives them to investigate everything - including other people's personal possessions. Kender appropriate absolutely anything that catches their eye. Physical boundaries of notions of privacy are both alien concepts to them, while the monetary value of an object means nothing to them. (...) Kender are never happier than when their hands are in the pockets, pouches, or backpacks of those around them."


Back in camp when we first met three months ago, the kender went up to the wizard while holding (and thus having stolen) his spell component pouch and asked, 'Why do you have a bag full of bat poo?' and got a very stern explanation that that pouch is really important, leave it alone. He has since asked a lot of questions about it but never had it vanish again since the wizard made a huge deal out of it for whatever reason, but wizards are hard to understand.

Often the kender has more gems and coins than he should since they're sparkly, but he gives them back if commented since he doesn't have the ownership aspect of it either, so we just keep track of our money. Heck, it's awesome that when loot shows up, he doesn't want the +2 bow, he wants the music box made entirely of gems that changes its picture every time you activate it.

Once he stole something from the governor, that sucked almost as much as when the always sarcastic human ranger mouthed off in front of the mayor about his daughter. Fortunately our paladin managed to talk us out of both situations with a severe apology, and the kender went out of his way to try to make it up to us after that.

Once he stole the lich's phylactery without even knowing he did it. That rocked.


"Kender do not consider such appropriation to be thievery as others understand it (kender are as contemptuous of thieves as the next person). Kender term this "handling" or "borrowing" (...) Kender are at best bemused and at worst outraged at being accused of theft or pick-pocketing. Kender always give perfectly reasonable explanations for just about every accusation leveled at them."

And like... I don't even consider this /bad/, as we've already established personal space problems. This means that the paladin (or wizard in the above scenario) can patiently explain, 'This is /really important/ for us to do things. It is absolutely critical that the triforce/spell component pouch/whatever remains safe, and that means it can't suddenly end up somewhere else, and if you take it from him /that is stealing/'. or something. And hey, 'let us go attack the bandits they're bandits' still works.

And I haven't even gotten to positive things like this:


"Kender live a carefree existence where every new day is a day of wonderful secrets just waiting to be discovered. Their most defining character traits are their insatiable curiosity and their utter fearlessness, which makes for a frightening combination. All dark caves need exploring, all locked doors need opening, and all chests hide something interesting."

Which is terrific for an adventurer and is definitely a party member I could get behind over Mr. cold hearted mercenary who don't care about nobody over there.

Not to mention this:



"Kender (...) can feel fear for their friends, and this has often led to the tempering of kender impulses."


I mean... 'I've talked to our kender. Once, almost a decade ago now, he was in another group that was trying to save the world from Lich the Vampire, and he picked the worst possible moment to borrow the cleric's shiny golden holy symbol, and the cleric died. He then has spent the past decade going from that cleric's church to church and doing everything he can for them and now is practically phobic of stealing holy symbols, which caused some problems when we were fighting Beholder the Vampire cleric. Really, he's a good guy."

So.


The Kender is going to be acting exactly the way the Dragonlance Campaign Setting entry describes them.

I stand by my previous point - does this mean 'the kender is being a jerk'? Since a lot of people who play kender are huge jerks, and that's my biggest problem with them. If the kender is being a jerk then meh, many of my characters would say screw that.

But if the kender is not being a jerk, then hey.

Both of these are perfectly reasonable within the Dragonlance Campaign setting.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Well like... okay, I'm getting the 'Kender are always bad!' vibe, and sure. But to also use Zanos' link and focus on some negative stuff...

That's how the book describes them.


Reckless in dangerous situations? We /have/ a barbarian in the party that is more likely to be reckless in a dangerous situation in a way that is much more problematic than a kender.

How? I should point out that the game doesn't encourage Barbarians to behave in a stupid, reckless, fashion.


Half the people I have ever played with do things because they are bored. 'Hey I'm bored, let's go see if there are any dungeons to delve' is fine.

The book calls bored Kender dangerous; that implies things like flipping switches that no one knows the function of.


Back in camp when we first met three months ago, the kender went up to the wizard while holding (and thus having stolen) his spell component pouch and asked, 'Why do you have a bag full of bat poo?' and got a very stern explanation that that pouch is really important, leave it alone. He has since asked a lot of questions about it but never had it vanish again since the wizard made a huge deal out of it for whatever reason, but wizards are hard to understand.


Often the kender has more gems and coins than he should since they're sparkly, but he gives them back if commented since he doesn't have the ownership aspect of it either, so we just keep track of our money. Heck, it's awesome that when loot shows up, he doesn't want the +2 bow, he wants the music box made entirely of gems that changes its picture every time you activate it.

Again, the book claims that Kender don't understand personal space and take peoples' stuff.


Once he stole something from the governor, that sucked almost as much as when the always sarcastic human ranger mouthed off in front of the mayor about his daughter. Fortunately our paladin managed to talk us out of both situations with a severe apology, and the kender went out of his way to try to make it up to us after that.

That still sounds disruptive.


Once he stole the lich's phylactery without even knowing he did it. That rocked.

A different race couldn't do this, because?


And like... I don't even consider this /bad/, as we've already established personal space problems. This means that the paladin (or wizard in the above scenario) can patiently explain, 'This is /really important/ for us to do things. It is absolutely critical that the triforce/spell component pouch/whatever remains safe, and that means it can't suddenly end up somewhere else, and if you take it from him /that is stealing/'. or something. And hey, 'let us go attack the bandits they're bandits' still works.

The book still implies that the Kender won't stop. Also, that's still annoying, since they're making up excuses for how they didn't just steal the Paladin's Holy Avenger.


And I haven't even gotten to positive things like this:



Which is terrific for an adventurer and is definitely a party member I could get behind over Mr. cold hearted mercenary who don't care about nobody over there.

I'm reminded of the phrase, "curiosity killed the cat"...


Not to mention this:



I mean... 'I've talked to our kender. Once, almost a decade ago now, he was in another group that was trying to save the world from Lich the Vampire, and he picked the worst possible moment to borrow the cleric's shiny golden holy symbol, and the cleric died. He then has spent the past decade going from that cleric's church to church and doing everything he can for them and now is practically phobic of stealing holy symbols, which caused some problems when we were fighting Beholder the Vampire cleric. Really, he's a good guy."

So.



I stand by my previous point - does this mean 'the kender is being a jerk'? Since a lot of people who play kender are huge jerks, and that's my biggest problem with them. If the kender is being a jerk then meh, many of my characters would say screw that.

But if the kender is not being a jerk, then hey.

Both of these are perfectly reasonable within the Dragonlance Campaign setting.

The Dragonlance Campaign setting encourages bad roleplaying; you have to ignore the text to get a character that isn't obnoxious.

[Waker]

Reckless in dangerous situations? We /have/ a barbarian in the party that is more likely to be reckless in a dangerous situation in a way that is much more problematic than a kender.
As ColorBlindNinja pointed out, there isn't anything that requires Barbarians to be crazy dumb-dumbs though. The biggest difference in this comparison however is the fact that as a race, Kender are described as reckless. That is a baseline expectation for an entire people. Excluding outliers, every Kender you meet is impulsive and without fear.


Half the people I have ever played with do things because they are bored. 'Hey I'm bored, let's go see if there are any dungeons to delve' is fine.
We're not talking about a group of adventurers sitting around and saying "I'm bored, what do you wanna do?"
Saying "Let's go adventuring" isn't going to inspire terror in a group of adventurers. When they talk about Kender's doing anything to conquer boredom, they mean anything. Tripping a trap, feeding a comrade a potion to "see what it does", alerting the enemy to your presence. Whatever!


Often the kender has more gems and coins than he should since they're sparkly, but he gives them back if commented since he doesn't have the ownership aspect of it either, so we just keep track of our money. Heck, it's awesome that when loot shows up, he doesn't want the +2 bow, he wants the music box made entirely of gems that changes its picture every time you activate it.
That sounds more like you're playing with a jackdaw.

As for all of the "positive" notes you made, none of that pertains to the Kender. Those are specific character traits for someone in your group. Its good that you played with someone who managed to not be a jerk about it, but that doesn't change the fact that the racial description greatly encourages jerks to be jerks and hide behind the aegis of roleplaying.

[Svata]

What's up with all these people playing Devil's Advocate here? Hell already has a lawyer and his name is Red Fel.

Hell has lots of lawyers. Red Fel gives them lessons.

[Waker]

Hell has lots of lawyers. Red Fel gives them lessons.

Yeah, but he's The Devil's Advocate. Very prestigious.

[Sagetim]

That seems unlikely, given the use of the phrase "communist state". In any case, my arguments apply to all variants of communal living, barring the extremely rare Vow of Poverty-style communes. Nobody likes it when, say, the hinges for the new front door go missing because some random passer-by decided they were shiny and good for taking. Property of all they may be, these hinges still have "proper and practical use", as I called it. That is, they're meant for the door, so bloody well use them for the door, don't go taking them places.

Now I kind of want to get Thinuan door hinges so that when they get stolen by Kender, they can get soul trapped in some door hinges for having stolen them. Remember, as long as the item isn't destroyed, the soul remains trapped, so as long as the door hinges get installed somewhere, that soul is trapped. Might even be worth it to have Thinuan nails (since screws are rather more involved to remove, and even with the way Kender are written, I find it unlikely that their idle hands of stealing would do particularly complex and work intense tasks to get at things).

On that note, if you make Thinuan disks, arcane mark them, cover them in gold, adjust the weight with magic, nystul's magic aura them to no longer register as magic, and then spend those 'gold coins' as regular currency, could you use that to soul trap people who die with the money on their person? Could you maybe attach a contingent spell to the gold so that it teleports back to you once it has a soul inside?

Edit: Ya'll might want to stop mentioning him by name and exclusive prestige class title before you summon him to the thread.

[Kantolin]

I'm a little mind boggled by half of these responses but hey, let's go.


That's how the book describes them.

The book does not say 'Kender are bad'.


How? I should point out that the game doesn't encourage Barbarians to behave in a stupid, reckless, fashion.


From the frozen wastes of the north and the hellish jungles of the south come brave, even reckless, warriors. Civilized people call them barbarians or berserkers and suspect them of mayhem, impiety, and atrocities.

In a rage, a barbarian gains phenomenal strength and durability but becomes reckless

Not to mention, 'the barbarian is reckless' is pretty dang common of a trope.


The book calls bored Kender dangerous; that implies things like flipping switches that no one knows the function of.

Nowhere does it say 'Kender flip switches no one knows the function of'. They /can/, I suppose, but so can other things.


Again, the book claims that Kender don't understand personal space and take peoples' stuff.

The book also says you can talk to them, you can explain things to them, and they can keep their tendencies in check, which I noted.

...and overall, um, what did your response have to do with the paragraph you quoted? Are you saying 'this paragraph cannot happen'? It is unreasonable?


That still sounds disruptive.

Yeah, human rangers can be pretty douchey?

Anywho, this was pointing out 'a lot of ways where this could go positively for the party'. Like, how is 'And the kender, after making a mistake, is trying his best to make up for it' bad? How is that a bad place for a Kender to be, or a bad Kender idea?


A different race couldn't do this, because?

A different race could totally do this. Being party-friendly is not unique to Kender. Although the Kender's borrowing ability being weaponized could be pretty neat.


The book still implies that the Kender won't stop. Also, that's still annoying, since they're making up excuses for how they didn't just steal the Paladin's Holy Avenger.

You are stating things like 'Why wouldn't the Kender specifically go out of his way to steal the most obnoxious things to cause maximum party strife'. Nowhere in the book does it say, 'A kender must focus on causing maximum party strife'. It in fact is suggested that they focus more on shiny baubles and stones and stuff, and then is also suggested that you can talk them into and out of things. Where are you getting your 'The Kender is required to steal the Paladin's holy avenger'?

And even if the Kender were to for some reason specifically focus on trying to steal specifically things that cause problems, you can talk to them about it, and they can 'curb their tendencies' and realize that is off limits because it is important.


I'm reminded of the phrase, "curiosity killed the cat"...

As both a DM and a player, I would much rather people who were curious and willing to go do things, than the other cold hearted mercenary extreme.

This is, however, an opinion. So hey - either way, we're still in 'It's fine'.


The Dragonlance Campaign setting encourages bad roleplaying;

Is that a counter to the text you quoted? The text you quoted is totally a good character that doesn't ignore the text and fits the game, and in fact includes plot hooks.

I mean. Yes, people often play kender as though they /must/ consciously steal holy avengers and stuff, but it's not too hard to get a kender to work fine in a party. I've given several examples of this that were not addressed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


As ColorBlindNinja pointed out, there isn't anything that requires Barbarians to be crazy dumb-dumbs though.

It does.


The biggest difference in this comparison however is the fact that as a race, Kender are described as reckless

People deal with barbarians all the time. 'Reckless' does not mean 'Not party friendly' nor does it mean even 'difficult to work with'.


When they talk about Kender's doing anything to conquer boredom, they mean anything. Tripping a trap, feeding a comrade a potion to "see what it does", alerting the enemy to your presence. Whatever!

Wat.

Nowhere in the book does it say 'Kender /must/ cause strife'. I have given several character ideas for a Kender that isn't problematic. Heck, several of them are for Kender that /were/ problematic in backstory and are pretty much done with that now. Totally fitting with the lore and everything.


As for all of the "positive" notes you made, none of that pertains to the Kender.

Wat. 'Here is an example of a couple kender ideas that could fit fine and not be a jerk' 'Yeah but those don't matter'.


Its good that you played with someone who managed to not be a jerk about it, but that doesn't change the fact that the racial description greatly encourages jerks to be jerks and hide behind the aegis of roleplaying.

I commented, 'It is annoying that people take kender and use it to mean 'I must be a jerk'. It doesn't have to be, simply because 'that is not okay', but hey. That was totally part of my complaint.

