Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
Kenders are fine (not great, but bearable) if they're stealing interesting but worthless trinkets or just being a gladly. I haven't read the Dragonlance novels, but my understanding is that Tas worked because he never stole anything too important and gave back anything actually important to it's owner (sometimes before being asked to).

The issue is when that jerk steals the Paladin's sword and hides behind 'it's in character'. Steal their wedding ring to have a look at it and give it back when called out
Kender get a bad rap and it's equally the fault of DMs and players, and the root of it is right there: steal. There's a certain kind of player who plays as a kender so they can steal from the party, either for personal gain in-character or to cause problems or drama at the table. But kender don't steal things; they borrow them, or find them, or just happen to pick them up for safekeeping, or make a valuable trade, and they lose things just as often as they gain them. It's an important distinction to make at the table because it means the kender player/character shouldn't be resistant to giving everything back instantly. A classically-played kender should barely even make the decisions about what they happen to acquire, even. A particularly shiny but worthless rock or a little fragment of robin's egg should be just as enticing as a big bag of money. A player who's taking important pieces of equipment or plot items away from his party members isn't being true to the spirit of the endeavor. A player whose character sheet is loaded with random junk -- a green marble, a blue jay's feather, a beaver's tooth, one of Bilbo Baggins's prized silver spoons -- and whose acquisitions are in that direction is, I think, operating more as the race was intended to be played and probably isn't causing problems at the table. (And, of course, it's easier to acquire trinkets and junk when trinkets and junk exist in the world and on your teammates' character sheets. DMs prepping for kender players should have a pretty expansive pocket-junk table.)

The other piece of it is that the DM has a responsibility to manage things at the table. A lot of that, of course, is dealing with out-of-character stuff out-of-character. But kender acquisitiveness is a double-edged sword. The DM shouldn't be allowing a kender player to acquire stuff from his teammates but not from NPCs. If there's, like, a key to a set of shackles and it's unattended within reach of the kender for even one second, it should be in the kender's pocket ready to be used. When I've seen kender get really annoying at the table, the DM tends to be permissive of the player stealing from the party but restrictive when the player tries to acquire objects in the world. The kender should have a pretty frickin' hard time taking the paladin's sword; it's two feet taller than he is.

In the novels, Tas (when he's a character and not a walking plot device, as he becomes in later books) is basically a property vortex. He acquires things and he loses them equally. Whenever he's told to return something, he does so promptly and cheerfully. He's easily distracted -- Raistlin starts putting sparkly things in his spell component pouch so Tas will take the pouch, pull out the beetle or crystal and drop the pouch. If it doesn't fit easily in a pocket or a pouch, he's not interested, and he has no concept of value. A bit of glass is just as interesting as a diamond. He often has something helpful in his collection of pouches, whether a map or a key or a trinket that just happens to be what's needed at the time, and he's good at finding things his teammates need. He'd fit fine at a table because he's not played maliciously and he's a valuable contributor to the party's success.