Looking for advice on introducing a new player character

[reveal]

Recently, a player has expressed interest in playing a different character. He's level 12 and has said that he has "done everything he can do" with his current PC. Since the party is in down time, I told him it would be the perfect time to do it. But here's my conundrum; he wants to play a Changeling. For those of you unfamiliar with Changelings, they're basically watered-down Dopplegangers who have an ability to change their appearance as though they used disguise self. It only affects their bodies and not their possessions.

The problem is the characters have two different groups who want to kill them. One is run by a Changeling who has, in the past, changed himself to look like one of their closest friends and then tried to kill them. This group also hired a troupe of assassins to kill the party. The assassins failed and the PCs saw that one of the assassins was a Doppleganger when they, the party, killed him.

The other group hired a Doppleganger to pretend to be the party cleric's long dead husband. He walked through the town square, making sure the cleric could see him, and led her to an ambush which almost killed her and the party wizard.

So, knowing the parties experience with shapechangers, I need advice on bringing in this new Changeling so that party will trust him. I know I could just say "Here's the new PC" and everyone would trust him, but the party likes to RP and wouldn't enjoy it as much as they would RPing something to have him gain their trust.

Two ideas I've come up with so far:

1) The parties sponsor in House Cannith could send the Changeling to help them. The party might trust him since he is trusted by House Cannith. The party will be asked by their sponsor to visit Istivin (see Dungeon #117) so this would be a logical way to fit him in.

2) Have the party ambushed (which is a plan anyway because of, well, see above ) and have the Changeling wade in to help them.

Does anyone else have any suggestions? I would really appreciate them.

 

[MoonZar]

Advice

3) The new PC could be a friend of a NPC friend of the group who will tell them that he's a good guy.

 

[shaylon]

Both of your solutions are good, but I would go with #2. A party can usually do nothing but accept a person who saves them. Then again, it all depends on what kind of players you have. Are they super paranoid? If so there might be little you can do to make them trust him at first.

-Shay

 

[Ferret]

I would go with number two, and if that fails fall back to one.

Or there is 4) Changling sticks to one form, then when the player has one their trust begins to change.....

 

[mcrow]

yeah, I think I would play it out not letting the other PC know he/she is a changling. then later on in the story arc work a situation in that will put the new cahracter in between a rock and a hard place. There will eventually be time when the character will have to make a decision to whether to expose what he/she is for the good of the party or make everyone's life more difficult.

 

[WinnipegDragon]

Alternately, this changeling could have a business or personal relationship with the changeling that has tried to kill them in the past. Some falling out/disagreement leads the new PC to realize that s/he has been wrong about this villainous person and seeks out the PCs to make amends.

 

[DonTadow]

Kudos on making your pcs as paranoid as I make mine .

If your pcs are like mine they would be very apprehensive about any changling wanting to enter the party. I ran into a simliar situation when a new pc wanted to play an elf, when the pcs had believed that elves were in on a political conspiricy.

What I would do is have the pcs encounter the new guy in some type of torture device, perhaps in teh act of being tortured. The changling pc is a rogue former agent of the group chasing you whom has betrayed them. Go back over your notes of previous sessions and see if there were any things that were out of sinque or coincodence to how the pcs either got away or defeated a battle (or you could make something up such as there should have been three more guards chasing the pcs but the new changling pc took care of them) . I would give the new pc credit for this.

OF course he was found out and is now being tortured for this. He probably thought he ws helping you guys out on the sly. When the pcs encounter him he shouts to them the informatino that helped him and tells them he has more information and he's working with "such a such npc" . Let the pcs be able to witness the torture act for a minute to know that these guys aren't staging anything.