First lets talk about Race.Spinning off a bit from a discussion of kender wizards in the Do You Plan To Buy Dragonlance thread. Kender tend to attract a lot of hate for some well-understood reasons. If hypothetically you had to play a kender PC, in a 5e Dragonlance game that you wanted to succeed and be enjoyable for everyone, how would you do it? Character concept, personality and game mechanics? Would you play against type to some degree or would you embrace the full stereotypical pickpocketing kenderness, and if the latter, how would you do it in a way that wasn't irritating?
To start the ball rolling:
Kender ranger, beastmaster subclass, using the Spirit of the Land companion from Tasha's and the Watchers dark gift from VRGtR. Background, maybe Folk Hero or Outlander? A kender who is fascinated by nature, insects in particular. Keeps the stereotypical kender wide-eyed curiosity and joyful enthusiasm, but redirects it away from the personal possessions of their fellow party members and outwards to the wild. Always has an interesting insect fact at hand and will tell you all about it, loves travelling to new places because it's a chance to see new butterflies. Has a slightly disturbing connection of some sort with a massive underground giant ant nest - her beastmaster's companion is actually a giant ant, and the 'watchers' from the dark gift are ants that follow her everywhere. Sure, sometimes the beast companion dies, but another one from the colony will show up and (as she will tell you at great length), it's not really the same as when a person dies, it's the ant nest that is the thinking creature, while individual ants are a bit like hair that will grow back. Will not steal your magic items or play pranks on you, but might sometimes make sure you 'share' your trail rations with the ants, even if you are unaware of doing so.
My big thing for Kender is they should be totally immune to fear, not advantage on a save, immune to the frightened condition completely.
The other notable thing about them is the kleptomancy. That has to be elminated for a few reasons. First we played that in 1e and it was really bad and difficult for party mechanics when trying to implement this with Kender PCs. Second it goes against the modern philosophy of you decide your characters disposition. If we can have the Lawful Good Orc Wizard we can have the non-thieving Kender. Add a skill, probably slight of hand, but get rid of the "I steal useless baubles from everyone" mechanic.
Do that with a standard halfling on top of it and I think we are good.
As far as class, if you are using a halfling chassis, the obvious choice is Monk. Make use of "move through a creature larger then yourself" by having a high movement pick up second chance feat. A Bladesinger Wizard or Arcane Trickster would be good too mechanically.
Personality and play - Noble or knight background - leader among the kender - striving to save the Wolrd and defeat Takisis or Raistlan or whatever evil is about to destroy everything.