But I mean, 'This character acts like it says in the campaign book', look here are several examples of that. If you want I can give an example of a way you can play a 'whatever' that would not be okay that fits in with the game's lore, I guess? O_o That doesn't seem helpful to any circumstance.

[Tipsy_Pooka]

Kender are to D&D what Jar Jar Binks is to the Star Wars universe...

[Pleh]

I think Pleh was thinking of more some kind of shared commune, rather than communism.


That seems unlikely, given the use of the phrase "communist state". In any case, my arguments apply to all variants of communal living, barring the extremely rare Vow of Poverty-style communes. Nobody likes it when, say, the hinges for the new front door go missing because some random passer-by decided they were shiny and good for taking. Property of all they may be, these hinges still have "proper and practical use", as I called it. That is, they're meant for the door, so bloody well use them for the door, don't go taking them places.

I believe I specified a PURELY communist state, which was meant to represent a ficticious level of communism not normally attainable in real world practices.

So yeah, VoP communal living is another way to describe it.

My point was that if there is any society they are not detrimental to, then I have disproven the notion that they are detrimental to the fundamental concept of society.

I can make the same argument about door hinges. Not everyone uses 'em.

[Dancingdeath]

Kender do not inherently seek to steal the most disruptive item in the room. And they don't seek to cause strife. Quite the opposite in face as they're very friendly and loving creatures. I've always played them as taking stuff the need. Sometimes stuff they just like or think is pretty.

If you've seen them played this way that's more the player rolling the dice behind them than the race they're playing seeking to sow dissent.

But these days it seems that it's more cool to be a trend hating hipster tool than to try to get along so maybe it's a generational thing. And the most messed up thing is that the first rule of hipster club is that you can never admit to being a member of hipster club. Even on pain of death.

[ExLibrisMortis]

[...] meant to represent a ficticious level of communism not normally attainable in real world practices.

[...] the notion that they are detrimental to the fundamental concept of society.
You've basically just admitted that any society kender are not detrimental to, is unattainable. Funny how that confirms that kender are detrimental to the fundamental concept of society.


(also: positing that "unattainable ultra-communism" is rather spurious, as you're supposing you can extrapolate some "degree of communism" beyond the maximum that can exist in reality. Political/economical ideology doesn't work like that)

[Waker]

I'm beginning to repeat myself, so I think I'm gonna stop posting here soon.

Nowhere does it say 'Kender flip switches no one knows the function of'. They /can/, I suppose, but so can other things.
Wat.
Nowhere in the book does it say 'Kender /must/ cause strife'. I have given several character ideas for a Kender that isn't problematic. Heck, several of them are for Kender that /were/ problematic in backstory and are pretty much done with that now. Totally fitting with the lore and everything.

their propensity to act on impulse at the expense of common sense makes them reckless in dangerous situations...
Boredom is the kender's arch-nemesis, to be conquered at any cost. It is said that nothing on Krynn is as dangerous as a bored kender or as terrifying as hearing a kender say, "Oops!...
It's when a kender is bored that a kender is most feared. A kender who can't find anything interesting to do determines to do something interesting, often with dire consequences...
Hmm, it seems to say that a Kender can and will do disruptive stuff when they are bored. It flat out says it in fact. If the Kender has nothing to entertain themselves then they will do something that will make the situation worse, even at risk to themselves and the rest of the party. You can talk about how we are ignoring all the good traits of how the character can be played, but the default assumption for all Kender is that they will endanger the party to entertain themselves. If you decide "Hey, lets play a Kender who doesn't kill the party" then you are effectively just playing a normal Halfling.


A different race could totally do this. Being party-friendly is not unique to Kender. Although the Kender's borrowing ability being weaponized could be pretty neat.
Stealing is not totally unique to the Kender. Any race can do that and restrain themselves from annoying the party by stealing from them, or pushing the big, red button, or blurting out personal information because they could.



As both a DM and a player, I would much rather people who were curious and willing to go do things, than the other cold hearted mercenary extreme.
You keep bringing this up for some reason. And even though many of us would agree that a cold-hearted mercenary might be boring to RP, at least it doesn't interfere with the rest of the party having fun.


Wat. 'Here is an example of a couple kender ideas that could fit fine and not be a jerk' 'Yeah but those don't matter'.
I commented, 'It is annoying that people take kender and use it to mean 'I must be a jerk'. It doesn't have to be, simply because 'that is not okay', but hey. That was totally part of my complaint.
But I mean, 'This character acts like it says in the campaign book', look here are several examples of that. If you want I can give an example of a way you can play a 'whatever' that would not be okay that fits in with the game's lore, I guess? O_o That doesn't seem helpful to any circumstance.
As I said its good that you found someone who didn't play Kender as a jerk. My point however with all these quotes is that in order to properly play a Kender, you need to take the good with the bad. I'm not saying that a Kender is utterly without any good points, its simply that all of those other elements of recklessness, stealing, lying bring a level of problems that most of us wouldn't want to deal with. Obviously mechanics is a big factor of choosing a race, but the lore behind it is a big part of it. If we selectively ignore large portions of it, then why are we playing it?
Sure you could play it off that every Kender character is constantly being chastened by his party to stop stealing/lying/whatever but then you fall into a rut. If every since Kender needs to go through the same development then you are largely just playing the same character over and over. Even worse you need to make the rest of the party participate in the same routine.

[Lord Raziere]

You keep bringing this up for some reason. And even though many of us would agree that a cold-hearted mercenary might be boring to RP, at least it doesn't interfere with the rest of the party having fun.


I bet you I could make a cold-hearted mercenary interesting. Just gotta figure out why he is that way, without being edgelord #9999. could be a good challenge for creating a backstory eh?

[daremetoidareyo]

The ice fairies replaced his heart at birth. The donee fairy is a lighthearted mercenary

[Keltest]

I'm beginning to repeat myself, so I think I'm gonna stop posting here soon.


Hmm, it seems to say that a Kender can and will do disruptive stuff when they are bored. It flat out says it in fact. If the Kender has nothing to entertain themselves then they will do something that will make the situation worse, even at risk to themselves and the rest of the party. You can talk about how we are ignoring all the good traits of how the character can be played, but the default assumption for all Kender is that they will endanger the party to entertain themselves. If you decide "Hey, lets play a Kender who doesn't kill the party" then you are effectively just playing a normal Halfling.


Stealing is not totally unique to the Kender. Any race can do that and restrain themselves from annoying the party by stealing from them, or pushing the big, red button, or blurting out personal information because they could.



You keep bringing this up for some reason. And even though many of us would agree that a cold-hearted mercenary might be boring to RP, at least it doesn't interfere with the rest of the party having fun.


As I said its good that you found someone who didn't play Kender as a jerk. My point however with all these quotes is that in order to properly play a Kender, you need to take the good with the bad. I'm not saying that a Kender is utterly without any good points, its simply that all of those other elements of recklessness, stealing, lying bring a level of problems that most of us wouldn't want to deal with. Obviously mechanics is a big factor of choosing a race, but the lore behind it is a big part of it. If we selectively ignore large portions of it, then why are we playing it?
Sure you could play it off that every Kender character is constantly being chastened by his party to stop stealing/lying/whatever but then you fall into a rut. If every since Kender needs to go through the same development then you are largely just playing the same character over and over. Even worse you need to make the rest of the party participate in the same routine.


The problem I have with all of these arguments is that youre assuming that the kender is sitting there going "how can I most screw over the player with my fluff?" A bored kender looks for something to do. That something does not inherently endanger the party, it could just as easily be "chase a lizard through a field" as "Poke a sleeping minotaur to see what he does." A kender likes examining what his friends have, but he takes the most interesting looking object, which is more than likely some bauble the player didn't even realize they had, let alone would actually need.

And of course Kender regularly go through their things (like, whenever they sit down for a bit regularly) so unless youre having the Kender off by himself frequently, youre getting your stuff back well before it becomes a problem that it is missing.

[Waker]

The problem I have with all of these arguments is that youre assuming that the kender is sitting there going "how can I most screw over the player with my fluff?" A bored kender looks for something to do. That something does not inherently endanger the party, it could just as easily be "chase a lizard through a field" as "Poke a sleeping minotaur to see what he does." A kender likes examining what his friends have, but he takes the most interesting looking object, which is more than likely some bauble the player didn't even realize they had, let alone would actually need.

And of course Kender regularly go through their things (like, whenever they sit down for a bit regularly) so unless youre having the Kender off by himself frequently, youre getting your stuff back well before it becomes a problem that it is missing.

The problem I have this these arguments is that people overlook the descriptions where people in Krynn regard a bored Kender as incredibly dangerous and imply that all a bored Kender would do is sniff flowers and draw pictures with crayons. The reason people assume the worst of Kender, is because their own racial descriptions tell us to.

[Florian]

@ExLibrisMortis:

Nah. This is just what happens when all we have is a good/evil scale and we meet something that is neutral. Basic reflex is to judge something that "isn´t good" to be "equal to evil".

For us, "ownership" = good, "theft" = evil.

That scale fails to directly translate to a race that doesn´t know/understand/accept both concepts, ownership and theft.

[Keltest]

The problem I have this these arguments is that people overlook the descriptions where people in Krynn regard a bored Kender as incredibly dangerous and imply that all a bored Kender would do is sniff flowers and draw pictures with crayons. The reason people assume the worst of Kender, is because their own racial descriptions tell us to.

As has been pointed out, the book doesn't actually say "All kender must live up to the worst racial stereotypes of their kind, actively conspiring to annoy the party and inconvenience them in any way possible." Unless you are dumb enough to pitch camp next to a sleeping minotaur, finding one and waking him up is unlikely to be a Kender's first resort to alleviate boredom. Unless youre ignorant enough to set up camp on top of an active trap (and even if you are, really) a kender is more likely to see if they can disarm the trap and learn how it works than to trigger it to see an explosion or whatever they think will happen. Unless the only thing you keep in your pocket is the Plot Token Of Interesting Appearance Which Must Be Kept On Your Person At All Times, theyre unlikely to mess with your important equipment.

[Pleh]

You've basically just admitted that any society kender are not detrimental to, is unattainable. Funny how that confirms that kender are detrimental to the fundamental concept of society.

(also: positing that "unattainable ultra-communism" is rather spurious, as you're supposing you can extrapolate some "degree of communism" beyond the maximum that can exist in reality. Political/economical ideology doesn't work like that)

Yes, thankfully we are talking about magic worlds and fictional races capable of what humans aren't (and fictional humans capable of what real humans aren't).

Unattainable to us in the real world, sure, but thankfully kender don't exist in our reality (or they are so well concealed to effectively not exist).

But uttainable utopian (as well as unsustainable distopian) societies are a hallmark of fantasy. Some games aim for greater historical accuracy and versimilitude, while others just go full tippyverse.

Or perhaps the traditional tolkien inspired mythos were elves can be super humanly good.

The existence of the kender itself proves the world fantastic enough to support equally fantastic societies.

[ColorBlindNinja]

I'm a little mind boggled by half of these responses but hey, let's go.


The book does not say 'Kender are bad'.

No, the book claims that everyone loves Kender, despite a large number of players despising them. That's far worse.



Not to mention, 'the barbarian is reckless' is pretty dang common of a trope.

Reckless in this context sounds like charging the enemy head on. I should also point out that quite a few people dislike Frenzied Berserkers because they're reckless.


Nowhere does it say 'Kender flip switches no one knows the function of'. They /can/, I suppose, but so can other things.




their propensity to act on impulse at the expense of common sense makes them reckless in dangerous situations - a volatile addition to addition to any adventuring party. Boredom is the kender's arch-nemesis, to be conquered at any cost. It is said that nothing on Krynn is as dangerous as a bored kender or as terrifying as hearing a kender say, "Oops!

I'd say messing with unknown switches is totally in character for Kender.


The book also says you can talk to them, you can explain things to them, and they can keep their tendencies in check, which I noted.

Can you quote some text to back that up?


...and overall, um, what did your response have to do with the paragraph you quoted? Are you saying 'this paragraph cannot happen'? It is unreasonable?

Kender will still peoples' stuff; the text is clear on that.




Kender appropriate absolutely anything that catches their eye. Physical boundaries of notions of privacy are both alien concepts to them, while the monetary value of an object means nothing to them.


Kender are never happier than when their hands are in the pockets, pouches, or backpacks of those around them.

Any character played this way will annoy players at the table.


Yeah, human rangers can be pretty douchey?

Does the fluff for human Rangers encourage players to play them like that?


Anywho, this was pointing out 'a lot of ways where this could go positively for the party'. Like, how is 'And the kender, after making a mistake, is trying his best to make up for it' bad? How is that a bad place for a Kender to be, or a bad Kender idea?

Again, if the fluff for Kender was played straight, the resulting character would be infuriating.


A different race could totally do this. Being party-friendly is not unique to Kender. Although the Kender's borrowing ability being weaponized could be pretty neat.

So how is this a point in their favor?


You are stating things like 'Why wouldn't the Kender specifically go out of his way to steal the most obnoxious things to cause maximum party strife'. Nowhere in the book does it say, 'A kender must focus on causing maximum party strife'. It in fact is suggested that they focus more on shiny baubles and stones and stuff, and then is also suggested that you can talk them into and out of things. Where are you getting your 'The Kender is required to steal the Paladin's holy avenger'?

Kender steal things; it's only a matter of time before they take something vital.


And even if the Kender were to for some reason specifically focus on trying to steal specifically things that cause problems, you can talk to them about it, and they can 'curb their tendencies' and realize that is off limits because it is important.

Again, can you quote some text to support this claim? Because the closest I can find is, "they can feel fear for their friends, and this has often led to the tempering of kender impulses." Which is one line in a sea of bad fluff.


