Hiyas:

My 2 thrones:

I'd introduce him at the minimum Rank to function well within the group.

HtH

L

I recently had this situation in my group, a brand new player joining a just over rank 4 cell. I settled it with some easy by bring in the new player's character at the beginning of rank 4 after all their Inquisitor is a competant induvidual so would send an induvidual of relevant skill. This puts the new player on an even footing in regards to skills, wounds and ability scores depending on how he spent his XP but still slightly behind the cell that have been together for a bit.

This is also the system that I am using for introducing new characters if one should die, they will start at the beginning of the rank that the rest of the cell are on. However if a player performs a 'heroic sacrifice' a la Deathwatch then they will come back on the same XP as their previous character and even be awarded the XP for the session in which they died.

For those that don't posses Deathwatch a 'Heroic Sacrifice' is a last stand by a character, so that the other can get away. During this time he will not take and critical hits other than one that kill him outright, but at the end of the scene he is dead, no fate points, no coming back he is dead dead dead.

Generally my campaigns end up being quite character driven with a lot of sub plots and various webs being weaved by PC's and NPC's alike. For this reason if someone joins half way through they get the same or even more XP than an established character, the trade off is that they are almost always pre-generated so that I know that there starting background and skills aren't going to upset the balance of the game.

As for established PC's generally speaking you don't get XP's for missed sessions.

@Mr Hindsight

When running 40k rpgs, I've always kept people at the same xp. Why? Less work for everyone involved to keep track of what xp they should be at and not penalising people who can't make games. Now if someone didn't bother showing up and got stroppy when asked about their absence, I might reconsider. But generally people who've missed sessions in my campaigns have had good reasons and I don't feel like penalising them further than them missing the session.

In my game I offer extra XP based on exemplary actions and a decent bonus if they write up an after action report when they finish a mission, some of these have proven to be an amazing and entertaining read, and i have even awarded 1 player 200xp becuase the PDF that he sent me with the report on the Inquisitorial parchment with case number and all the pertinent facts was so amazingly well written that I was completely blown away. It added so much character to his character, really brought it to life...

But anyway, I digress. When I had a player have to leave the game becuase he could no longer make the time and I had another player join in I put the new player in at the base experience that they had earned, so even though they had had several missions, reports and exemplary deeds I brought her in at the amount that the players had been making just off of completing the missions, this was in a couple cases several hundred experience less, but she hasn't been left in the dust by the other players and has even earned some extra XP to catch up.

I'm not saying my solution works for everyone, but it works pretty **** well for my group.

In short, I would bring the player up to a compatible amount of xp, like at the bottom of the rank the other players are on. Like if the other players have around 2600 xp I would probably start the new one at 2000, the beginning of rank 4.