Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raunalyn" data-source="post: 8612961" data-attributes="member: 72670">But that's not how they are portrayed in the books, nor is it how they are portrayed in Dragonlance Adventures and Tales of the Lance:"Kender treasure their friends; if a kender's friends are injured or slain, the kender may become very depressed and upset. Death only seems to affect a kender when it comes to one that the kender knows and loves, or when it is meted out by disaster or warfare to innocent beings (including any kender). In such cases, the distress that the usually cheerful kender feels is terrible to behold. A story is told of a human ranger during in the Age of Dreams who wounded a deer that was the pet of a kender community. The sight of the entire village of small kender crying their hearts out was so upsetting to the ranger that he quested until he found a druid who could heal the animal,then retired and took up fishing."From Tales of the Lance:"Kender make lifelong friends. They offer undying (though distracted) devotion and self-sacrifice to their companions. They always aid those who are hurt and they happily share their meager bounty with those less fortunate. The wounding of a dear friend sends kender into paroxysms of grief. Their grief is so plaintive that it can soften even the hardest heart.Due to their big-heartedness for others, kender are easily hurt by indifference or cutting remarks from friends. However, they quickly forgive and forget, and this endearing trait makes them extremely difficult to dislike."That doesn't sound like a "spoilt brat," but it does sound like an innocent child. There aren't any particular rules that specifically give Kender this negative reputation...again, it's a complete misunderstanding of how they should be portrayed. This can be easily managed using clear expectations and guidelines that are expressed at the beginning of the campaign. The mechanics here are irrelevant...this is mainly a narrative element to how they are portrayed that some players (who either through misunderstanding or power gaming) tend to abuse. I will reiterate that I've had gnomes who were more disruptive to my games than Kender...I had a game where the party almost had a TPK from a gnomish mishap...that was mechanical, not narrative.</blockquote>

Verification