As both a DM and a player, I would much rather people who were curious and willing to go do things, than the other cold hearted mercenary extreme.

Why?

Also:



their propensity to act on impulse at the expense of common sense makes them reckless in dangerous situations - a volatile addition to addition to any adventuring party. Boredom is the kender's arch-nemesis, to be conquered at any cost. It is said that nothing on Krynn is as dangerous as a bored kender or as terrifying as hearing a kender say, "Oops!

Repeated for emphasis.


So hey - either way, we're still in 'It's fine'.

Your opinion requires you to ignore the text.


Is that a counter to the text you quoted? The text you quoted is totally a good character that doesn't ignore the text and fits the game, and in fact includes plot hooks.

...



Kender appropriate absolutely anything that catches their eye. Physical boundaries of notions of privacy are both alien concepts to them, while the monetary value of an object means nothing to them.


Kender are never happier than when their hands are in the pockets, pouches, or backpacks of those around them.



Kender do not consider such appropriation to be thievery as others understand it (kender are as contemptuous of thieves as the next person). Kender term this "handling" or "borrowing"


Kender are at best bemused and at worst outraged at being accused of theft or pick-pocketing. Kender always give perfectly reasonable explanations for just about every accusation leveled at them.

Kender are kleptomaniacs who lie about their theft. How is this not annoying and disruptive?


I mean. Yes, people often play kender as though they /must/ consciously steal holy avengers and stuff, but it's not too hard to get a kender to work fine in a party. I've given several examples of this that were not addressed.

You have done no such thing. You have to ignore the Dragonlance Campaign Setting's description on Kender to reach your conclusion.

The book encourages bad roleplaying, and all of the worst Kender behaviors that people hate.



It does.

Not in a way that's disruptive.


People deal with barbarians all the time. 'Reckless' does not mean 'Not party friendly' nor does it mean even 'difficult to work with'.

Do I have to quote the bit about bored Kender being dangerous again?


Wat.

Nowhere in the book does it say 'Kender /must/ cause strife'. I have given several character ideas for a Kender that isn't problematic. Heck, several of them are for Kender that /were/ problematic in backstory and are pretty much done with that now. Totally fitting with the lore and everything.

Your character ideas ignore the text.

The fluff for Kender, if followed, will cause strife.


Wat. 'Here is an example of a couple kender ideas that could fit fine and not be a jerk' 'Yeah but those don't matter'.

The only matter if you admit that you have to ignore the book for them to work.


I commented, 'It is annoying that people take kender and use it to mean 'I must be a jerk'. It doesn't have to be, simply because 'that is not okay', but hey. That was totally part of my complaint.

The book encourages this sort of thing.


But I mean, 'This character acts like it says in the campaign book', look here are several examples of that. If you want I can give an example of a way you can play a 'whatever' that would not be okay that fits in with the game's lore, I guess? O_o That doesn't seem helpful to any circumstance.

Then admit that the book doesn't support your ideas for playing Kender in a non-disruptive fashion.

[Florian]

No, the book claims that everyone loves Kender, despite a large number of players despising them. That's far worse.

No, it just shows that you are a bad player and should be avoided.

I you can´t understand what the appeal of that specific setting and its elements is, but can only think in your own terms of fun, you have a very limited horizon.

[Kantolin]

Hmm, it seems to say that a Kender can and will do disruptive stuff when they are bored. It flat out says it in fact.

What it says is that, when Kender are bored, they will become determined to find something interesting to do, often with dire consequences.

You are taking that to mean 'will carefully plot how to screw over their party as much as they can', for some reason, despite the text not saying that.

And in fact with the overall racial text implying that kender tend to be innocent and carefree and not 'mwa ha ha how can I screw over my party as much as I can'.



If the Kender has nothing to entertain themselves then they will do something that will make the situation worse, even at risk to themselves and the rest of the party. You can talk about how we are ignoring all the good traits of how the character can be played, but the default assumption for all Kender is that they will endanger the party to entertain themselves.

Nowhere in there does it say 'even at risk to themselves and the rest of the party', that's a presumption you're interjecting in there. Nowhere in your quote does it say, 'A kender must endanger the party to entertain themselves', nor does it even say they /may/.

It is said that nothing on Krynn is as dangerous as a bored kender, which I suppose if taken literally could mean that 'Oh my gods, the kender is bored and that is objectively more dangerous than Takhisis herself who is also on Krynn' or something. And I mean...


Civilized people call them barbarians or berserkers and suspect them of mayhem, impiety, and atrocities.

That does not mean 'a barbarian must cause mayhem, impiety, and atrocities as often as they can to maximum detriment of the party' or something, and someone suggesting otherwise would cause many an eyeroll.


If you decide "Hey, lets play a Kender who doesn't kill the party" then you are effectively just playing a normal Halfling.

I've given several perfectly understandable kender character ideas that don't kill the party. Where and why are you reading 'Must kill the party' in the kender's description? Are my ideas non kendery? I can come up with a few more, those were listed offhand.



Stealing is not totally unique to the Kender. Any race can do that

This is absolutely true. I did not in any way mean to imply that being party-friendly was something unique to Kender, and no other race can be party-friendly, nor did I mean to imply that only kender are allowed to steal gems from liches. I apologize if I somehow made it seem like I thought as such.


You keep bringing this up for some reason.

Other people seem to have this strange opinion that 'Hey, let's go do something! Sure I'm interested in trying that!' is intrinsically bad of an opinion for a party member to have.


And even though many of us would agree that a cold-hearted mercenary might be boring to RP, at least it doesn't interfere with the rest of the party having fun.

If you've never had the 'Meh I don't care' wreck or at least harm a game night, then you are very fortunate. Earlier in the topic, lots of people were referring to 'edgelords' with some disdain, so it's certainly possible to play a cold-hearted mercenary in a way that interferes with the rest of the party having fun.


As I said its good that you found someone who didn't play Kender as a jerk. My point however with all these quotes is that in order to properly play a Kender, you need to take the good with the bad.

I kind of feel like this is a true point, and is not being given equal weight on your side. I gave an example of a positive-for-the-group character who, in fact, ended up with something from the governor in his pockets and got caught and caused some problems, and then reacted the way a good character does. Very much still a kender, still borrows things and is treated as such, but doesn't consciously go out of their way to make absolutely sure that the Paladin's holy avenger is not on the paladin when it's time to fight the boss.

(Heck, I could even tolerate a kender who taps the Paladin on the shoulder during the last 'Lich the Vampire is beyond this door' preparation and giving him his holy avenger when the paladin totally had it in the fight /in/ that room, although I find it extremely unlikely that a kender would end up borrowing that. Either way, 'look not causing party strife'!)

But for some reason it feels like you are insisting, 'Kender are exclusively the sum of their negative parts and there can be no positive to it' or something. And also that these negative parts involve carefully plotting 'how can I cause maximum harm to my party mwa ha ha', which makes as much sense as the party barbarian saying, 'Welp the book says I can't do boring things like guard duty, screw protecting the queen I'm gonna go run off and kill things recklessly'.

(Which is silly)


Sure you could play it off that every Kender character is constantly being chastened by his party to stop stealing/lying/whatever but then you fall into a rut. If every since Kender needs to go through the same development then you are largely just playing the same character over and over. Even worse you need to make the rest of the party participate in the same routine.

Oh pish posh, that's the 'all druids need to carefully explain why they're not frolicking through the woods' argument but applied to kender instead. There are tons of fun character ideas that you can play as a kender, just like there are tons of fun character ideas for pretty much every race. If anything, the race of 'I like to do new and exciting things' certainly doesn't lack for ideas on 'what does my character like to do'.

[Kantaki]

I really can't understand why Kender are so hated.
After all their description can be summarized in one word: Adventurer:smallamused:

[ColorBlindNinja]

No, it just shows that you are a bad player and should be avoided.

I you can´t understand what the appeal of that specific setting and its elements is, but can only think in your own terms of fun, you have a very limited horizon.

You really shouldn't make baseless assumptions about people, you'll be wrong less often.

I'm actually indifferent to Kender; the book claims that if you don't love them, you're a puppy-eating monster, regardless of how valid your objections are.

I take issue with that, particularly because it reeks of Mary Sue.

[Tainted_Scholar]

I really can't understand why Kender are so hated.
After all their description can be summarized in one word: Adventurer:smallamused:

I'm not sure if you're joking or not.

But yes, they can be summarized as adventurers; obnoxious, incompetent, and dangerous adventurers.

[Kantaki]

I'm not sure if you're joking or not.

I'm absolutely serious.


But yes, they can be summarized as adventurers; obnoxious, incompetent, and dangerous adventurers.

And that's a tautology.:smalltongue:

[Tainted_Scholar]

And that's a tautology.:smalltongue:

Are you saying that all adventurers are like that? Because that is completely untrue.

[Kantaki]

Are you saying that all adventurers are like that? Because that completely untrue.

I admit, it might be a slight exaggeration.:smallamused:

[Kantolin]

Whoops, doublepost because someone responded while I was posting, but this resulting edit is too long to fit into the previous post (and someone will likely post again while I am responding to this)

Edit: Turned out to not be a doublepost at all! Carry on. :P


No, the book claims that everyone loves Kender, despite a large number of players despising them.

This is, indeed, what the book says. Thus, pleasantly, if you play a kender you are less likely to have the guards shout, 'Quick kill it!' than if you were playing (say) an orc in most settings, since the book says that most of the people in the setting are comparably fond of kender.


Reckless in this context sounds like charging the enemy head on.

So now barbarians are allowed to show they are reckless by waiting patiently for there to be an enemy, and then charging that enemy, but kender are not allowed to show they are reckless by doing the same thing? Nowhere does it say 'A kender must attack the party as much as he can'.


I should also point out that quite a few people dislike Frenzied Berserkers because they're reckless.

Actually, quite a few people dislike frenzied berserkers because in their mechanics they have 'Make a roll or attack your teammates'. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say 'Ugh, it says Frenzied Berserkers have to be reckless, that ruins everything' when the problem is, 'Ugh, the Frenzied Berserker has to make a will save or attack his allies'.


I'd say messing with unknown switches is totally in character for Kender.

You could say that. I could say messing with unknown switches because the strange metal trap is something an uncultured barbarian has never seen before is totally in character for a barbarian.

Nowhere does it say 'A kender must immediately mess with unknown switches'. Heck, you can show being curious about unknown switches by going to the party leader and noting, 'Hey, there's a switch here and I'm not sure what it does'. They can show fear for their friends, and thus could also add, 'I kinda want to disarm it, but it might be connected to a fireball trap or something. Whadya think?'


Can you quote some text to back that up?

That... Kender can curb their tendencies for their friends? Here's one example from Zanos' link:


"Kender (...) can feel fear for their friends, and this has often led to the tempering of kender impulses."



Kender will still peoples' stuff; the text is clear on that.

I am not seeing what that has to do with my statement. My original statement being quoted to, as it's getting lost in the quote chain, was:

Back in camp when we first met three months ago, the kender went up to the wizard while holding (and thus having stolen) his spell component pouch and asked, 'Why do you have a bag full of bat poo?' and got a very stern explanation that that pouch is really important, leave it alone. He has since asked a lot of questions about it but never had it vanish again since the wizard made a huge deal out of it for whatever reason, but wizards are hard to understand.


Often the kender has more gems and coins than he should since they're sparkly, but he gives them back if commented since he doesn't have the ownership aspect of it either, so we just keep track of our money. Heck, it's awesome that when loot shows up, he doesn't want the +2 bow, he wants the music box made entirely of gems that changes its picture every time you activate it.

Are you suggesting 'this is unacceptable' or 'The book says a kender cannot do any of this' or something?



Any character played this way will annoy players at the table.

Again, if the fluff for Kender was played straight, the resulting character would be infuriating.

Wha? I've given you several examples of a kender played straight, who are or have stolen things and everything. It seems your general comment on 'why those characters do not work' is 'they do not screw over the party', despite the book not at all saying 'a kender must screw over their party mwa ha ha' or something.


So how is this a point in their favor?

I am, again, not trying to suggest that only Kender are allowed to be good party-friendly characters. I again apologize if I somehow made it seem like I am suggesting that, as it is not true. I'm simply pointing out that kender /can/ be good party-friendly characters, much like how barbarians can.


Kender steal things; it's only a matter of time before they take something vital.

Pish posh. Fighters stab things; it's only a matter of time before they stab something vital.


Which is one line in a sea of bad fluff.

Whether or not you're happy it's there or not does not negate it being there; it still proves my points. Also, Zanos' link in specific skips a lot, as to quote it:


I can still give them the benefit of the doubt since they're very clearly a rogue race and -- you know what? Let's just skip ahead to the horribleness.

So of course a lot of things in there are missing; this is by intent.


Why?

Generally speaking, people play D&D to do things. Granted, I cannot back that up with data as that is indeed an opinion, but a party that is eager to go do things is a lot easier for me to DM for than a party that sits on their hands and don't care 'bout nothin'.




Also:
Repeated for emphasis.

That quote says 'Kender hate being bored and like to do things'. You are somehow extrapolating, 'And thus a Kender must make things as miserable for his party as he can mwa ha ha' despite them being curious and inquisitive and not malicious and hateful. I'm not sure where your extrapolation comes from.


Your opinion requires you to ignore the text.

What on earth have I ignored? Heck, my character suggestions even /stole stuff/. One of them, in their backstory, stole something which was sufficiently problematic such that someone important to them died, and this haunts them, forming the impetus that drives their current plot. I clearly did not ignore 'Kender borrow things' nor did I ignore 'Kender do not like being bored', so what did I ignore?



You have done no such thing. You have to ignore the Dragonlance Campaign Setting's description on Kender to reach your conclusion.

Again, what is being ignored? Borrowing? As I didn't ignore that. 'Does not like being bored'? As I did not ignore that either.

