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.

Savage Worlds uses a bennies system. Each PC has by default three bennies and the GM has a pool of bennies that varies on the number of PCs. the GM pool can be used for *any* NPC, how matter how minor or major. Major NPCs ("wild cards") also get to use their individual bennie pools, which gives them an edge over faceless mooks.

May be of help.

Well I would go by the way, that each Fate Point which is burned by any of the players, it is transformed to the DOOM Point and given to the Game Master to be used on any of the NPC completely as FP, inclouding the Burning (then it is lost from the game). That could escalate the game quiete nicely.

The original version of the Dark Heresy rules (nearly two years before the final game was released - the system was very different) had a system that worked in a vaguely similar manner.

All PCs (and some major NPCs) had Fate Points, which (like now) could be spent for a variety of purposes. Players could, at their discretion, choose to gain two different benefits from spending a Fate Point, rather than the normal single benefit, but if they did so, then the GM gained a Fate Point for a general pool that he could apply to any of his NPCs, in addition to any that he already had from his major NPCs. PCs typically had 3 Fate Points, major NPCs normally only had 1.

On a related subject, NPCs (of any sort) couldn't burn a Fate Point to survive death - instead, an NPC could burn Fate when they died to take a final turn's worth of actions before dying.

I think the Star Wars idea is intriguing, I think pairing that with how NPC's only gain one more turn before dying when using a Fate point would be the right mix. I could create a more dynamic and rich flow of power and make things more cinematic. I might go so far to say players might be detered from spending these points willy nilly as the GM could bundle up these evil points to do especially dire things fitting to the situation (Doubling the damage of a heretic's psychic attack by spending a couple of these points, for instance), it would strictly be up to a GM who understands flavor of story over strict mechanics but could be a hoot.

As far as individual or squad, here are some thoughts:

+Deathwatch, specifically, is all about cooperation, so it makes sense that they would use it as a team.

+Having individual pools that would create negative points specific to that player could punish those who are greedy. The candle that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast.

+Would be too much bookkeeping, but perhaps something that ties into Solo and Squad mode? Too many numbers, I think, unless players wrote it on their sheet much like Corruption. So when they spend these points in solo it affects only them, but when in squad mode one person spending affects the pools of all those involved (this would grant more "bad" tokens for the GM, one good traded for several bad, but considering the power of squad mode and increasing the chance of success this might be just fine of a tradeoff)

When it comes to Burning Fate, I would say it works like this: When using the points to reroll and other mundane stuff, you do the whole flipping over tokens deal. When a player burns a point to prevent himself from dying the point is removed from the pool and the GM does not get such an evil token. The punishment is losing the point to begin with, and this makes death as important to avoid as it was before. Earning new fate points should be accomplished only through great achievements.

In any case I'm really intrigued by the idea and I certainly want to playtest this. I recall Star Wars Saga Edition having a similar "Destiny" system so I'm going to scurry off to review that.