D&D General Tasslehoff is A LOT less annoying than Flint

[GMforPowergamers]

Anyway, I am nearly done with book two, but so far the thing that has struck me most (aside from the mediocre writing itself) is that for all the talk of kender being annoying and Tasslehoff Burrfoot being the epitome of the worse of that halfling offshoot in terms of stealing and doing foolish things (which to be honest, is also how I remembered him), I am finding him to be an absolute delight and his attitude and curiosity is a great antidote to the dour characters like Tanis and Sturm.

I love the characters in the book. I even think if someone played LIKE tasslehoff it would not be too bad (maybe mildly annoying),

as a card carrying "I hate Kender Club" it annoys me MORE that the advice in the books and the descriptions (and later comments by the writers) basicly take the worst aspect of a cool character turn it up to 11, then lets players run with it.

 

[James Gasik]

There is one thing about Tasslehoff that differentiates him from "generic Kender" that I do appreciate, now that my memory has been jogged. He can learn from his mistakes.

An example of this is the "dream" during the Cyan Bloodbane arc, he fails to disarm a trap and dies. When he comes across a trap in real life later, he remembers what happened in his dream and makes a different choice, instead of just doing the same nonsense over and over, which is a mistake I have seen Kender player characters make.

They go "shenanigans!". But when those shenanigans cause problems in the game, rather than grow or evolve, their solution is "more shenanigans!".

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

When I went back and re-read the first trilogy, I found Flint and Tasslehoff to be my favorites as an adult. The way they reacted to the situations they found themselves in felt very, I don't know, relatable? They felt more like real people than the other characters. Flint's mundane death, for me, still packs more of a punch than Sturm's.