I'm gonna throw a couple 2c in here too because awhile back there was actually a really good discussion about the shinki drought and god/shinki matchups and I totally said I'd summarize the main points and post them on the suggestions/mod HMD and then I... completely forgot about it 8V but now I'm reminded and I'm glad because this is a big part of the game!
While multiple shinki being assigned to the same god is definitely a contributing factor to the shinki drought (I'm totally calling it this now), this isn't always a simple case of a god character hoarding shinki from their OOC friends or w/e. RNG matches can make for fun surprise CR, but it doesn't always work out. Players might drop for any number of reasons, and that often leaves behind a god or shinki that's now without a partner. Newer characters are the highest risk for this, unfortunately, so allowing your character to be paired by RNG can lead to dead ends and a lot of reshuffling. This is something that affects both gods and shinki. It's not something that only affects god characters even if it might seem that way from an outside perspective.
If a shinki character is reshuffled repeatedly, it can be difficult for that character to adjust and the player might chose to pair them with one of their established CR instead. If they know the player is committed to the game, they know they won't have to deal with another quick reshuffling. God characters can do this too by having their characters pick up Nora shinki! The Nora system exists so that gods can basically share shinki and still have that strong emotional connection with them, but I feel like this doesn't get used nearly as much. Whether it's because shinki characters don't want to Nora or god characters want a shinki all to themselves, I can't really say, but I think the game would benefit greatly from a stronger push to encourage Nora-ing ICly and more shinki characters in general over limiting how many shinki each god can take on.
For example: there could be special shinki-only missions from NPC gods requesting a character to Nora for them for some specific reason. This is something that definitely goes on in Noragami, so maybe the PCs have been around long enough for some of the Nora-friendly native gods to finally start warming up to the idea of working together? Being Nora'd to a native god even temporarily could give special rewards or favours that wouldn't be obtainable any other way, at the cost of possibly being shunned by less Nora-friendly natives. Or perhaps in future events there may be enemy shinki who can use the bind spell on PCs, so shinki with multiple names from being Nora'd would have an advantage from the onset. Stuff like that!
All that said, I do actually like the idea of putting a bit of a limit on how many shinki each god can have based on their follower count. It fits the lore and it would encourage more activity from players if they wanted to pair up with lots of shinki friends. Something like 3 PC shinki maximum and then +1 for each 10k followers should be plenty. I don't know if I'd want to put a hard cap on it though, personally, for the reasons stated above (and if you have enough followers to take on like 12 shinki you're probably active enough to tend to all that CR tbh). Maybe Nora characters would be excluded from the count so that going Nora would be even more beneficial on an OOC level? Sharing is caring and all that.
A workshop post also sounds like it might be fun! Sometimes you might end up with a pairing that doesn't work out, so meeting with other new players to discuss possible CR for matchups would be awesome. Toplevels on the meme could be limited to just shinkiless gods/godless shinki and people who are apping/thinking of apping, since they're the ones that need it the most. I think it'd be worth trying, at least once!
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While multiple shinki being assigned to the same god is definitely a contributing factor to the shinki drought (I'm totally calling it this now), this isn't always a simple case of a god character hoarding shinki from their OOC friends or w/e. RNG matches can make for fun surprise CR, but it doesn't always work out. Players might drop for any number of reasons, and that often leaves behind a god or shinki that's now without a partner. Newer characters are the highest risk for this, unfortunately, so allowing your character to be paired by RNG can lead to dead ends and a lot of reshuffling. This is something that affects both gods and shinki. It's not something that only affects god characters even if it might seem that way from an outside perspective.
If a shinki character is reshuffled repeatedly, it can be difficult for that character to adjust and the player might chose to pair them with one of their established CR instead. If they know the player is committed to the game, they know they won't have to deal with another quick reshuffling. God characters can do this too by having their characters pick up Nora shinki! The Nora system exists so that gods can basically share shinki and still have that strong emotional connection with them, but I feel like this doesn't get used nearly as much. Whether it's because shinki characters don't want to Nora or god characters want a shinki all to themselves, I can't really say, but I think the game would benefit greatly from a stronger push to encourage Nora-ing ICly and more shinki characters in general over limiting how many shinki each god can take on.
For example: there could be special shinki-only missions from NPC gods requesting a character to Nora for them for some specific reason. This is something that definitely goes on in Noragami, so maybe the PCs have been around long enough for some of the Nora-friendly native gods to finally start warming up to the idea of working together? Being Nora'd to a native god even temporarily could give special rewards or favours that wouldn't be obtainable any other way, at the cost of possibly being shunned by less Nora-friendly natives. Or perhaps in future events there may be enemy shinki who can use the bind spell on PCs, so shinki with multiple names from being Nora'd would have an advantage from the onset. Stuff like that!
All that said, I do actually like the idea of putting a bit of a limit on how many shinki each god can have based on their follower count. It fits the lore and it would encourage more activity from players if they wanted to pair up with lots of shinki friends. Something like 3 PC shinki maximum and then +1 for each 10k followers should be plenty. I don't know if I'd want to put a hard cap on it though, personally, for the reasons stated above (and if you have enough followers to take on like 12 shinki you're probably active enough to tend to all that CR tbh). Maybe Nora characters would be excluded from the count so that going Nora would be even more beneficial on an OOC level? Sharing is caring and all that.
A workshop post also sounds like it might be fun! Sometimes you might end up with a pairing that doesn't work out, so meeting with other new players to discuss possible CR for matchups would be awesome. Toplevels on the meme could be limited to just shinkiless gods/godless shinki and people who are apping/thinking of apping, since they're the ones that need it the most. I think it'd be worth trying, at least once!