A few people brought this up, so I thought I'd open it up for debate. The questions on the table are: Is 20 white stones to one red stone too much? Do we want to lower the cap? Should white stones cost more boon? Should other stones in your fate pool (brown, for instance) reduce the white stone maximum and/or bump out white stones already there?
It ultimately comes down to the game's difficulty level. If you guys feel like the current system is too forgiving or death isn't as risky as it should be, that can be changed. I, for one, have seen the look of relief on every person's face thus far as they drew white, so I'm of the mind that the danger of drawing red or brown seems to be there. That's just my objective opinion, though. Let's hear the subjective opinions of some players.
maybe you culd even out the fate stones with karma liek more of the karam u have more red stones are put so like if you have 30% karma u put 3 red stones in... I say make it a lil more risky on what you do in Orn and make Death scary but not to bad becasue i am sure alot of ppl relly dont want to perm make death a lil more different
perhaps a cap of 20 stones would work, with your karma playing a part as well. Some people are just lucky, why should PCs be any different. I think that if people spend Boon on more stones, they are not investing it into another aspect of their character. Perhaps the Immortal with the domain of Luck smiles upon some. I also believe that if someone puts all of that effort into the luck of the draw, their character could reflect that somehow. Perhaps Plot could have that person take a level of disciple and they revere that immortal. This allows the character to reflect decisions made by players OOP, while also perhaps deterring others from taking that route. Another way to balance would be raise the Boon price, but it could take away from the balance a bit. for example if it is more beneficial boon wise to get skill points, then characters concepts with the trade skill would go towards that. On the other hand maybe the fact that a character is luckier than others could also be a character concept. I mean who wouldnt love playing a rogue who always flew by the seat of his pants. That character has all confidence in not only himself, but also in his deity to guide and protect him. Just a few outside looking in thoughts. I guess what i was attempting to say is that as long as you can somehow explain the fact that they have more stones with a good in game solution I dont see what the harm in it is.
The fear of death is very real, however, being that the death shade can be defeated, having an excessive number of white stones really makes death sorta laughable. Granted, even with 20 whites and 1 red, there's still the chance of pulling red, I'm not as worried about it.
Personally, I think a cap of 10 whites is adequate, or even a cap of 10 stones total. Due to the fact that I don't know the circumstances behind how you acquire a brown stone and what it does, I can't give a solid opinion as to whether or not it should add to the stones or replace an existing. In general, I'm more leaning toward simply adding to existing unless it had some positive effect.
With the monetary/time cost for a point of boon as it is, I think 1 boon is appropriate for the cost of a white stone, especially due to the fact that there have been a few cases where characters have died because of vicinity XX damage spells taking out large numbers of people with few healers (especially when vicinity damage takes out the healers), and the fact that there are so very few revive items out there at the moment and nobody is able to cast the spell yet. Until either of those things change, spending more than 1 boon per white stone just seems harsh.