Radomo said:

Not in a low-rank game, no. But, at Rank 5 or so, it should be no more difficult than using any Rogue Trader character in a Dark Heresy game.

Radomo said:

It's a difficult balancing act, really. Straight comparison of numbers alone don't really cover it.

One thing to consider is that the abilities an Ork possesses, for the most part, serve a single purpose - making the Ork dangerous in a fight. Kroot have abilities all over the place, covering combat, stealth and tracking, while a lot of the Ork abilities - most notably, the 'Ard trait and the talents that come from it - have effects which all overlap in function: making the Ork harder to overcome in a fight.

An average starting Goff Ork (11 to every characteristic roll, so WS 36, BS 21, S 44, T 41 (8), Ag 31, Int 26, Per 31, WP 31, Fel 26, and 12 wounds), amongst other things, exists in one of three states in a fight: uninjured, lightly injured, or critically injured. In the first case, their toughness keeps them like that for longer (remembering that Unnatural Toughness has an advantage over a similar number of armour points in that Pen won't affect it). In the second case, their toughness bonus is so high that they physically can't become Heavily Injured (and can pick up 14 extra wounds during their career, and the Hardy talent in Rank 3, so they remain this way long-term), and the +20 on tests to heal them makes it extremely easy for an Ork to get back into the fight - for the Greenskins, a staple gun is first aid, afterall. In the third case, True Grit keeps the Ork from falling particularly quickly when they do get seriously injured, its high Toughness Bonus (aided by cheap toughness advances) keeps fatigue from lesser critical hits from being too much of an issue, and Iron Jaw keeps criticals that cause stunning to be less effective... meaning that an Ork stays on its feet fighting longer than virtually anything else the same size.

Their advances - cheap and numerous wounds, cheap strength, toughness and WS advances and some powerful Ork-specific talents - all contribute towards the career as a whole as well.

In short... the numbers don't show everything. Orks are extremely focussed on combat (specifically, melee and resilience; they've got good access to weapon training, but it's difficult to get the most out of guns with a low BS - autofire guns are a must for most Orks), and thus their abilities are weighted in that direction primarily. Further, the numbers were picked to be fairly close to the basic Ork Boy NPC in Creatures Anathema and the Ork Freebooter NPC in the Rogue Trader rulebook (my first step was to compare the two and see what they had in common).

On top of that, early playtesting - of a starting array of ability scores slightly higher (can't remember them all off-hand now; that first draft was nearly a year ago, but Strength and Toughness were both 2d10+35; the advance schemes gave certain talents sooner as well) - showed them to be disproportionately unkillable, so they were nudged downwards a bit.

All that aside, it's your game, so make the changes you feel like making. If, hypothetically, you wanted to boost the Ork's starting ability scores to be a little more in line with the values other Rogue Trader characters get, I'd suggest base (before 2d10 roll) characteristics of WS 35, BS 20, S 30, T 30, Ag 20, Int 20, Per 25, WP 25, Fel 20. I don't, personally, see that as necessary, however.

Well, that was more detail that I expected. Thanks!

In the back of my head, I kind of knew that was the answer (being, essentially, highly min/maxed toward melee/toughness), but I was curious if there was another answer.

In fact, I'd already tried to compare Kroot/Ork in the melee uberness area along similar lines. My first glance told me that similar starting Str + good str access + Unnatural Str made Kroot better. I was also thinking that Kroot leap > Brutal Charge. But, other than those items, Kroot get very slow access to other melee boosting talents, due to, as you said, their almost jack of all trades knack for shooting, stealth, melee, *and* perception skills.

Your buffed profile is probably more than I was thinking. In my head, as buffing WS/BS by 5 (BS of 10 is brutal ) each and spreading a +3-5 for Int/Ag/Per among some of the origin options (basically, what you did with Blood Axe, but +3 Int for a Mekboy origin, for example), so that you could get one based on your ork's genetic predisposition.

Again, I'm very happy with your implementation as is, and I'm getting ready to put the boot in with my ork in an upcoming campaign. So, well done, sir.

By Gork! You'ze done a zoggin great deal of Orkiness. I'd just like to see it in a Dar k Heresy Suplement (like when I'd wished to see an Orc supplement for WFRP 2nd Edition, but it never came!)