I did ignore 'Must maliciously hurt the party as much as possible' as that is nowhere in the text.



Do I have to quote the bit about bored Kender being dangerous again?

If you are serious about 'Kender are more dangerous than the entire army of evil when bored' being something to take extremely literally, and summarily 'barbarians are not allowed to go on guard duty and must come from jungles or frozen wastes', then...

...actually that's amusing and can be worked with. I'd totally play a weaponized kender who only can quench his boredom in the blood of the [bad guys of the campaign]. :D

(Let alone this meaning that if a kender has an empty glass vial, and drops it, and says 'oops', that kender is suddenly the most dangerous thing in Krynn! Screw you, Takhisis, we've got a kender here!)


Then admit that the book doesn't support your ideas for playing Kender in a non-disruptive fashion.

Once again, I've yet to ignore anything - I've noted both borrowing and 'I don't like to be bored'. What, besides 'borrowing' (as I covered that) and besides 'I don't like to be bored' (as I covered that too) is there that's bothering you? Curiosity? As I've noted that too.

It is perfectly reasonable to make a kender druid who is fascinated by the various animals he meets and tries to befriend them, and loves seeing people with say dogs who treat their animals well as the humanoid-animal bond is the best thing, and they love to go adventuring so they can actually /see/ this 'polar bear' they were taught about, and they can occupy the bratty child prince that the party has to transport for /hours/ by talking about exciting new animal stories that absolutely keep the kid entranced.

You seem to argue that, because it is possible for a kender to be bored, the kender must then punch the polar bear or something, despite nothing in the text stating nor even implying that kender need to do that. Or needs to steal a metal sword that is far too big for the kender to even carry when what he's really interested in is the party ranger who does beautiful woodcarvings of various animals, and while the process isn't too exciting the ranger always lets the kender see or have the end result.

(An evil kender who has in fact seen every animal in Krynn and possibly on other planes and now has no more new animals to find joy in discovery, and thus takes to splicing animals together and created owlbears and chimera and the like, would then be a neat villain. And still could be playable in an appropriate campaign depending on how he worked mechanically, haha, so there's two ideas.)

[Tainted_Scholar]

I would just like to point out that Kender are outright described as volatile additions to a party and dangerous when bored. The first one means that Kender will cause your party trouble, that's what volatile means. The second means that, well they're dangerous. A bored Kender is dangerous to their party members. They will actively place the party in danger when bored.

[Keltest]

I would just like to point out that Kender are outright described as volatile additions to a party and dangerous when bored. The first one means that Kender will cause your party trouble, that's what volatile means. The second means that, well they're dangerous. A bored Kender is dangerous to their party members. They will actively place the party in danger when bored.

Volatile doesn't mean "causes trouble" at all. It means prone to unpredictability and rapid change. That can be beneficial or indifferent to many parties.

and taking "dangerous when bored" as literal has already been discussed.

[Tainted_Scholar]

Volatile doesn't mean "causes trouble" at all. It means prone to unpredictability and rapid change. That can be beneficial or indifferent to many parties.

vol·a·tile
ˈvälədl/Submit
adjective
2.
liable to change rapidly and unpredictably, especially for the worse.

Being volatile is a bad thing.

The other definition has to do with chemistry btw.


and taking "dangerous when bored" as literal has already been discussed.

Tell me then, how would you interpret "dangerous when bored"? Because the only interpretation I can think of is them being dangerous. There's no other way to interpret it, they are dangerous when bored, that's what it says.

[Kantolin]

I would just like to point out that Kender are outright described as volatile additions to a party and dangerous when bored. The first one means that Kender will cause your party trouble, that's what volatile means. The second means that, well they're dangerous. A bored Kender is dangerous to their party members. They will actively place the party in danger when bored.

Again, pish posh.


1.
evaporating rapidly; passing off readily in the form of vapor:
2.
tending or threatening to break out into open violence; explosive:
3.
changeable; mercurial; flighty:

Unless you are used to kenders slitting PC's throats or grah smashing them out of nowhere, which seems /particularly/ un-kender-like, then they're changeable and mercurial; we knew that. I dare say the same can be said of almost anybody who is chaotic, let alone 'a lot of people'.

I mean, I keep bringing up orcs since orcs generally cause way more problems for a party just by being orcs. This of course does not mean orcs need to show 'I am aggressive' by 'I maliciously cause as much problems for the party as I can mwa ha ha', as that's just as silly.

Just because bad players look at kender and see, 'Mwa ha ha, I can maliciously take what I want from the party and they can't do anything about it!' doesn't mean 'All kender must maliciously take what they want from the party, mwa ha ha'.

Edit: To source myself: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/volatile?s=t

I did avoid quoting definitions 4-7, three of which clearly don't fit (unless Kender are computers :P ), and fleeting/transient is a little weird when aimed at a person.

[ColorBlindNinja]

This is, indeed, what the book says. Thus, pleasantly, if you play a kender you are less likely to have the guards shout, 'Quick kill it!' than if you were playing (say) an orc in most settings, since the book says that most of the people in the setting are comparably fond of kender.

It still doesn't makes sense, as few would put up with their pick pocketing.


So now barbarians are allowed to show they are reckless by waiting patiently for there to be an enemy, and then charging that enemy, but kender are not allowed to show they are reckless by doing the same thing? Nowhere does it say 'A kender must attack the party as much as he can'.

Did you read the text I quoted? Bored Kender are dangerous to their companions. "Reckless" in this context is touching things you shouldn't.


Actually, quite a few people dislike frenzied berserkers because in their mechanics they have 'Make a roll or attack your teammates'. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say 'Ugh, it says Frenzied Berserkers have to be reckless, that ruins everything' when the problem is, 'Ugh, the Frenzied Berserker has to make a will save or attack his allies'.

That's what I meant by reckless.


You could say that. I could say messing with unknown switches because the strange metal trap is something an uncultured barbarian has never seen before is totally in character for a barbarian.

Any Barbarian that was stupid enough to touch unknown objects would have died long ago. Kender only survive because of plot armor.

Also, where does the text for Barbarians even hint that they would do such a thing? This is such a stretch it's a wonder your argument hasn't snapped in half.


Nowhere does it say 'A kender must immediately mess with unknown switches'. Heck, you can show being curious about unknown switches by going to the party leader and noting, 'Hey, there's a switch here and I'm not sure what it does'. They can show fear for their friends, and thus could also add, 'I kinda want to disarm it, but it might be connected to a fireball trap or something. Whadya think?'

That the book implies they wouldn't think twice about touching it?


That... Kender can curb their tendencies for their friends? Here's one example from Zanos' link:

One exception in a sea of bad fluff, doesn't magically fix all that's wrong with Kender.


I am not seeing what that has to do with my statement. My original statement being quoted to, as it's getting lost in the quote chain, was:

Are you suggesting 'this is unacceptable' or 'The book says a kender cannot do any of this' or something?

I'm suggesting that according to the book, they wouldn't stop stealing.


Wha? I've given you several examples of a kender played straight, who are or have stolen things and everything. It seems your general comment on 'why those characters do not work' is 'they do not screw over the party', despite the book not at all saying 'a kender must screw over their party mwa ha ha' or something.

And if they party loses patience with the Kender's behavior and kills him? Also, if the Kender continues to steal/touch everything, the party will be in hot water before they know it.


I am, again, not trying to suggest that only Kender are allowed to be good party-friendly characters. I again apologize if I somehow made it seem like I am suggesting that, as it is not true. I'm simply pointing out that kender /can/ be good party-friendly characters, much like how barbarians can.

You still have to ignore the text to reach that conclusion.


Pish posh. Fighters stab things; it's only a matter of time before they stab something vital.

Oh, look, a strawman! How does this relate to the fact that if the Kender keeps stealing his party's stuff, eventually it'll be something important?


Whether or not you're happy it's there or not does not negate it being there; it still proves my points. Also, Zanos' link in specific skips a lot, as to quote it So of course a lot of things in there are missing; this is by intent.

It doesn't fix the other problems that Kender have.




Generally speaking, people play D&D to do things. Granted, I cannot back that up with data as that is indeed an opinion, but a party that is eager to go do things is a lot easier for me to DM for than a party that sits on their hands and don't care 'bout nothin'.

Whatever floats your boat.



That quote says 'Kender hate being bored and like to do things'. You are somehow extrapolating, 'And thus a Kender must make things as miserable for his party as he can mwa ha ha' despite them being curious and inquisitive and not malicious and hateful. I'm not sure where your extrapolation comes from.

The fact that they're dangerous and hearing a Kender say "Oops!" is terrifying?


What on earth have I ignored? Heck, my character suggestions even /stole stuff/. One of them, in their backstory, stole something which was sufficiently problematic such that someone important to them died, and this haunts them, forming the impetus that drives their current plot. I clearly did not ignore 'Kender borrow things' nor did I ignore 'Kender do not like being bored', so what did I ignore?

Again, what is being ignored? Borrowing? As I didn't ignore that. 'Does not like being bored'? As I did not ignore that either.

I did ignore 'Must maliciously hurt the party as much as possible' as that is nowhere in the text.

I have quoted several lines of text, which you have dismissed without properly addressing.



If you are serious about 'Kender are more dangerous than the entire army of evil when bored' being something to take extremely literally, and summarily 'barbarians are not allowed to go on guard duty and must come from jungles or frozen wastes', then...(Let alone this meaning that if a kender has an empty glass vial, and drops it, and says 'oops', that kender is suddenly the most dangerous thing in Krynn! Screw you, Takhisis, we've got a kender here!)

Oh look, another Strawman! Barbarians fluff is far more flexible than Kenders'. There is nothing that implies that is the case, while the game calls bored Kender dangerous.



Once again, I've yet to ignore anything - I've noted both borrowing and 'I don't like to be bored'. What, besides 'borrowing' (as I covered that) and besides 'I don't like to be bored' (as I covered that too) is there that's bothering you? Curiosity? As I've noted that too.

No you haven't, you've made claims that don't support the text. Particularly about bored Kender being dangerous, and you just assume they won't steal anything important.


It is perfectly reasonable to make a kender druid who is fascinated by the various animals he meets and tries to befriend them, and loves seeing people with say dogs who treat their animals well as the humanoid-animal bond is the best thing, and they love to go adventuring so they can actually /see/ this 'polar bear' they were taught about, and they can occupy the bratty child prince that the party has to transport for /hours/ by talking about exciting new animal stories that absolutely keep the kid entranced.

And if you're being true to Kender's fluff, that Druid will steal people's possessions and touch things he shouldn't.


You seem to argue that, because it is possible for a kender to be bored, the kender must then punch the polar bear or something, despite nothing in the text stating nor even implying that kender need to do that. Or needs to steal a metal sword that is far too big for the kender to even carry when what he's really interested in is the party ranger who does beautiful woodcarvings of various animals, and while the process isn't too exciting the ranger always lets the kender see or have the end result.

I'm arguing based on what the text says. (Also, hello strawman!)


(An evil kender who has in fact seen every animal in Krynn and possibly on other planes and now has no more new animals to find joy in discovery, and thus takes to splicing animals together and created owlbears and chimera and the like, would then be a neat villain. And still could be playable in an appropriate campaign depending on how he worked mechanically, haha, so there's two ideas.)

According to the book, Kender are rarely evil.

If you cannot justify your arguments with the text of the Dragonlance Campaign Setting, don't bother responding.

If you do respond and dismiss the text I quoted again, I will not reply.

[Kantolin]

I have quoted several lines of text, which you have dismissed without properly addressing.

If you cannot justify your arguments with the text of the Dragonlance Campaign Setting, don't bother responding.

If you do respond and dismiss the text I quoted again, I will not reply.

Huh.

I can respond and am now working on a response, but uh...

/Have/ I ignored your points? I thought I was pretty thorough with quoting you and then addressing the parts of your post I quoted. If I have ignored your points then I do apologize - the few lines of yours that I did not quote were mostly repetitions that had been answered already.

Can you outline a part of your previous post that I ignored? If so, I'll be sure to address it more specifically, as my intent is not to ignore your points but to addresst hem.

[Tainted_Scholar]

Again, pish posh.



Unless you are used to kenders slitting PC's throats or grah smashing them out of nowhere, which seems /particularly/ un-kender-like, then they're changeable and mercurial; we knew that. I dare say the same can be said of almost anybody who is chaotic, let alone 'a lot of people'.

A. Nice Strawman.

B. The books says that they are volatile. That means that will cause problems.

And since non of the definitions you posted are super applicable to the context.

vol·a·tile
ˈvälədl/Submit
adjective

2.liable to change rapidly and unpredictably, especially for the worse.

If Kender are volatile additions to the party then that means that they will change things in the party for the worst.



I mean, I keep bringing up orcs since orcs generally cause way more problems for a party just by being orcs. This of course does not mean orcs need to show 'I am aggressive' by 'I maliciously cause as much problems for the party as I can mwa ha ha', as that's just as silly.

You do realise that orcs are evil right?

Not that it matters, since that has nothing to with Kender.

Actually address the text on Kender.


Just because bad players look at kender and see, 'Mwa ha ha, I can maliciously take what I want from the party and they can't do anything about it!' doesn't mean 'All kender must maliciously take what they want from the party, mwa ha ha'.

You aren't addressing the text.

Kender are dangerous to the party. The text says so.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Huh.

I can respond and am now working on a response, but uh...

/Have/ I ignored your points? I thought I was pretty thorough with quoting you and then addressing the parts of your post I quoted. If I have ignored your points then I do apologize - the few lines of yours that I did not quote were mostly repetitions that had been answered already.

Can you outline a part of your previous post that I ignored? If so, I'll be sure to address it more specifically, as my intent is not to ignore your points but to addresst hem.

I'm mostly talking about the book stating the Kender are dangerous when bored, while you claimed there's nothing to indicate their boredom will screw over the party.

