Kender: How Do? Or ways to roleplay a Kender that is not unfun.

[Velaryon]

I just had a ridiculous idea that someone must surely have thought of before now.

Convince your entire party to play Kender.

How I would handle it is to just have one community gear list (except for key items like the fighter's weapon, wizard's staff, etc.), and when someone needs a particular item, roll randomly to see whose pockets it ended up in today.

Is it workable? I have no idea, as I've never even played in a game with a Kender, much less played one myself. But tell me that wouldn't be good for at least one session's worth of comedy hijinks.

[Witty Username]

The real question is “How do you play a character in a way that is not unfun”

There are some races/classes/backgrounds that can be seriously unfun for other players if the controlling player decides to be an a-hole. Some examples:
Paladins.
Racially purist elves
Socially superior nobles.
Evil characters in a good party.
Dwarves who resolve social problems with an axe.

If your fun consists of knocking down things others have built then it doesn’t matter what class/race/background you play. You’re being Rian Johnson in “The Last Jedi” where you take every plot point JJ Abrams developed in “The Force Awakens” and break it.

Well said. I am astounded how strong emotions are around "The Last Jedi" though.

[Pauly]

Well said. I am astounded how strong emotions are around "The Last Jedi" though.

Actually I resigned my Star Wars fan card with the prequel trilogy, and I really haven’t been able to be emotionally invested in Star Wars for a long time. TLJ makes a nice-ish stand alone movie. But as a middle part of a trilogy it’s a disaster because it’s supposed to build from TFA to set up whatever the 3rd movie was. What it did was to tear down TFA and do nothing to set up excitement about seeing the next installment. My comments about TLJ were purely as a disinterested observer.

[Porcupinata]

The one kender I've seen successfully run basically ignored the whole "stealing from everyone" aspect; he just happened to have a lot of unusual items in his pockets. ("But where did you get that ball of string?" "Oh ... *shrug* ... musta found it somewhere.")

Yep.

When the 5e playtest was underway, one of the "D&D Next" playtest releases happened to have Kender as a race, and their description talked about how they picked up random (non-valuable) things that took their fancy and gave them a racial ability to discover that they a mundane object about their person if the party needed one. However, the write-up for the race stopped at "acquires interesting things" rather than going the whole hog and describing them as being kleptomaniacs who take other people's belongings and have no concept of personal property.

The result of that was that my wife - who has never read a Dragonlance book in her life and had never even heard of kender until she read that playtest release - played one and it was absolutely fine. The curious and fearless character who always had something interesting in their pockets was an asset to the party rather than the liability she would have been had the D&D Next write-up given them the ridiculous attitude to property. The character never once stole anything from another party member, and was as surprised as anyone else when she happened to have something useful on her (and could never remember when or where she had picked it up).

That's the way to do a kender that's not unfun - although I realise that others might not be so lucky and might get a player who remembers the terrible versions of the race and insists on playing the terrible version even though that version is from a different edition.

[Segev]

Yep.

When the 5e playtest was underway, one of the "D&D Next" playtest releases happened to have Kender as a race, and their description talked about how they picked up random (non-valuable) things that took their fancy and gave them a racial ability to discover that they a mundane object about their person if the party needed one. However, the write-up for the race stopped at "acquires interesting things" rather than going the whole hog and describing them as being kleptomaniacs who take other people's belongings and have no concept of personal property.

The result of that was that my wife - who has never read a Dragonlance book in her life and had never even heard of kender until she read that playtest release - played one and it was absolutely fine. The curious and fearless character who always had something interesting in their pockets was an asset to the party rather than the liability she would have been had the D&D Next write-up given them the ridiculous attitude to property. The character never once stole anything from another party member, and was as surprised as anyone else when she happened to have something useful on her (and could never remember when or where she had picked it up).

That's the way to do a kender that's not unfun - although I realise that others might not be so lucky and might get a player who remembers the terrible versions of the race and insists on playing the terrible version even though that version is from a different edition.

That's actually quite cool, and would make a nifty racial perk for a halfling subrace.

New Halfling Subrace: Medlkend
A curious (in both senses) people, these lithe and energetic halflings are friendly to a fault and rarely seem to even comprehend that others might not reciprocate. They love to travel, and meet new people, and learn new things, but have a tendency to ignore boundaries that can make them annoying to those who don't know how to deal with them.
Insouciant. You are carefree and without ties that hold you back. Nothing daunts your curiousity nor friendliness. You are immune to the Frightened condition.
Acquisitive. Medlkend are a naturally curious lot, and pick up items of interest without even realizing it. Many keep bags of trinkets they've collected over the years, but tend to also be more than willing to share them with others for the asking. You can examine your bag for useful items by rolling an Intelligence(Investigation) check to see what's in there. The DM will describe an item worth the amount of your roll in gp or less that is potentially useful to your current situation, or he will roll on the Trinkets chart to determine some new item you've found. Note that medlkend are as likely to lose objects as acquire them, so they may not have the same item the next time they check (at the DM's discretion). You may do this once, regaining the ability after a long rest.

[Sacradans]

I frequently play kenders, they are my favourite race by far. And I've done so in a few different editions over the years. I will upon occasion actively 'handle' from strangers in town or whatnot, and happily roll off the trinket table to see what I acquired. But I limit this to at most 1/session. Generally my DM is good with me just randomly checking pockets for any mundane object I may have picked up along the way.

And in the past, I've been known to have my kender be kind of a packrat with things, especially with party members. I would scan over my inventory and pick out something I had... a pretty marble that matched the elf's eyes, a ball of string that would just dashing in the dwarf's beard.. and write the object down on a scrap of paper, along with the phrase of 'you reach into your pocket/pouch later to grab [insert random item here]. You find that it seems to be missing but in its place is [my gift here]. I'd then hand the scrap of paper to the appropriate player. They'd jot down some thing they had that I'd be able to find. I got all sorts of cool stuff that way, like a half-carved whistle that my character carried around for MONTHS trying to play it but never could.

The benefit of this system was that it was fun for both me and the other players, they got to decide what my grubby little hands grabbed (so they wouldn't lose something valuable to them), it didn't detract from the story, or occupy the DM's time.

[LibraryOgre]

The Mod Ogre: Only in Ravenloft do we allow undead kender.