I am unsatisfied with the single fate point in the Tau Character Guide. Though it is highly unlikely I'll ever run a game with a Tau player (despite one of my players being super excited to have just got the guide today), I am thinking that I'd be willing to let a Tau player purchase the NPC-only Touched by the Fates Talent at Character Creation as an Elite Advance to get more, because seriously, with all their Fate-Point dependent Talents, that seems kind of silly to me to only have one.

However, I am unsure what would be a good pricing for the Talent. I'm hovering around 500xp, and allowing it to stack with their single fate point (for an average of 3-4 Fate Points), but am unsure if this is too much, or too little. Fate points are pretty powerful if the players are smart with them, but I don't necessarily want to eat up all their starting xp.

Or should I just give it to them for free maybe? We had an ork player in our group once, and the GM at the time just gave him the Sanctioned Xenos Trait for free, because 800xp seemed prohibitively expensive for what he got out of it. If I do that though, do I still allow the Fate Points to stack, or just House Rule it to override their single Fate Point (for an average of 2-3 Fate Points)?

Any suggestions?

Not sure if it would be unbalancing, but maybe just say to hell with it, and let them have "normal Fate points". I don't care if there is some weak rule that tries to hedge them down on Fate, because the high-up Tau in Deathwatch have the normal Fate points, so I'd say treat them like a character, and give them the Fate points they should have. Fate, it's the PC shirt, after all.

I'd give them the options of more fate points or a battlesuit.

Not sure if it would be unbalancing, but maybe just say to hell with it, and let them have "normal Fate points". I don't care if there is some weak rule that tries to hedge them down on Fate, because the high-up Tau in Deathwatch have the normal Fate points, so I'd say treat them like a character, and give them the Fate points they should have. Fate, it's the PC shirt, after all.

Exactly. Simply by being a PC, you are already a cut above the rest. Beyond simply being more skilled than the average schmuck of your kind, there is a strong degree of luck involved in getting to that point at all in the 40k-verse, and Fate Points represent that.

As to giving them "normal Fate points", there is no official rule for the Tau to generate them. The official rule is "you get one, and that's it", so I was thinking using this Trait is as close to an "official" method as possible, so I wouldn't have to house-rule it further, or arbitrarily assign a number, and then have a guy who rolled poorly on his non-tau character grumble about why that guy gets so many and he doesn't.

If I shouldn't charge them an XP fee for the Trait, I'm thinking then that it should be used as a replacement for their single fate point, rather than stacking with it. Seem fair?

I'd give them the options of more fate points or a battlesuit.

Only if they're starting at Rank 5. Like hell am I giving one of my players a Battlesuit at Rank 1!