I also mentioned that the book says that Kender steal their party's stuff, and you seem to assume that they won't take anything important.

[Waker]

What it says is that, when Kender are bored, they will become determined to find something interesting to do, often with dire consequences.
You are taking that to mean 'will carefully plot how to screw over their party as much as they can', for some reason, despite the text not saying that.
And in fact with the overall racial text implying that kender tend to be innocent and carefree and not 'mwa ha ha how can I screw over my party as much as I can'.
Except for the utter lack of anything I said about carefully planning anything. A jerk player can of course use this as justification for bad behavior, but even a good player is supposed to do stupid stuff. They don't sit there and consider, "What is the single most disruptive thing I can do?" A Kender is supposed to be the Id, the Deedee to the party's Dexter. They don't have to be malicious with their hijinks, but the lack of foresight and need to do something at all times results in bad stuff happening now and again. Sometimes it will be a harmless prank, but at times it will result in something more debilitating.


Nowhere in there does it say 'even at risk to themselves and the rest of the party', that's a presumption you're interjecting in there. Nowhere in your quote does it say, 'A kender must endanger the party to entertain themselves', nor does it even say they /may/.
It is said that nothing on Krynn is as dangerous as a bored kender, which I suppose if taken literally could mean that 'Oh my gods, the kender is bored and that is objectively more dangerous than Takhisis herself who is also on Krynn' or something. And I mean...
Once again, Kenders are by their very nature thrill-seekers. They don't sit around thinking, "This could result in harming myself or the party." Because the consequences of their actions are something they don't take into consideration.



That does not mean 'a barbarian must cause mayhem, impiety, and atrocities as often as they can to maximum detriment of the party' or something, and someone suggesting otherwise would cause many an eyeroll.
Fine if you are gonna keep trying to bleed this rock.

From the frozen wastes of the north and the hellish jungles of the south come brave, even reckless, warriors. Civilized people call them barbarians or berserkers and suspect them of mayhem, impiety, and atrocities...
At best, barbarians of chaotic alignment are free and expressive. At worst, they are thoughtlessly destructive...
In a rage, a barbarian gains phenomenal strength and durability but becomes reckless and less able to defend himself.
The first statement is fairly general. It describes them as "brave, even reckless" so a certain degree of impulse control could be assumed. The second statement of how civilized people view them it utterly worthless since it says "suggests", or in other words it's just stereotyping. Chaotic Barbarians can be thoughtlessly destructive, but Barbarians don't even have to be chaotic, merely unlawful. Plus any chaotic character can be destructive, so that is just another general statement. And the last bit is talking about how they are in a Rage, so some degree of recklessness is expected.


I've given several perfectly understandable kender character ideas that don't kill the party. Where and why are you reading 'Must kill the party' in the kender's description? Are my ideas non kendery? I can come up with a few more, those were listed offhand.

Originally Posted by "Dragonlance Campaign Setting
Kender are obsessively driven to kill the party at all times.
No, the Kender don't need to try to kill the party. But a lack of long-term thinking can lead to many inconveniences as they may lose the element of surprise in a fight or precious resources are wasted. There are tons of ways to hinder the party other than TPK.


But for some reason it feels like you are insisting, 'Kender are exclusively the sum of their negative parts and there can be no positive to it' or something. And also that these negative parts involve carefully plotting 'how can I cause maximum harm to my party mwa ha ha', which makes as much sense as the party barbarian saying, 'Welp the book says I can't do boring things like guard duty, screw protecting the queen I'm gonna go run off and kill things recklessly'.
I'm insisting that they negatives outweigh the positives, not that they have no positive features. I'm focusing on the negatives because those are the aspects that I have an issue with.


Oh pish posh, that's the 'all druids need to carefully explain why they're not frolicking through the woods' argument but applied to kender instead. There are tons of fun character ideas that you can play as a kender, just like there are tons of fun character ideas for pretty much every race. If anything, the race of 'I like to do new and exciting things' certainly doesn't lack for ideas on 'what does my character like to do'.
That is a spurious claim, because nothing says that druids are only found in the woods. Aside from the fact that Druids can be found in any biome, they have no prohibitions against travel. A more accurate comparison would be the the joke used in OotS where all Drow were actually chaotic good rebels fighting against their oppressive society.

[Kantolin]

A. Nice Strawman.

You are connecting 'Kender are a volatile addition to a party' and 'nothing is as dangerous as a bored kender' to mean 'Kender are dangerous to the party'.

I do not see how my response is a straw man, as your conclusion seems strange. Kender don't grash smash their party or something.

I suppose to say it without an example: You are being far, far too literal on 'nothing is as dangerous as a bored kender'. If taken anything near that literally, then I will totally play a weaponized kender who only finds a solution to his boredom in the blood of the [enemies of the campaign]. If I say, "Man, nothing in Halo is more dangerous than Alice with a bazooka', nobody will take that /literally/.

It means 'Bored kender /do things/', not 'a kender must cause the party maximum danger'.


And since non of the definitions you posted are super applicable to the context.

What? 'Changeable' 'Mercurial' 'Flighty'.

Your response seems more like an argument that lawful good is 'gooder' than chaotic good or something along those lines. Where did your definition come from, anyway? Are there more options there that are being overlooked than 'Obviously they meant /this/'?


You do realise that orcs are evil right?
Not that it matters, since that has nothing to with Kender.

I was mentioning orcs as 'They are quite likely to cause way more problems than kender, but...'

I didn't go into too much detail since we're talking about kender here, and I /presumed/ my statements about orcs would be taken a face value. If necesary, however, I can give a pile of quotes from the half-orc description?


Kender are dangerous to the party. The text says so.

First of all, the text actually says:

"While kender have a modicum of instinct for self-preservation (...) their propensity to act on impulse at the expense of common sense makes them reckless in dangerous situations - a volatile addition to addition to any adventuring party.

That first of all does not say 'Kender are dangerous to the party'.

If in a dangerous situation, they have the propensity to act recklessly, which is just like barbarians who also have that in their description, which is used as an example as nobody says 'barbarians /must/ be dangerous to the party'.

Them being volatile additions could be said of pretty much anybody chaotic (or really 'just about anyone', frankly, but I'll say chaotic as that's more expressly likely).


I'm mostly talking about the book stating the Kender are dangerous when bored, while you claimed there's nothing to indicate their boredom will screw over the party.

I also mentioned that the book says that Kender steal their party's stuff, and you seem to assume that they won't take anything important.

Hm. To split them up...


I'm mostly talking about the book stating the Kender are dangerous when bored, while you claimed there's nothing to indicate their boredom will screw over the party.

First of all, I noted that you clearly cannot take this literally, as the text says:



It is said that nothing on Krynn is as dangerous as a bored kender or as terrifying as hearing a kender say, "Oops!"."


And taking that literally suggests 'Bored kender are more dangerous than Takhisis', which clearly isn't the case. It may be best to take that line as descriptive hyperbole to show 'Kender do not like being bored and take steps to not be bored'.

(Unless, I suppose, it /is/ the case, in which we get to weaponized kender which seems more than a little silly but hey)

Secondly, there are a ton of things a kender can do to alleviate being bored. Joining up with a group of adventurers to slay the evil Lich the Vampire can be one of these things. So is taking up juggling, or trying to help rectify past mistakes from their youth by helping out every church of [blah] they can and tirelessly struggling to help that church thrive. Or looking forward to the fact that the party has to take a boat to get to their next destination and they've never been on a boat. Or exploring the new town the group has come to.

To quote myself:

That quote says 'Kender hate being bored and like to do things'. You are somehow extrapolating, 'And thus a Kender must make things as miserable for his party as he can mwa ha ha' despite them being curious and inquisitive and not malicious and hateful. I'm not sure where your extrapolation comes from.

Now, it is of course /possible/ for a kender to decide to alleviate being bored by doing something like attacking the party or seeing how many of the party's belongings they can take before anyone notices or waiting for most of the party to be under a boulder trap and then triggering it, but a kender certainly doesn't /need/ to do any of those things anymore than the barbarian does.

(I'm noting the barbarian counterexample since the barbarian entry talks about the monotony of guard duty or other mundane tasks as not being things for barbarians to do, which is very similar to the kender and boredom. As it is silly to suggest that every barbarian must react a certain way, so is it for kender. I could use gnomes as another example of having flights of fancy, I just figure my point has been made.).


I also mentioned that the book says that Kender steal their party's stuff, and you seem to assume that they won't take anything important.

The book says that kender are fascinated by things. I absolutely covered their borrowing, several times. For some reason, you are stating that they /must/ take things that are important, and not that it's possible to talk to them about it. Or even that they at some point in their backstory stole things that were important, and got spoken to about it then, and thus are past that point of character development. I gave an example of a spell component pouch and also an example of a holy symbol as two rather important things being stolen, and both of them in a way that in no way harmed the party, and in both cases resulted in a 'This is not okay'. One was on screen, the other was off screen, so if your group does not want to deal with that on screen then that's fine too, it happens off screen. Or it just hasn't come up yet and never will for the campaign because the kender is more interested in animal carvings and shiny rocks than holy avengers they can't carry anyway. And possibly in the last group the kender was in, the wizard made a huge stink about their boring book that the kender won't take it since the kender /likes/ the wizard and doesn't want the wizard to be mad at him, but he's glad he can help the wizard collect weird esoteric reagents, that's neat and the wizard appreciates the company and help.

I mean, I did note:

You are stating things like 'Why wouldn't the Kender specifically go out of his way to steal the most obnoxious things to cause maximum party strife'. Nowhere in the book does it say, 'A kender must focus on causing maximum party strife'. It in fact is suggested that they focus more on shiny baubles and stones and stuff, and then is also suggested that you can talk them into and out of things.

And I feel that is quite relevantly answering the stealing issue.

I then gave several kender character ideas that fit with the text, fit with what Iv'e said above, and address boredom and/or borrowing:


I gave an example of a positive-for-the-group character who, in fact, ended up with something from the governor in his pockets and got caught and caused some problems, and then reacted the way a good character does. Very much still a kender, still borrows things and is treated as such, but doesn't consciously go out of their way to make absolutely sure that the Paladin's holy avenger is not on the paladin when it's time to fight the boss.



It is perfectly reasonable to make a kender druid who is fascinated by the various animals he meets and tries to befriend them, and loves seeing people with say dogs who treat their animals well as the humanoid-animal bond is the best thing, and they love to go adventuring so they can actually /see/ this 'polar bear' they were taught about, and they can occupy the bratty child prince that the party has to transport for /hours/ by talking about exciting new animal stories that absolutely keep the kid entranced.



I mean... 'I've talked to our kender. Once, almost a decade ago now, he was in another group that was trying to save the world from Lich the Vampire, and he picked the worst possible moment to borrow the cleric's shiny golden holy symbol, and the cleric died. He then has spent the past decade going from that cleric's church to church and doing everything he can for them and now is practically phobic of stealing holy symbols, which caused some problems when we were fighting Beholder the Vampire cleric. Really, he's a good guy."


Three character ideas, borrowing and boredom addressed (Admittedly, it doesn't state that the first one is actively doing something, but one can presume he's doing what the party is doing and is not bored by doing so or he'd have left), very kendery, full of fascination and wonder.

Do I need more? Are those three characters bad?

I feel this addresses those two points, at length. If you do not feel so, then I want to say that the actual problem is 'we disagree' and not 'I am ignoring your points', as I am really in good faith trying to address your points, I just disagree with your points.

Edit: Fixing broken quotes

[Kantolin]

Except for the utter lack of anything I said about carefully planning anything.

There is this implication that 'a kender /must/ be a /problem or they aren't a kender'. This implication is actually reduced in this particular post, which I think puts us closer to an agreement on something, so I appreciate the slightly more neutral change in tone.


They don't have to be malicious with their hijinks, but the lack of foresight and need to do something at all times results in bad stuff happening now and again. Sometimes it will be a harmless prank, but at times it will result in something more debilitating.

Actaully, a kender's 'hijinks' never need to be malicious. In fact, as kender are rarely evil and value friendship and like people, their hijinks are in fact less likely to be problematic than people make them out to be.

I mean sure, sometimes a kender player can do something that causes the group some trouble, but that's true of every character - I've given plenty of examples of a great kender idea that does not do that. The lawful good character sees a group of slavers, this potentially causes the group some trouble. But a kender can occupy his time with shiny baubles and marbles or something, no harm no foul.


Once again, Kenders are by their very nature thrill-seekers. They don't sit around thinking, "This could result in harming myself or the party."

You can take this to be 'Kender must go cause problems', or you could take this to be, 'Kenders enjoy being adventurers'. As I mean, 'Hey let's go into this dungeon and/or assault Lich the Vampire' is pretty thrill-seekery.

Or heck, maybe a given kender enjoys skydiving. Lots of ways of thrill seeking that aren't 'messes up the party at every step'.


Fine if you are gonna keep trying to bleed this rock.

I am noting the barbarian references purely because people are saying 'But it says bored kender are the most dangerous thing in Krynn' as 'Thus they need to make life horrible for the party' when they don't do that for barbarians, who have similar verbiage, or when someone suggests, 'Then how about they become adventurers? Oh hey, 'problem' solved'.

(Although it's interesting that my PHB copy says something different than yours. Still, it's similar enough that the points are still the same)


The first statement is fairly general. (...) a certain degree of impulse control could be assumed. (...) in other words it's just stereotyping. Chaotic Barbarians can be thoughtlessly destructive, (...) Plus any chaotic character can be destructive, so that is just another general statement. And the last bit is talking about how they are in a Rage, so some degree of recklessness is expected.

