XP and Character Advancement in Orky Heresy

Rather than using the existing (and convoluted) Dark Heresy system for character advancement, the Orky port to DH will use the simpler rules from Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. You'll need both WHFRP and DH to run Orky Heresy, I'm afraid.

Here's the briefest of summaries:

• Buying a skill or talent or +5% of statistic upgrade costs 100 xp.
• When you have filled all the upgrades of your existing career, you may pay 100 xp to advance to any career that's listed in the "Career Exits" of your current career.
• In the case of upgrades where you have choices (such as listing "Barter or Evaluate") you may advance provide you have at least one option from each choice, or can wait and buy every option first.

And here's ways this "Orky-port" varies from WHFRP and DH:

• The WHFRP rule that lets you pay 200 xp to restart at ground level by going to any basic career does not apply to Orky Heresy. Instead, you may pay 200 xp and act weird for a session or two to go to the Outcast career.
• Don't worry about meeting the prerequisites of Skills and Talents. The careers are set up to make it likely you'll hit the prereq's, but it's no biggie if you don't. They are still available as options. Your options are limited enough to prevent most abuses of this in an all-Ork campaign.
• When you start a new career, you immediately get all the trappings (items) of that career. This is a bit more generous than WHFRP, but again it's not unbalancing as long as everyone gets the same benefits. Roll the teef dice of your new career, and add them to your total.
• The system uses a few talents from WHFRP and some new talents. If at first you don't find it in DH, check here and in WHFRP.
• I recommend the flat XP awards from WHFRP instead of the more organic system of DH. Part of the fun of playing Orks is being able to screw up and not worry too badly, so flat XP works well to make the players not stress over success. Replacement characters should only trail a couple hundred XP behind the character that died for much the same reason.
  
• That said, the following XP bonus exists just for Orks: +100 XP in any session in which you took 1 or more wound. The fluff text of the 40k Ork books says that getting injured triggers a biological reaction in Orks to grow bigger and get 'arder. The rules should reflect that.
  

Again, this is all a playtest / prototype / beta / untested version of the Orky port for Dark Heresy. There's some rough edges, and the GM will have to improvise from time to time.

Good luck, and have fun!

Thrones to Teef

For my Orky-port of the Dark Heresy RPG, it just won't do to have the prices of everything be done in Imperial Throne Gelt. Long-time fans of 40k know that Orks use Teef as Kurrency. It only makes sense, their teeth get knocked-out all the time, rot away gradually even after being knocked out, and regrow fairly quickly.

Eventually, if I actually run the system, I'll work up a full price chart in Teef. In the meantime, I plan on using the following conversion system to wing things.

Variable pricing and conversion rates: Prices within an Ork community vary by day, memory, and whim. For every full 100 thrones something in the book costs, its Orky price is 1d10 teef. If it doesn't cost an even multiple of 100 thrones, add +1d6 teef to the cost. You add these together, so a Bolt Pistol (which costs 250 Thrones) would cost between 3 and 16 (2d10+1d6) teef.
If, however, something is so cheap as to be less than 20 thrones by the books, it costs just a single toof, and you don't roll at all.

The Barter roll: To prevent abuse by PCs buying low and selling high (a terribly unOrky thing to do), every transaction involves a Barter roll once the characters have committed to making a purchase. If both parties fail (or succeed by the same margin) then the cost is just a normal roll of the teef dice, as detailed above. However, if at least one player succeeds, then the player with the most degrees of success may roll an extra die, plus one extra die for every degree of success, and pick which ones to use.

Example: Gazkit wants to buy a Bolt Pistol from Throk. Both make rolls of the Barter skill. Unfortunately for Gazkit, he gets only a simple success, whereas Throk rolled three degrees of success. Instead of rolling 2d10+1d6, Throk may roll 6d10+1d6, (or 5d10+2d6, or even 2d10+5d6 if he really wants) and keep any two of the 10-siders and any one d6 for his total. Gazkit is committed to the purchase before the price is rolled, and just has to live with it. However, he doesn't have to be happy about it, and Throk might want to keep emotional consequences of a trigger-happy Ork with a shiny new bolter in mind when he's choosing his dice.

I didn't want it anyway: Normally, an Ork is committed to buying whatever it is that they wanted badly enough to get to the stage of making a Barter roll. However, an exception can be made in the event of the Teef total exceeding more than half that Ork's savings. So, in the example above, if Gazkit only had 20 teef total, he could back out of the purchase if it came to more than 10 teef. However, there are mechanical consequences for doing such:

1. First off, the Ork in question can't by the same or similar item that session at all, not even from a different seller. Consider it a form of Orky sour grapes. When they say "I didn't want it anyway!" they mean it.
2. Secondly, if that Ork ever tries to buy the same or similar item from the same seller, he doesn't get to roll Barter at all. The seller still does, and so has a better than normal chance of getting the dice from degrees of success. If the potential buyer does the "I didn't want it anyway" gambit multiple times with the same seller, each subsequent time gives an extra +10 bonus to the sellers subsequent barter rolls.

Eliminating Giant Dice Pools: A 8,500-Throne suit of light power-armor would cost an incredible 85d10. Obviously, no one wants to roll that many dice. So, for purchases over a thousand Thrones either party may choose to just invoke a 10d10 = 55 Teef rule, provided that at least one die is still rolled and kept. In other words, for that 8,500-Throne suit, either the buyer or the seller could choose to drop 80 of the dice from the roll and agreeing the cost is instead (8 x 55 = 440) 440 + 5d10 Teef . This shouldn't come up often. Very few things that cost over 1,000 Thrones are likely to be available at an Orky village, anyway. Note that either party, buyer or seller, may invoke this rule, and the other is forced to live with it. Unless they didn't really want it, anyway.

Resale Value: When selling to an established tradesmen (in otherwords, someone who's just going to turn it around and sell it to some other Ork as fast as he can) your selling price is penalized by -1 Teef. By the same token, such a merchant can invoke "10d10=50" when buying something really big. That way, he's got a slightly better chance of making a profit. Still, Ork merchants live on the razors edge.

Teef In Me 'Ead: Should a PC ever ask how many teeth they (or an NPC) has in their mouth, the answer is 2d6. This is overruled only if a different number was already established this session, the session previous or the day previous (in game-time, regardless of time out-of-character). Therefore, no Ork is ever broke for long, but you also can't just punch yourself in the face every session.