In OOTS you know at the very least the alignment of the person doing the raising. It was a recent plot point; Durkon couldn’t raise any of the Drakestooths because a bunch of paranoid CN types wouldn’t respond to a call from a LG cleric who might be a paladin.
And of course, everyone in the Lower Planes, even (or perhaps especially) the toady little nobodies, think that they’ll eventually be able to take over and run the place. Just you wait and see… I’ll show you, I’ll show you all!
While meanwhile, the eternal torment (that the victims are sure will only be temporary, and repaid with interest) continues.
So there is. Forgot that one, although I don’t think it would be of much use when it comes to Nale not letting Tarquin rez him. He would have no way of knowing the alignment of whoever was doing the rez for Tarquin.
When Durkon was trying to resurrect one of the dead Girard acolytes, the soul refused to return and Roy said that Durkon is Lawful Good and Soon’s paladins are Lawful Good so the dead soul was being stubborn, thinking is was one of Soon’s paladins. So you must get some sense of who is raising you. Or at least they do in Burlew’s world (but not enough to know it was a dwarven cleric and not a human paladin doing the raising).
[Edit: Probably should have finished the thread since this is brought up already… oops!]
On the other hand, Roy was able to check in on the mortal realm and knew Hayley was trying to get him resurrected. No idea if Nale would be able to do the same from whatever infernal plane he winds up in.
Come to think of it he’d probably be able to just guess it was Tarquin; who else would bother? Except Sabine, but she’s likely to be right there,* and probably doesn’t really have the resources for raising the dead.
*Nale: “Hey! Someone’s trying to Raise me! Probably someone working for ‘dear’ old Dad. Well, screw him!”"
Sabine: “Or better yet…”
Durkon. Then make Nale a thrall 
That would be AWESOME!
I’ve played in a few Dragonlance campaigns, with kender being a PC race. And the players who played kender generally would steal stuff from other PCs, just to “stay in character”, never mind that a wizard might have NEEDED that material component for a vital spell that could save the whole damned party. Allowing kender as PCs just about always tore a party apart. I didn’t like kender in the books, and I for damn sure didn’t like having a kender as a party member.
Yeah, a friend of mine’s favorite character was a kender, and it was a lot of fun… for him. For everyone else, not so much.
How long before you made it a policy to kill any kender you found in your group?
I DMed a group that had a couple of wannabe kender. I told the players that kender were Offensive Unto ALL The Gods, Even The Evil Ones, and that the gods regarded kender as lightning rods.
To steer this thread back to TOotS, Belkar is a great character…in a storyline. He’s hilarious, and I love the way that he gets the last word in a lot of the strips. I sure wouldn’t want to be in a game where a Belkar-like character was a PC, though. And I certainly wouldn’t want to try to play Roy if there was a Belkar in the party.
I still think that, at some point in the future, a major cliffhanger is going to be resolved when a very bright light causes a shadow to appear, and out pops a very disheveled-looking dwarf and shadowdancer who’ve been stuck in there since #242.
I’d like to add that they wrote a WATCHMEN role-playing game where one Player is supposed to keep going off into another room to confer with the GM; yes, it’s a terrible idea, but that’s actually the point. “This should make the other Players suspicious of the Comedian, which is certainly within the spirit of the Watchmen series … You may have to remind the Comedian Player that he must do everything in his power to keep the South-related activities a secret from the other Players … Remember that the Watchmen are not a smoothly functioning team, and that petty squabbles and grandstanding are in character within this group.”
So, yes, for once, you, too, can make this work in real life exactly the way it worked in the comics: Poison For Group Dynamics!
nm
This is utterly off-topic, but… I once DM’d a game where everyone played kender and tinker gnomes. And they had gully dwarf sidekicks.
It was Glorious.
Doesn’t sound like they were playing the kender very well. Why in the world would a kender find a piece of bug or rock interesting? A diamond or ring that is really sparkly? Sure, but how often do you need a rez spell or the like quickly? Now maps on the other hand, those disappeared like crazy. When I played a kender, if we found a map the leader would put it in his pack, then the next time we needed it, they just asked me for it.
OTOH, I tended to drive them crazy because I also did the other kender traits: Non-stop talking and not being afraid of anything. I got petrified once and they were seriously considering leaving me like that until the mission was over, until they realized the map they needed was in my pack.
I always played that character to be annoying to the other players, but stopped short of creating problems getting along and everyone enjoying the game. Your players sound like the kind of people that camp low level areas in MMOs so they can grief the newbies.
But that’s exactly how the rules describe them. The contents of a kenders pockets and pouches looks like the pockets of an eight year old boy. Bits of bugs and random rocks, string, leaves, etc are neat and worth keeping.
Roy (and Eugene) could check in on the mortal realm because the Greenhilt family sword provided a focus.
To be fair to my friend, he did have the sense to usually not play that character. And it did lead to one genuinely awesome moment when the plan called for the kender to sneak up on the bandits’ camp, which he did by skipping right down the middle of the road wearing bright-colored clothing and whistling loudly and off-key… and it worked.