All of this I agree with (Clipped out some of it to put the 'assumed' and other such words together, but I agree with the statement in general). You should not take the barbarian's entry to imply 'a barbarian must constantly be reckless at all times oh no you're sitting still not being reckless you're a bad barbarian', as that is ridiculous. People seem to be doing similarly with kender, however, which is why I keep bringing up the 'This is a base that we both find ridiculous' to compare it to.


No, the Kender don't need to try to kill the party. But a lack of long-term thinking can lead to many inconveniences as they may lose the element of surprise in a fight or precious resources are wasted. There are tons of ways to hinder the party other than TPK.

This also feels true for everyone. A rogue who focuses on trying to greedily obtain money (partially for a good cause, partially because she likes doing it) to the point where she loses her voice, a wizard who monofocuses on solving problems with magic that they lose their family and cause genocide, a fighter who won't tie a rope to his daggone sword. :P

But it also doesn't /have/ to cause problems, especially since Kender can be team players. Nobody would fault a character who was like, 'Meh, I don't really do all this war stuff, you tell me where to go and I'll hit things with my spear', despite that not being long-term thinking.

(Also, a kender who happened to be really fascinated with war and leadership could be interesting! They could become really good at it! Or they could completely fail to do so well but still have the information to help other people do it. Or they could just miserably fail at it. All are fine characters that don't necessarily wreck the party).


I'm insisting that they negatives outweigh the positives, not that they have no positive features. I'm focusing on the negatives because those are the aspects that I have an issue with.

That is fair enough.

It does feel like you're saying, 'Nono, you can't interpret the text /that/ way as then kender will be acceptable', though. But maybe that's not fair, and maybe I'm reading into your responses more than I should, in which I apologize.


That is a spurious claim, because nothing says that druids are only found in the woods.

Indeed again. Still, this is a common problem that druid players have to deal with (Sorry the game is taking place in a city, you can't be a druid), which is why I brought up the comparison - people cite it with frequency.

[Tainted_Scholar]

You are connecting 'Kender are a volatile addition to a party' and 'nothing is as dangerous as a bored kender' to mean 'Kender are dangerous to the party'.

Because that's not an unreasonable interpretation. If they are dangerous when bored, then logically they would be dangerous to the people around them, AKA the party. And if they are volatile additions to the party then that means that they are likely to change things for the worse, making them dangerous to the party.


I do not see how my response is a straw man, as your conclusion seems strange. Kender don't grash smash their party or something.

Except I never claimed that Kender just randomly attack the party, that's why it's a strawman. Kender are dangerous and volatile without actively attacking people.


I suppose to say it without an example: You are being far, far too literal on 'nothing is as dangerous as a bored kender'. If taken anything near that literally, then I will totally play a weaponized kender who only finds a solution to his boredom in the blood of the [enemies of the campaign]. If I say, "Man, nothing in Halo is more dangerous than Alice with a bazooka', nobody will take that /literally/.

It means 'Bored kender /do things/', not 'a kender must cause the party maximum danger'.

Again, I never said that. Saying that they the most dangerous thing ever is indeed hyperbole, but that doesn't change the fact that they are still dangerous.


What? 'Changeable' 'Mercurial' 'Flighty'.

I misread that definition the first time and thought it was talking about chemistry.

However, the definition I provided is more accurate since it included the negative connotation that volatile carries. When something is volatile it's usually alot more unstable than simply "flighty".


Where did your definition come from, anyway? Are there more options there that are being overlooked than 'Obviously they meant /this/'?

It came from google. Just google "Volatile definition"

Additionally, since the text was referring to Kender as an addition to a party, the definition applied to people, "liable to display rapid changes of emotion." isn't applicable either. It was referring to Kender being volatile specifically in conjunction with a party, not them being volatile people.



I was mentioning orcs as 'They are quite likely to cause way more problems than kender, but...'

I didn't go into too much detail since we're talking about kender here, and I /presumed/ my statements about orcs would be taken a face value. If necesary, however, I can give a pile of quotes from the half-orc description?

We don't need to talk about orcs, we're talking about Kender.



First of all, the text actually says:


That first of all does not say 'Kender are dangerous to the party'.

I went into why Kender are dangerous to the party at the top of the post.



If in a dangerous situation, they have the propensity to act recklessly, which is just like barbarians who also have that in their description, which is used as an example as nobody says 'barbarians /must/ be dangerous to the party'.

Except the text never says that Barbarians are dangerous or volatile, it does say that about Kender.

Additionally, other people have already gone into detail about how Barbarians being reckless is in no way comparable to Kender.



Them being volatile additions could be said of pretty much anybody chaotic (or really 'just about anyone', frankly, but I'll say chaotic as that's more expressly likely).

No, it really can't be said about anybody. Chaotic characters are not automatically volatile additions to parties, there's no reason to think that. However, Kender are automatically volatile additions to any party.



And taking that literally suggests 'Bored kender are more dangerous than Takhisis', which clearly isn't the case.

Again, nobody has suggested taking it literally like that. That's a Strawman.


It may be best to take that line as descriptive hyperbole to show 'Kender do not like being bored and take steps to not be bored'.

And now you're just ignoring the text.

The book says they're dangerous when bored, you cannot claim otherwise without ignoring the text.

Your interpretation has no basis in what the book actually says. You essentially made it up.

[Luccan]

So, I don't want to get too involved, but at least from the article Zanos linked, there are two times dangerous is mentioned, both in the same paragraph

"While kender have a modicum of instinct for self-preservation (...) their propensity to act on impulse at the expense of common sense makes them reckless in dangerous situations - a volatile addition to addition to any adventuring party. Boredom is the kender's arch-nemesis, to be conquered at any cost. It is said that nothing on Krynn is as dangerous as a bored kender or as terrifying as hearing a kender say, "Oops!"."

Emphasis mine.

That's where it says bored kender are dangerous. If people are referring to the more complete text, direct quotes would be helpful. However, the above is clearly hyperbole, since, leaving aside setting specifics, how could any given bored kender be the most dangerous thing on Krynn? On the other hand, the implication is that bored kender are dangerous. Really, I think their description is just terribly written and any DM who thinks of allowing them should rewrite the fluff, at least a little.

[ColorBlindNinja]

That's where it says bored kender are dangerous. If people are referring to the more complete text, direct quotes would be helpful. However, the above is clearly hyperbole, since, leaving aside setting specifics, how could any given bored kender be the most dangerous thing on Krynn? On the other hand, the implication is that bored kender are dangerous. Really, I think their description is just terribly written and any DM who thinks of allowing them should rewrite the fluff, at least a little.

I've read the text in question in its entirety, it never goes into details; that's all you get.

[Waker]

Ok, I've exhausted everything to say on the topic, so this is my final post in this thread.


Actaully, a kender's 'hijinks' never need to be malicious. In fact, as kender are rarely evil and value friendship and like people, their hijinks are in fact less likely to be problematic than people make them out to be.

I mean sure, sometimes a kender player can do something that causes the group some trouble, but that's true of every character - I've given plenty of examples of a great kender idea that does not do that. The lawful good character sees a group of slavers, this potentially causes the group some trouble. But a kender can occupy his time with shiny baubles and marbles or something, no harm no foul.
Remember the scene in Lord of the Rings when Pippin steals the Palantir from Gandalf and all that jazz? That is an excellent example of what most of us mean when we say Kender engage in reckless behavior to sate their boredom or curiosity. He wasn't malicious about it, but once the idea got planted in his head he had to do it even though Merry tried to warn him off. He should have known it was dangerous because of how Gandalf treated it, but he couldn't help himself.
Or his "Oops" moment when he knocks the bucket down the well in the mines of Moria.
Or his blurting out "Frodo Baggins" in the Prancing Pony when the party is supposed to be incognito.
Will everything a Kender do be as threatening as this? Of course not. But any time there is access to magic items, dangerous terrain, the presence of hostile flora/fauna, this is always a risk when you have Kender in the party.
And please don't go off talking about LotR or anything. That was just an example.


I am noting the barbarian references purely because people are saying 'But it says bored kender are the most dangerous thing in Krynn' as 'Thus they need to make life horrible for the party' when they don't do that for barbarians, who have similar verbiage, or when someone suggests, 'Then how about they become adventurers? Oh hey, 'problem' solved'.
Saying that they are the most dangerous thing ever is hyperbole. Even the writers of gaming books aren't exempt from exaggeration.


This also feels true for everyone. A rogue who focuses on trying to greedily obtain money (partially for a good cause, partially because she likes doing it) to the point where she loses her voice, a wizard who monofocuses on solving problems with magic that they lose their family and cause genocide, a fighter who won't tie a rope to his daggone sword. :P
The point that I've made several times though is that if a Rogue is greedy, that is due to a personal character trait, not a function of their class. Any character can be greedy unless something specifically says otherwise. At the same time though, Kender are called out as being racially predisposed towards being problematic.

[Coidzor]

Remember the scene in Lord of the Rings when Pippin steals the Palantir from Gandalf and all that jazz? That is an excellent example of what most of us mean when we say Kender engage in reckless behavior to sate their boredom or curiosity. He wasn't malicious about it, but once the idea got planted in his head he had to do it even though Merry tried to warn him off. He should have known it was dangerous because of how Gandalf treated it, but he couldn't help himself.
Will everything a Kender do be as threatening as this? Of course not. But any time there is access to magic items, dangerous terrain, the presence of hostile flora/fauna, this is always a risk when you have Kender in the party.
And please don't go off talking about LotR or anything. That was just an example.

Hell, Kender would be more reckless, poking buttons on something even when they know that it is a bomb and what a bomb is.

Activating death traps in the villain's lair by pressing buttons and flipping switches that they don't even bother to read the labels for, if they're even labeled.

[ColorBlindNinja]

The most obvious solution to the Kender issue, assuming you want to be true to their fluff, is to play an all Kender party. :smallwink:

[Tainted_Scholar]

The most obvious solution to the Kender issue, assuming you want to be true to their fluff, is to play an all Kender party. :smallwink:

No, stahp.

[Pleh]

The most obvious solution to the Kender issue, assuming you want to be true to their fluff, is to play an all Kender party. :smallwink:

or just break out the munchkin card game and get it out of your system

[Wraith]

Just a question, if you came across the last living Kender in a campaign, what would you do? The Kender in question is trying to do some sort of ritual that will bring back over a million Kender, and she tells you this upon meeting you.

I'm pretty sure that most of my characters wouldn't necessarily kill the Kender, but they absolutely would prevent the ritual. Not for any particular anti-Kender sentiment, but for a variety of other good reasons.

Economic. A million of anything just popping into existence is going to result in deaths; theirs, through starvation, spread of disease and conflict through displacing other present peoples and creatures, or others through the inevitable million-strong army of dudes who just showed up and decided that they now need somewhere to live. There's no way to feed them, or clothe them, or house them, and *most* Fantasy settings have no way of dispersing that number of people to a safe place quickly and safely.

Political. A million of anything is a nation, and by medieval standards, a pretty damn big one. Without going into real-world politics, no one is going to take kindly to being told that they now have a million destitute neighbours on their doorstep, or even worse, that they all need to move out of their homes to make room for the newly established Kingdom that was just summoned into existence.
It also works the other way. Let's say that the ritual isn't used by the Kender, but gets picked up and used by, say.... Orcs, or Hobgoblins; you have literally got an overwhelming army of evil creatures who now need somewhere to go and something to do. The best case scenario is genocide of everything in the immediate area, and it only gets worse the longer it goes on.

Spiritual. The power of Resurrection is one of, if not THE, greatest of miracles bestowed upon Clerics by their Gods, taking many years of dedicated service and self-sacrifice to attain even once on behalf of the worthy. What would happen to the cosmology if it could suddenly be conjured en masse, to any old person worthy or otherwise?
Alternatively, the ritual does not bring dead Kender back to life but creates new ones - this is arguably even worse, because now you have not revenants running around but artificial lifeforms, lacking the Divine Spark and being little more than soulless homunculi. They'd be blasphemy or an abominations, created only to soon be hunted down and killed anyway by Undead Slayers, Mage Hunters, Inquisitors, and other such do-gooders.

Darwinian. If there's only one Kender left in the world, then clearly nature has conspired to see to it that this is how it should be*. The strong and adaptable prosper, the weak and stagnant die off as their environment changes around them and they are overtaken by better-suited predators and competitor prey-races, so who am I to stand back and disrupt the course of nature itself and let a million weaklings suddenly return to somewhere completely unsuited to them?

* I'm perfectly aware that this isn't how Darwinian Theory actually works, but unless you're going to prove that The Origin of Species had a Krynn-based reprint at some point, I'm not going to bother with the precise details because this is such a fun argument. :smalltongue:

So, yeah. Everyone I know would probably kick over all of the Kender's reagents and shoo it away, but probably leave it be. Except possibly for Wult, who even when not in a bad mood has a 50/50 chance of eating people who waylay him, but that's lycanthropy for you I guess.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Darwinian. If there's only one Kender left in the world, then clearly nature has conspired to see to it that this is how it should be*. The strong and adaptable prosper, the weak and stagnant die off as their environment changes around them and they are overtaken by better-suited predators and competitor prey-races, so who am I to stand back and disrupt the course of nature itself and let a million weaklings suddenly return to somewhere completely unsuited to them?

Kender spit in the eye of nature with their plot armor! :smalltongue:

[Tainted_Scholar]

Darwinian. If there's only one Kender left in the world, then clearly nature has conspired to see to it that this is how it should be*. The strong and adaptable prosper, the weak and stagnant die off as their environment changes around them and they are overtaken by better-suited predators and competitor prey-races, so who am I to stand back and disrupt the course of nature itself and let a million weaklings suddenly return to somewhere completely unsuited to them?

* I'm perfectly aware that this isn't how Darwinian Theory actually works, but unless you're going to prove that The Origin of Species had a Krynn-based reprint at some point, I'm not going to bother with the precise details because this is such a fun argument. :smalltongue:

Even with the annotation on the end, this nearly gave me a hernia. :smalltongue:

[animewatcha]

This is primarily geared toward those that are pro-kender, but those that are against kender can chime in as well.

