D&D 5E Kender a hafling subrace

[DnD Warlord]

Kenders.

Okay so they are halfing sized elf looking creatures with no fear no concept of personal property and some cool toys…



On there face they sound great. I HATE HATE HATE with a passion the idea that any intelligent enough to be a PC race could ever not be able to be taught any basic thing. In this case it is the above mentioned concept of personal property.



To make matters worse because the writers said so, they are supposed to be forgiven for this short coming…in fact whole pages have been written about how almost everyone loves them and no one stays mad at them…



I see this as FAR worse then the vistani as grouping an entire race under "They can steal because they are too dumb to be able to know it is stealing" mixed with a complete misunderstanding of the real life affliction Kleptomania.



In the Dragon Lance thread about the lawsuit we have hashed and re hashed the love/hate for kenders… I wonder though, is there a middle ground that we could find?



If you dislike and would not want to play with a kender as is, what is the most minor tweek you think that could allow it?



If you like and have played with a kender what is the most change you could imagine to one that would still feel like a kender?



I actually like the idea of a hafling subrace with fearless and the little cool toys like the hoopic…I just don't want the "have to steal all the time" baggage…

 

[Charlaquin]

Halflings already have advantage on saving throws against fear as part of the base race, I think that’s sufficient to represent Kender fearlessness. For the “they don’t understand personal property” angle, which I maintain should be cultural and that they can learn to understand the concept, even if they might find it kinda dumb, I’m a fan of the deep pockets feature they had in the Next playtest. I don’t remember exactly how it worked, but the idea was that you had all sorts of random junk in your pockets that you had casually picked up without really thinking about it. You could use an action (or maybe it was a bonus action?) to extract a tiny object from your pockets. There may have been a limit on the item’s value or something, or maybe there was a random table you could roll on for what kind of thing you pulled out. Might be kind of cool to make it a roll on the trinkets table, actually!

For the ASI (if you’re not using the new optional rule from Tasha’s to swap it out) I would probably go with Charisma to represent the “everyone loves them for some reason” thing.

 

[CleverNickName]

+1 for the "Deep Pockets" feature. I homebrewed this back into my campaign as a racial feature for Lightfoot Halflings.

 

[DnD Warlord]

+1 for the "Deep Pockets" feature. I homebrewed this back into my campaign as a racial feature for Lightfoot Halflings.

Does anyone still have the play test handy??

 

[billd91]

On there face they sound great. I HATE HATE HATE with a passion the idea that any intelligent enough to be a PC race could ever not be able to be taught any basic thing. In this case it is the above mentioned concept of personal property.

I decided to look back at the Dragonlance Adventures book from late 1e - turns out it's never been about being incapable of being taught that stealing is wrong. In fact, it underscores that kender also believe intentionally stealing something is wrong. That means that any group norm an adventuring party might have against taking valuable stuff to mess with someone or enrich one's self can be fully respected by a kender.

 

[CleverNickName]

I don't, but I have my campaign notes:

Deep Pockets. You are always collecting small and interesting objects wherever you go, and at any moment you can assume to be carrying nearly any number of tiny, worthless items such as buttons, pebbles, bits of glass, beads, discarded trinkets, empty vials, scraps of paper, hair pins, old keys, and other items. Once per short rest (and at the DM's discretion), you may produce anitem from your pocket of your choice. This item must be non-magical, smaller than a hen's egg, weigh less than 0.1 pounds, and have a value of 1 gp or less.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

IMO, Kender are a problem at the table exclusively when a disruptive player is allowed to play one, and that's it.
I've no problem with most people loving them in spite of their habits, nor with them being reluctant to try to learn about personal property. Of course, I'm of the opinion that jealousy and possessiveness are unnatural traits that we gave ourselves via poorly designed social systems first built to handle a dramatic change in how we lived as a result of the Agricultural Revolution, not something "basic" that any intelligent creature should be able to fairly easily understand or be willing to internalize.

But, making it so that Kender have no history of such social constructs and see them as something that afflicts other peoples, with more mature Kender being more willing to tolerate it out of respect for other cultures seems perfectly fine to me.

 

[DnD Warlord]

I've no problem with most people loving them in spite of their habits, nor with them being reluctant to try to learn about personal property. Of course, I'm of the opinion that jealousy and possessiveness are unnatural traits that we gave ourselves via poorly designed social systems first built to handle a dramatic change in how we lived as a result of the Agricultural Revolution, not something "basic" that any intelligent creature should be able to fairly easily understand or be willing to internalize.

But, making it so that Kender have no history of such social constructs and see them as something that afflicts other peoples, with more mature Kender being more willing to tolerate it out of respect for other cultures seems perfectly fine to me.

The problem is and why I must disagree is that I do not play games with people who try to cause trouble. I do play games with book fans (some dragon lance some FR some both) I do play with people who try to role play interesting and fun characters.

I have seen a one off weird character cause trouble before... but every single kender has caused trouble.

one of my best friends since high school ran a game and a young woman who had NEVER been a problem asked to play a kender... it was a problem. She has since played an assassin, a paliden and at least a dozen other characters. What made that one different... maybe the flavor text and background given to her by the books...

I even watched as a group who I ran had someone trying to bring in a kender. The problem in this case was the restriction we put on him of not stealing from the party made it no fun for him... yet in campaigns before and sense he has never been a problem.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The problem is and why I must disagree is that I do not play games with people who try to cause trouble. I do play games with book fans (some dragon lance some FR some both) I do play with people who try to role play interesting and fun characters.

I have seen a one off weird character cause trouble before... but every single kender has caused trouble.

one of my best friends since high school ran a game and a young woman who had NEVER been a problem asked to play a kender... it was a problem. She has since played an assassin, a paliden and at least a dozen other characters. What made that one different... maybe the flavor text and background given to her by the books...

I even watched as a group who I ran had someone trying to bring in a kender. The problem in this case was the restriction we put on him of not stealing from the party made it no fun for him... yet in campaigns before and sense he has never been a problem.

I mean, fair enough I guess. I've never seen such a thing.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

On there face they sound great. I HATE HATE HATE with a passion the idea that any intelligent enough to be a PC race could ever not be able to be taught any basic thing. In this case it is the above mentioned concept of personal property.

Its a common trope in fantasy and sci-fi: The culture without a concept of a certain thing like war or personal property, or money, that the obviously culturally-superior humans must teach them.

To make matters worse because the writers said so, they are supposed to be forgiven for this short coming…in fact whole pages have been written about how almost everyone loves them and no one stays mad at them…

Because the people in the setting know about Kender and know they are generally nice people.

I see this as FAR worse then the vistani as grouping an entire race under "They can steal because they are too dumb to be able to know it is stealing" mixed with a complete misunderstanding of the real life affliction Kleptomania.

?
Neither Vistani nor Kender "steal because they are too dumb to be able to know it is stealing" or have any connection to real-life kleptomania. If those are the connections that you are making, that is very unfortunate.

I actually like the idea of a hafling subrace with fearless and the little cool toys like the hoopic…I just don't want the "have to steal all the time" baggage…

Kender have never actually had "have to steal all the time baggage."