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This sounds really interesting.

Here's my take:

Iron Heroes already has the in-combat aspect of things pretty well covered. None of the IH classes are chumps in close combat. Some are slightly better than others, but make up for it in other ways. I feel like you really shouldn't need to swap out very much if at all in the core classes.

This just leaves the social roles/rigid caste system of things. You've got a couple options here.

1) Simple, but limiting. Make social roles part of the trait system. Everyone is assumed to be part of the warrior class. If they want higher, they've gotta pay a trait for it. A couple of those already exist, but would be pretty easy to modify if you wanted it to. If they decide to go lower, the trait would not count against the limit of two, and they'd get some small extra boost for the loss of social standing. Depending on how strenuous social standing is, you could make it a skill boost, a feat, an attribute boost, or even a trait.

2) Make a feat chain based on the role system. It would have to be generic enough to cover all the roles, though. Basically, the deeper one went into the feat chain, the more bonuses you would accrue from the role, and the less you would have to "pay" for being that particular role.

3) Make several feat chains based off roles. Courtiers would be under social mastery. Samurai would get to pick power or finesse or projectile. Ninja would probably go under finesse. Sages, monks, or the like would have a lore based chain.

4) If you didn't want to use up character resources, you could always make the chains free, but with greatly lessened benefits. This would be a slightly expanded version of your template idea.

5) The template would work fairly well, and it's probably a lot simpler and easier than all of my potential solutions.

What in game effects did you want role to play?