What if Kender + Jar Jar Binks ( voice, mannerisms, etc. ) were combined in this Last Kender?

[Svata]

Immediate, violent, painful death.

[Lord Raziere]

What if Kender + Jar Jar Binks ( voice, mannerisms, etc. ) were combined in this Last Kender?

Purge it with flame.

Purge the ritual with flame.

Then purge the area with flame then perform an exorcism.

Just to be sure.

[Pleh]

This is primarily geared toward those that are pro-kender, but those that are against kender can chime in as well.

What if Kender + Jar Jar Binks ( voice, mannerisms, etc. ) were combined in this Last Kender?

I mean this with all sincerity.

Jar jar gets a bad rap. Worse than he deserves.

Bad character? Yes, but that was Lucas' fault for giving him no redeeming features beyond playing clown for the kids. Jar jar deserves a big portion of criticism, but he unfortunately became the scapegoat for all the fans frustrations about the movies, taking on more hate than he actually deserves half the time.

A little more effort in making him an actually empathetic character and we might not have crucified him as we did.

To answer your question, it wouldn't change my answer. In fact, having jar jar's mannerisms basically makes the effort to conduct a powerful, complex magic ritual just about impossible. I'd be more worried about what unspeakable horrors his failed ritual brought about than any impractical chances he would succeed.

[Kantolin]

And now you're just ignoring the text.
The book says they're dangerous when bored, you cannot claim otherwise without ignoring the text.
Your interpretation has no basis in what the book actually says. You essentially made it up.

The crux of your argument seems to revolve around 'This is the one way the text must be interpreted'.

Here is the text:

"While kender have a modicum of instinct for self-preservation (...) their propensity to act on impulse at the expense of common sense makes them reckless in dangerous situations - a volatile addition to addition to any adventuring party. Boredom is the kender's arch-nemesis, to be conquered at any cost. It is said that nothing on Krynn is as dangerous as a bored kender or as terrifying as hearing a kender say, "Oops!"."

We are, I believe, in agreement that you cannot take the text literally. Taking the text literally means 'Bored Kender are the most dangerous thing on Krynn', which is silly and clearly reading too literally into something meant to be read more flavorfully.

I /think/ we are in agreement on that.
(If this is not true, let me know and I'll step back there. My suggestion that 'Obviously, this text needs to be interpreted' has been met with 'that is a strawman', so there may not be agreement here after all?)

You are then arguing 'So a kender must cause tremendous problems for the party at all times or it isn't a kender', which isn't at all what the text says, that's just your interpretation of the above. This interpretation adds an element of malice in there that isn't there, and in fact is highly against most of the rest of the text stating they're innocent, carefree, yadda.

(For the record, Waker's statement (Which I will get to below) does not have this element of malice that Tainted_Scholar seems to have, and thus will be addressed separately).

This is why I am giving alternate examples of things being 'dangerous' and 'reckless' and the like, since I'm not seeing where your interpretation comes from. Kender are changeable, mercurial, flighty. Kender are liable to display rapid changes of emotion. Bored Kender do things. Those are perfectly viable ways of reading that text; you seem to dismiss it as though there's no possible way this interpretation makes sense.

The text states that kender can temper their behaviors based on their friends. This also seems particularly likely; kender /like/ people by default, kender also value friendship and don't want bad things to happen to their friends. Decreeing a Kender must constantly cause problems in the way you are suggesting flies in the face of that, because you insist 'This line, which obviously means X, must take precedence over that line, which I agree means Y but that disproves my point so I'm not going to agree with it'?

Nevermind that, even if a kender is required to have caused problems in their life, they don't have to constantly do so and can have discovered 'Wizards get really upset when their spellbooks vanish' in the backstory before the game begins.

My noting that 'barbarians are also listed as reckless' (and half-orcs, and things) was to show a base where 'Look, here it points out the word 'reckless', and you don't jump to the unusual conclusions you are jumping to'.

Your interpretation requires kender to be a lot more malicious than they are, and most certainly is not the 'one true interpretation' (And, given I refer to the text with frequency, I'm certainly not ignoring it). I've given three kender ideas that are fine characters and fine kender; do you need a fourth?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~


Remember the scene in Lord of the Rings when Pippin steals the Palantir from Gandalf and all that jazz?

Yep!

A kender /could/ do that. They could also /have/ done that, or could /not/ do that. If you have an important artifact, nothing /requires/ a kender to borrow it - maybe the kender realizes it's really important. Maybe the kender mostly cares about animals and could care less about it. Maybe the kender just by coincidence didn't go for it. Whatever. Lots of options that don't wreck party dynamics.

The giant did a whole article about this called 'Making the tough decisions'. It doesn't suddenly not apply because kender, nor is it impossible to apply /to/ kender. And this is on the argument of 'a kender must cause problems for the group at all times or it's not a kender', which I still rather thoroughly disagree with and is certainly not stated in the text, but hey.

I mean, there are other examples that help prove my point, but they stray into 'going off talking about lord of the rings' territory.

Really, do any of my three character suggestions seem like not kender? If so, is it purely 'because they are not directly causing problems for the party'? All three have to various extents addressed the whole 'boredom' and 'borrowing' things, which are the main things people are citing as 'thus kender are problems'.

But it seems that, even though those characters have addressed boredom /and/ borrowing, and despite those characters following the text, they apparently cannot be kender because they're not causing problems for the party as though kender had 'Special Quality: A kender will cause problems for the party, mwa ha ha' or something as opposed to a line that everyone agrees must be interpreted and clearly doesn't mean what it says literally.

(Admittedly, most of my ideas focused more heavily on the borrowing side of things. But I mean, 'I am bored and causing problems for my family so they threw me out, then I became an adventurer and now we're fighting vampires and I am certainly never bored, plus I've taken up juggling' solves the boredom end, so it's really much easier to discuss)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Economic.

Yeah, the economic and political sides of this particular situation definitely means most of my characters would have problems with it somewhere. ^_^

Although the spiritual one doesn't /necessarily/ have to be bad. Miracles are totally things, haha. I could see it legitimately being a miracle blessed by the gods (or the good gods)... or a ploy by a corrupt church or two to pretend they are miracles for some additional gain.


What if Kender + Jar Jar Binks ( voice, mannerisms, etc. ) were combined in this Last Kender?

I totally understand why Jar Jar gets all the hate - he has much, much more screentime... but I always found Boss Nash (I may be misspelling his name) to be far more irritating than him. Stupid Boss Nash.

Not that I'm fond of Jar Jar. :P

(Still, most of my characters wouldn't kill something because /I/ don't like it, so it again falls to my previous post on the subject).

(Edit: Some clarity)

[Kantaki]

This is primarily geared toward those that are pro-kender, but those that are against kender can chime in as well.

What if Kender + Jar Jar Binks ( voice, mannerisms, etc. ) were combined in this Last Kender?

Oh, I would still help her. Even more so actually.
If only because I don't want to commit genocide when I kill her.
Although turning her fellow Kender into wights and re-enacting Tsukiko's death sounds tempting.
Not that I would need that many wights for this.
Making her think I did it to all of them on the other hand...:smallamused:

(No problem with Kender or Jar Jar- they can even be funny if the exposure stays limited or they happen to other people -but the combination sounds like it would go on my nerves.)

[One Step Two]

The Last Kender wants to bring back the Kender Nation?

Only if they have the elemental powers of wind, and the plan will only occur past their own life time, when Harmonic Convergance empowers to the return of the Kender Nation. Then I will gladly be their sarcastic meat-loving sidekick, and this will be the tale of The Last Air-Kender

Otherwise, I don't think I can condone the Genocide of a species out of character if it can be prevented, though I do admit the impact a million new beings springing into existence will cause some woes.

As for Kender in general? I've made posts in the past relating to them. But it's best summarized as with the following.

Kender are a problem depending on just one factor: The people portraying them.

As written, Kender are admittedly problematic, but like a person trying to use a Paladin to boss people around, "Because that's what Paladins do!" it's not a paladin that is the issue, nor is being a random loon/sadistic cannibal because "That's what my alignment says I would do!" isnt the alignment that is the issue either. It's the person portraying them.
A player can use their class, race or alignment to cause problems in a game.
But a better player can use thier class, race or alignment to add to the games dynamics.

The Kender is just a bigger target for abuse because of how they are written, a good player/GM can use them however to enrich a story.


Let me give you the best known example of a Kender that everyone on this forum should know:

Elan the bard.

Elan acts just like a Kender, in his childlike mannerisms, his constant need to think of something to do and pressing buttons he should not press! But he provides hope, support, and inspiration to his allies. The only thing that Elan doesn't do that a Kender does, is slight of hand checks to pick up random items.

Throughout it all, Elan enriches the story despite how zany and reckless he acts, and that is what a good Kender should aspire to be. Someone who adds to the story, even if he's taking things out of other peoples pockets.
Which I must stress is not always gold or weapons, they grab new or random stuff, if they've seen the party wizard use the wand of magic missiles before, that's boring, why does he need to see it again?

[ShurikVch]

Question for those who are either like, or really dislike Kenders - what's your opinion about:
Half-Kenders
Afflicted Kenders
Forlorn Kenders
Fearbringers?

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Forlorn Kenders are tolerable because a race of sad sacks is funnier than a race of klepto Mary Sues.

As for the Jar Jar Kender, I'd be even more wary than usual, because the DM might be aware that Jar Jar was originally intended to be a sith

[ShurikVch]

Forlorn Kenders are tolerable because a race of sad sacks is funnier than a race of klepto Mary Sues.Those you are talking about are Afflicted Kenders

Forlorn Kender is an Undead (printed in errata to the Key of Destiny):
Forlorn kender are corporeal undead creatures fueled by despair and hatred, born of afflicted kender who have died within the Desolation and twisted by the malice imbuing the realm of Malystryx. During the reign of the Dragon Overlord, these twisted and pathetic undead kender roamed in small packs throughout the ruined realm, but following her death they seem to have suddenly increased in number, as if gathering together, fueled by some even darker menace.
Most of the Forlorn possess only a feral cunning, a hatred of all living things that drives them to destroy anything they come across. Some rare Forlorn, however, seem to possess some of the drive they once possessed in life and through force of will, can control their lesser brethren and can invoke fear in even the normally fearless (true) kender; these Forlorn have become known as the Fearbringers.
...
Small and gaunt, this undead creature seems to have been a kender in life. Its topknot hangs in wild tangles about a face twisted into a grimace of hatred and pain; its unblinking eyes stare hungrily, as an eerie scream – part cry of pain, part shriek of anguish – is torn from the depths of its hollowed body.
Although a Forlorn resembles the kender it was in life, in undeath there is little remaining of the original personality save for a dim, bestial cunning. They move with uncanny quickness, hunting in packs like scavengers, filling the air with their unnatural screams of pain and hatred.
The Forlorn lurk around the ruined settlements, villages, and towns of the kender that were destroyed by Malystryx. Despite the fact they were born of Malystryx's magic, they were not under her control, and attacked her minions as often as they attacked any other living creature that crosses their path. Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, is that kender, both true and afflicted, are their preferred prey. Indeed, a pack of hunting Forlorn will break off an attack against any other foe in order to concentrate upon kender in the vicinity.
...
They cannot speak, except to shriek, and if they understand Common, they show little willingness to listen to anything except the screams of their prey.
When an afflicted kender of strong personality falls prey to the forlorn kender, they rise as one of the fearbringers – undead kender of great personal power and an undying hatred for the living, although they seem to bear a particularly strong hatred for any other living kender. They gather armies of forlorn to their side, seeking to scour the countryside bare of all living things.
Fearbringers appear as they did in life, although their skin is drawn tautly over their skulls, their lips twisted into a permanent rictus grin, and their eyes burning with a hungry crimson flame.
Fearbringers speak any languages they knew in life.Fearbringer got Shadow Blend, Children of the Night, Create Spawn (Kender → Forlorn, Afflicted → Fearbringer, any other Humanoid → Wight), and the most notable feature - Fear Aura which works on living Kenders too

[Pleh]

As for the Jar Jar Kender, I'd be even more wary than usual, because the DM might be aware that Jar Jar was originally intended to be a sith

Careful with the pseudocanon there. There's a place for laws, then theories, then there's stuff like this that will likely remain conspiratorial.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Careful with the pseudocanon there. There's a place for laws, then theories, then there's stuff like this that will likely remain conspiratorial.

Both Lucas' biography and the actor who played JarJar have mentioned there having been actual plans along those lines.

[Coidzor]

Half-Kender and Afflicted Kender I'd put into a demiplane for observation purposes and see if they evolve into regular old Halflings after several million generations.

Forlorn Kender and Fearbringers are either A. tools to use to destroy Kender or B. Kender and thus need to be destroyed.

[Pleh]

Both Lucas' biography and the actor who played JarJar have mentioned there having been actual plans along those lines.

Last I heard, it was, "there was secretly more to the character"

But nothing tremendously conclusive about what that was supposed to be.

[Forum Explorer]

You're confusing potential to be dangerous with the actual thing. Arcane spellcasters have the potential to be dangerous. So do people with swords. Kender are just straight up detrimental to society.


Not really. In the fluff a city has actually formed a Guild of Kender. You lose something? You go to that guild and see if they have it (or something similar to it) and reclaim whatever you lost.

Other societies use them as crude messengers. Not to someone specific, but to spread things like bounty notices.

Also like someone else said, they are basically adventurers. Well, not basically. The entire race is one of adventurers. Give them a quest and they'll go away. They might even complete the quest. Added bonus, they'll work for basically nothing cause they likely won't even remember what you offered them in the first place. Or you gave them a shiny rock on a piece of string.


