Orky Career Paths

So, I've decided I'm going to slap together an Orky patch/port/supplement for the Dark Heresy RPG. It'll be fun - the humor level will be bumped up a bit, and the fear of PC death will be lessened. I considered three approaches to the character class model:

1. Dark Heresy's Career Paths, which are kind fiddly, and really hard to balance. What's more, while the paths allow for a lot of variety in skills and talents chosen, they straight-jacket you conceptually. That may be fitting of the regimented society of The Imperium, but it ain't Orky. A good bonk on the head can send an Ork down an entirely new path, and the rules need to reflect that.

   
   

2. Something completely unique and Orky. I could make a new system that's really flavorful, but it'd not only be a lot of effort, it would also limit the system's usefulness. Basically it would have minimal value to random Dark Heresy players who stumble across this via search engine. That's no good - the point of sharing things on the net is to make it so players anywhere might stumble across your ideas and find them inspiring.

   
   

3. WHFRP's Basic and Advanced Careers. This is what I settled on. It's a framework that's already familiar to myself, and to much of the Dark Heresy audience. It contrasts against the Imperiums lifetime Career Paths, yet isn't so different as to feel like a whole other game. Best of all, I don't have to spend a lot of verbiage explaining how it works - I can just direct the reader to a book (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay) published by the same folks who publish Dark Heresy.
   

I add one little caveat/houserule to the system in WHFRP - ignore the WHFRP rule about spending 200 XP to change to any new Basic Career. Instead, there's an Advanced Career called Outcast that anyone can join at any time by spending 200 XP and acting kinda weird or crazy for at least one session. Outcast has a lot of different career exits, and even lets you change Clans. I'll post more when I have all the details (for at least a few dozen careers) worked out.