Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Lords of the Boards, your assistance is requested.
I've got a new player joining my AoW game and am trying to think of a way to integrate him and am looking for suggestions. Perhaps the biggest rub is that he is coming into the game as the PCs are in the middle of HoHR. They are going to be highly suspicious of a new character given all the dopplegangers, so I need to make sure they have a good reason to trust him.
Right now, my idea is to bring him in along with a scroll of Discern Shapechanger (I think that's the name - it's in the Spell Compendium, 2nd level wizard spell that allows the caster to detect dopplegangers). I think this will go a long way towards earning the party's trust, plus will confirm that he is not a doppleganger and reveal the doppleganger in the party.
The other item for which I am seeking suggestion is his background. This is one of my strongest roleplayers and he is bringing in a character from another campaign I ran. At that time, the character was a very sick neutral evil bastard. As a teen, he was obssessed with his sister and hated his abusive parents. He burned his house down, hoping to kill his parents so that he could run away with his sister. Unfortunately, he messed up and killed her too.
During the old campaign, the character had made a bargain with a non-core diety of death. In exchange for a certain number of souls, collected with a special garrotte, the god would ressurect the PC's dead sister. The player decided that during the time period between the end of the old campaign and the beginning of the new one, the character had achieved the goal. However, it turned out to be a trick, and instead of ressurecting the sister he loved, the god ressurected his unborn sister (his moter was pregnant but the character did not know that at the time).
The character was upset by this incident, but mellowed as a result of having to take care of the baby (alignment shifted to neutral). He has raised the child and 14 years have passed. She is quiet and intense with white hair (he describes her as River Tam from Serenity). Now that she is self-sufficient, the character is looking to get back the sister he really wanted in the first place.
I need an excuse for him to go find the PC's in the Sodden Hold and join them on their mission. The best thing I've come up with so far is that the cleric that ressurected the little sister is Darl Quethos from LoLR. Darl had a vision from Vecna to ressurect the younger daughter because she carried the strongest blood link to the druids that imprisoned Kyuss (she had a diff't father from the PC). Darl told the character to raise the girl because she had a destiny, unlike the trashy other sister. The character understandably wants revenge and has been trying to find Darl ever since. He has been largely unsuccessful, and in the meantime, Loris has learned of the significance of the child and has stolen and imprisoned her in the HoHR.
What do you think? Any suggestions.
That's a good story. It'll help give Darl more of an impact when he rolls around in LoLR...or maybe before?
My absolute favorite way to introduce a new character is to wait until the PCs are in the midst of combat. (For greater effect, make it a tough one, where the PCs stand a good chance of losing.) Then, have the player of the new character, through some sort of motivation, jump into the fray to save the PCs from danger. (I did this with one of my PCs cohorts, when she made the scene.) It may seem a bit cliche, but it has two definite benefits. First, it shows the other PCs that the character possesses the desire to protect the party in some capacity, though this may very well be misinterpreted. Second, it allows the player to mix it up with the group with little ado.
Eventually, though, your PCs will probably come to the "gee, can we trust this guy? we better cast a lotta spells to be sure" leg of introductions. Given the nature of the adventure, a discern shapeshifter scroll sounds very appropriate. But it's always been my experience that fighting alongside one another is both more expedient and more fun.
I'm not sure where "halfway" through HOHR is, but I assume that they're at least down on the lower level of the Sodden Hold by now. If they haven't reached Telakin, perhaps the new player could be brought in by the dopps for Telakin to absorb or make a gem from. Having the character dragged in by some other doppelgangers could help with the credibility a little. Then the new player gets to show his stuff in a fight unarmed. This could be during the final showdown with Telakin, so that the party can retrieve the new guys stuff once they're done with Sodden Hold.
Or they could run across him fighting off a gang of doppelgangers in the sewers (for whatever reason). Seeing some guy killing doppelgangers is a pretty good character statement and the party gets to rescue him...
Those are my first thoughts anyway.
What the hell does that character want with his dead sister anyway? To be friends? Creepy backstory.
I would suggest that the character is in the same situation as the PCs; Loris Raknian wants him out of the picture and has hired the mind flayer and his dopplegangers to kill him along with the PCs. It would have been good if, rather than using a scroll or something to discern whether or not the character is a shapeshifter, there could have been a superstition from folklore or something to give the characters clues. Maybe dopplegangers hate cold iron, so the charcter could come in with a cold iron horseshoe on a necklace around his throat.
Or maybe his own work against the doppleganger ring has given him information as to their plans, including putting a plant in the group. He may have reliable information gleaned from a now dead doppleganger as to their plans with the group and comes into the scene declaring that the players characters should cast a true seeing spell if capable in order to find the spy in their midst. Or maybe he stops the doppleganger right in the nick of time as it moves to coup de grace a sleeping player.