That doesn't change the fact that the book that defines their race 3.5 encourages you to play them badly.


The Kender is going to be acting exactly the way the Dragonlance Campaign Setting entry describes them.

Then that's a flaw of the 3.5 book, not of the setting itself, or the Kender for that matter. If one book of a setting inaccurately described elves as a bunch of super racists that would constantly belittle and refuse to be nice to any 'lesser' races, would that mean that all elves in that setting must now be caricatures of a normal elf? Or does it mean that the book is bad, and you should ignore that description?

Basically, the book gave a really bad description of Kender. It's not very accurate and those who are familiar with the setting will likely know that it's garbage and shouldn't be used.

Besides, PCs often play as 'exceptions' to the race. Just like every drow PC seems to be a CG rebel trying to redeem their race, a Kender PC can easily be one who is a loyal friend who wouldn't do anything to harm their friends.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Last I heard, it was, "there was secretly more to the character"

But nothing tremendously conclusive about what that was supposed to be.

I recall seeing an interview where the actor claimed there was a scene deleted from RotS where Palpatine was alone with JarJar, basically discussing plans for what the empire would truly be, like they were at least tacit allies

[Zanos]

Not really. In the fluff a city has actually formed a Guild of Kender. You lose something? You go to that guild and see if they have it (or something similar to it) and reclaim whatever you lost.
To say nothing, of course, of how it was lost in the first place.


Other societies use them as crude messengers. Not to someone specific, but to spread things like bounty notices.
Clearly the answer is to give the Kender their own bounty poster and have them show it to everyone.


Then that's a flaw of the 3.5 book, not of the setting itself, or the Kender for that matter. If one book of a setting inaccurately described elves as a bunch of super racists that would constantly belittle and refuse to be nice to any 'lesser' races, would that mean that all elves in that setting must now be caricatures of a normal elf? Or does it mean that the book is bad, and you should ignore that description?
If an X setting book says that elves are super elite racists, I'm pretty free to say that "elves in X setting are crap."


Basically, the book gave a really bad description of Kender. It's not very accurate and those who are familiar with the setting will likely know that it's garbage and shouldn't be used.
That's the description people are discussing. I think a better argument is that it shouldn't have been written.


Besides, PCs often play as 'exceptions' to the race. Just like every drow PC seems to be a CG rebel trying to redeem their race, a Kender PC can easily be one who is a loyal friend who wouldn't do anything to harm their friends.
Yeah, like that isn't tired.


I recall seeing an interview where the actor claimed there was a scene deleted from RotS where Palpatine was alone with JarJar, basically discussing plans for what the empire would truly be, like they were at least tacit allies
Jar Jar is pretty close to Palpatine whenever they're shown in a diplomatic setting, which I always thought was unusual, since otherwise most of the characters find him to be at least somewhat irritating.

[Bohandas]

I recall seeing an interview where the actor claimed there was a scene deleted from RotS where Palpatine was alone with JarJar, basically discussing plans for what the empire would truly be, like they were at least tacit allies

Yeah, but those movies were rewritten so many times it's ridiculous..

[Forum Explorer]

To say nothing, of course, of how it was lost in the first place.


If an X setting book says that elves are super elite racists, I'm pretty free to say that "elves in X setting are crap."


That's the description people are discussing. I think a better argument is that it shouldn't have been written.


Yeah, like that isn't tired.


If it works, it works.


Even if in the setting itself, the elves were merely standoffish?


Exactly. It's a crap description. It should be thrown out and rewritten from scratch.


?:smallconfused:

[Luccan]

Here's a question: in a setting with Kender as described by a poorly written 3.5 description, could they be Paladins? I mean, maybe Pallys of Freedom, but I mean the regular kind. Because that brings up an interesting idea: if the answer is yes, it could be argued that what is "good" and "lawful" in that setting are only important so long as the person believes their actions to be good and lawful. If not though, then that brings up another flag: Kender being one of the few mortal races that could never have a paladin... I like the idea of a game where it's just hitting everyone that Kender might be secretly evil or, better yet, mortal scions of chaos. Yeah, mortal scions of chaos is better. They cause too much damage to be allowed to continue, but they're not malicious, so there is a mortal conundrum of whether or not locking them up/killing/banishing them is right.

[Forum Explorer]

Here's a question: in a setting with Kender as described by a poorly written 3.5 description, could they be Paladins? I mean, maybe Pallys of Freedom, but I mean the regular kind. Because that brings up an interesting idea: if the answer is yes, it could be argued that what is "good" and "lawful" in that setting are only important so long as the person believes their actions to be good and lawful. If not though, then that brings up another flag: Kender being one of the few mortal races that could never have a paladin... I like the idea of a game where it's just hitting everyone that Kender might be secretly evil or, better yet, mortal scions of chaos. Yeah, mortal scions of chaos is better. They cause too much damage to be allowed to continue, but they're not malicious, so there is a mortal conundrum of whether or not locking them up/killing/banishing them is right.

They are literally scions of chaos. They were created when a group of gnomes hunted down a Chaos powered gemstone, those who were curious about the stone transformed into Kender. (Those who were greedy for the stone became dwarves)

Also I don't think they could be. Stealing is against the law, and they can't resist that compulsion. And being forced to break the Paladin's code still makes you fall IIRC.

[Svata]

Only evil acts make paladins fall. They can do chaotic acts, so long as their alignment is still LG.

[Keltest]

Only evil acts make paladins fall. The can do chaotic acts, so long as their alignment is still LG.

I am skeptical that somebody who does not recognize the idea of property ownership to that degree can really count as lawful.

[Pleh]

They are literally scions of chaos.

Here and I thought that title was best reserved for the chaos beast (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/chaosBeast.htm).

I would be interested to see the interview about Jar Jar's deleted scene. I could try to google it myself, but it might be hard to be sure I was viewing the same one

[Svata]

I am skeptical that somebody who does not recognize the idea of property ownership to that degree can really count as lawful.

Oh, no, I was never arguing that! I was just making a rules clarification for a mistake I have seen made a lot. I in no way think a Kender could ever be lawful.

[Forum Explorer]

Here and I thought that title was best reserved for the chaos beast (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/chaosBeast.htm).


If you think about it, those Chaos beasts are really all the same. They gibber and attack things. That's doesn't cause much chaos. Kender on the other hand...

[ShurikVch]

If you think about it, those Chaos beasts are really all the same. They gibber and attack things.According to Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Apocrypha (Dragon #359), Dwiergus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demon_lords_in_Dungeons_%26_Dragons#Dwierg us) is a "Gargantuan 34-HD elite chaos beast" with Demon Lord template

[atemu1234]

According to Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Apocrypha (Dragon #359), Dwiergus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demon_lords_in_Dungeons_%26_Dragons#Dwierg us) is a "Gargantuan 34-HD elite chaos beast" with Demon Lord template

:smallconfused: That most certainly could never, ever reach CR 20, let alone a CR in the early thirties. Even with those spell-like abilities.

[ShurikVch]

:smallconfused: That most certainly could never, ever reach CR 20, let alone a CR in the early thirties. Even with those spell-like abilities.Firstly, Dwiergus is CR 25. Where the heck you got the "early thirties"? :smallconfused:
And secondly - Astral Projection (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/astralProjection.htm) at-will...

[atemu1234]

Firstly, Dwiergus is CR 25. Where the heck you got the "early thirties"? :smallconfused:
And secondly - Astral Projection (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/astralProjection.htm) at-will...

I'll admit I'm AFB, at the moment, but wasn't the Demon Lord template only supposed to be used to produce creatures with a target CR of 30-32?

[ShurikVch]

I'll admit I'm AFB, at the moment, but wasn't the Demon Lord template only supposed to be used to produce creatures with a target CR of 30-32?Actually, it says "no demon lord should be less powerful than CR 22" (despite there are already several "official" lords with less CR - for example, Juiblex)
"CR in the early thirties" is a tall order. AFAIK, only Dagon, Demogorgon, Fraz-Urb'luu, Graz'zt, Orcus, Pazuzu, Turaglas, and Ugudenk are fit in (and even they are mostly "just" 30)

[Pleh]

If you think about it, those Chaos beasts are really all the same. They gibber and attack things. That's doesn't cause much chaos. Kender on the other hand...

Doesn't cause much chaos because they live in Limbo, where they don't stand very much out of the crowd.

Kender live in the middle of downtown.

If you had Chaos Beasts roaming the streets the way Kender do, I think you'd find them to cause far more Chaos than the Kender.

Running around attacking the nearest individual isn't particularly chaotic, but melting everyone and everything they come into contact with rather is. At least as much as stealing whatever isn't nailed down.

[Bohandas]

It seems to me that the solution to the player who plays chaotic stupid kender is to pair them with the player who only plays lawful stupid paladins. They will either cancel each other out or else push the campaign past unfortunately derailed to the land of hilariously derailed

[ColorBlindNinja]

It seems to me that the solution to the player who plays chaotic stupid kender is to pair them with the player who only plays lawful stupid paladins. They will either cancel each other out or else push the campaign past unfortunately derailed to the land of hilariously derailed

More likely, they kill each other, YMMV.

[digiman619]

It seems to me that the solution to the player who plays chaotic stupid kender is to pair them with the player who only plays lawful stupid paladins. They will either cancel each other out or else push the campaign past unfortunately derailed to the land of hilariously detailed


More likely, they kill each other, YMMV.
​So it's win/win/win, then.

[ShurikVch]

We went from Kender to Gully Dwarves to Gnomes. I guess threads are like kittens, they rarely go where you want or think. :tongueincheek:Kender, Gully Dwarf, and Gnome walk into a bar...


Chaos? Like the one from Warhammer 40K? So that's why Dragonlance is the way it is! :smalltongue:Chaos?
Warhammer 40K?
http://i.imgur.com/a1Kmy3F.jpg

[ColorBlindNinja]

Chaos?
Warhammer 40K?
http://i.imgur.com/a1Kmy3F.jpg

Sounds like a perfectly reasonable reaction to Kender. :smalltongue:

[Tainted_Scholar]

Welp, my internet's back up, so I can reply again. Yay...


The crux of your argument seems to revolve around 'This is the one way the text must be interpreted'.

No, the crux of my argument is, "This is what the text says and your interpretation ignores it."



We are, I believe, in agreement that you cannot take the text literally. Taking the text literally means 'Bored Kender are the most dangerous thing on Krynn', which is silly and clearly reading too literally into something meant to be read more flavorfully.

Yes, that part is clearly hyperbole. But the text still says that they are dangerous when bored, if you claim otherwise than you are ignoring the text.


I /think/ we are in agreement on that.
(If this is not true, let me know and I'll step back there. My suggestion that 'Obviously, this text needs to be interpreted' has been met with 'that is a strawman', so there may not be agreement here after all?)

:Headdesk:

The reason I told you it was a strawman was because nobody in the thread was actually taking it literally. What happened was;

Us: The text says that Kender are extremely dangerous when bored.
You: So you're claiming that Kender are more Dangerous than Takhisis?

You statement was a Strawman because nobody actually claimed that.



You are then arguing 'So a kender must cause tremendous problems for the party at all times or it isn't a kender', which isn't at all what the text says, that's just your interpretation of the above. This interpretation adds an element of malice in there that isn't there, and in fact is highly against most of the rest of the text stating they're innocent, carefree, yadda.

See, this is another strawman. I have never claimed that Kender must always cause problems for the players at all times. I never claimed that Kender are malicious either.

And, I have already explained this.




This is why I am giving alternate examples of things being 'dangerous' and 'reckless' and the like, since I'm not seeing where your interpretation comes from. Kender are changeable, mercurial, flighty. Kender are liable to display rapid changes of emotion. Bored Kender do things. Those are perfectly viable ways of reading that text; you seem to dismiss it as though there's no possible way this interpretation makes sense.

Your interpretation ignores the text.

Bored Kender are dangerous, that is explicitly stated. The fact that they used hyperbole to describe them when bored implies that they are very dangerous.

And Kender are volatile additions to the party, that is also stated. And I repeat, voltile means, "liable to change rapidly and unpredictably, especially for the worse". However, you don't seem to be using that definition, you're using a definition that's not actually applicable here. The definition of volatile you're using applies to people. But the book didn't describe Kender themselves as being volatile, they said that they were volatile additions to a party.

EDIT; Also, Volatile carries negative connotations that you have been ignoring.


The text states that kender can temper their behaviors based on their friends. This also seems particularly likely; kender /like/ people by default, kender also value friendship and don't want bad things to happen to their friends. Decreeing a Kender must constantly cause problems in the way you are suggesting flies in the face of that, because you insist 'This line, which obviously means X, must take precedence over that line, which I agree means Y but that disproves my point so I'm not going to agree with it'?

I'm getting sick of you misrepresenting my argument.

However yes, you are correct that Kender can temper their impulses to help their friends. However that's only their friends. Additionally, even if they temper their impulses that doesn't mean their impulses go away. A bored Kender isn't suddenly going to become harmless because they have a friend. They're are still going to be volatile additions to a party all the same. And they're still kleptomaniacs who lie when caught stealing.

One redeeming line doesn't erase all of the Kender's problems.



Nevermind that, even if a kender is required to have caused problems in their life, they don't have to constantly do so and can have discovered 'Wizards get really upset when their spellbooks vanish' in the backstory before the game begins.

Except it doesn't work that way. Kender know full well that people get angry when you take their stuff, but that doesn't stop the Kender from stealing things from peoples pockets.



My noting that 'barbarians are also listed as reckless' (and half-orcs, and things) was to show a base where 'Look, here it points out the word 'reckless', and you don't jump to the unusual conclusions you are jumping to'.

You interpretation on Barbarians was utterly asinine, as other posters have pointed out.

Additionally, I'm not focusing on the fact that Kender are reckless so this has nothing to do with this discussion.