Not sure how many people here have seen the beta for EotE yet, but it has an interesting "Destiny Pool" mechanic. It serves a similar role to the 40k line's fate points, but is a shared pool among the players and the GM. Light side points can be used by PCs, dark side points used by the GM. More importantly though, every time a light side point is used, it is flipped to the dark side, and can be later used by the GM (and vice versa). This seems like a cool system, if only because it allows a constant use of these points instead of a hoarding of resources.
That said, given that fate points are highly individual, would there, could there be any way to adopt this into the 40k line? It would suffer from a few distinct issues:
- Group pool vs. individual pool - not sure how to handle this. Either each PC tracks their fate point pool separately (and the GM tracks a "negative" pool that can only be used against them), or the pool is shared. If it is shared, obviously it would be the size of all the PCs fate points. Players could be forced to only be able to pull as many from the pool as their initial total (if players are stingy on the matter), or all could agree to use as needed (could get broken).
- Burning Fate - a distinctly 40k term. It would probably be handled by allowing a PC to reduce their total, remove one fate point from the pool, and get the effect. "Negative" points could be pulled first.
- What foes can use it? - Hard to say, as fate is normally meant to fall only under Touched By The Fates. It could in theory only go to these NPCs, making fate otherwise not restore too often during play. Sadly, this would make foes with Touched By The Fates significantly more difficult, as they start the combat with far more fate points at their disposal (if the players had been using them willy-nilly up to this point). Could be intentional. Also, as the NPCs use their points, players are restoring FPs quite quickly. If normal enemies are allowed to use "negative" fate points, could work reasonably well, just don't give them access to Righteous Fury. Easily a good way for NPCs to restore a few wounds mid combat, or get that needed boost to an attack.
Thoughts? Fate points are one of those fairly powerful tools in this system, and tweaking it probably could have dire consequences.