Hellborn Descended is a TTRPG system by Studio Hex where you play as demonic mercenaries in a modern Hell, taking on high-stakes jobs with the sole goal of acquiring fortune, fame, and power.

It is a sequel to the original Hellborn which has been discontinued, and it is still under development; the Quickstart document contains some basic lore and the very basics of the core rules that let you play the game. I’m mentioning this right at the start because, well, it’s still unfinished and unpolished, but it shows a lot of promise. So this isn’t a review in the same vein that most others we’ve written in this blog – it’s more of a… beta test, let’s call it. The Quickstart document is currently PWYW (pay what you want) in DrivethruRPG, so if you’re also interested you can get it for free.

With all that in mind, let’s get into it.

The Lore

There’s not much in terms of lore so far, at least in the Quickstart. I assume a lot of it is going to be based on the original Hellborn, which I haven’t played – so I can’t comment or speculate on that. What we do have, is a mix of industrial – cyberpunk – modern influences on Hell. It’s no longer rivers of flame and seas of ice – the modern world has slowly infected it with its own brand of misery. Now it’s concrete, steel, and asphalt, corporations and media and mercenaries.

Instead of the 9 circles of hell as per Dante, in this case there are 7 Rings instead, one for each deadly sin: Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Sloth, Pride, and Wrath – each with its own demonic inhabitants, culture, and rules. Each ring takes the from of a massive island, so there’s also another difference to the usual depictions of hell: There’s no inherent hierarchy between rings and demons – at least from what we can see. There is, of course, the constant backstabbing, powerplays, and conflicts, but that’s mostly between powerful individuals and corporations rather than the rings themselves.

There’s not much more in terms of lore given so far. There are references to significant events and people, but they’re not expanded upon – though I’m not too torn up about that. What’s there is enough to give you a quick feel of the setting, and as I mentioned before, I assume a lot of that is from the original Hellborn – so there’s a basis to build upon that will be expanded with the full release. The authors mention that they drew inspiration from Hellboy, Cyberpunk 2077, and Helluva Boss – I can definitely see the first two, but since I only know the last one by name, I can’t comment on it. There’s definitely a lot of cyberpunk elements, with the massively powerful corporations and high-tech stuff, though some descriptions also give me more… industrial vibes; Doom, with its gritty and heavy metal atmosphere, like a gore factory; Ultrakill, with both decay and extinction of Hell combined with ultraviolence, and the fusion of demonic and machine – especially with the high-contrast red and black artwork; even a bit of Warhammer 40k – the Ring of Wrath, where the Balerkin live in underground Bunkers in a volcanic wasteland, waging war on each other, reminded me of Cadia and Krieg.

The Mechanics

Now for the main part – how do things work in this system?

Hellborn Descended uses a 3d6 system for skill checks – but a bit differently than what you might expect. It is NOT a d6 “pool” system like, say, Shadowrun; instead, you roll the 3d6 like you would a d20, and just add up their results. If the total (plus any bonuses) exceeds the Difficulty Rating (DR), you succeed. For example: A check has a DR of 13, and you have a 2 on the relevant attribute score (more on that later). You roll your 3d6 – say you got a 3, a 4, and a 5: Your total is 3+4+5+2=14, so you succeed. Seems a bit weird at first – at least to me – but it’s pretty simple. It does make the probabilities a bit weirder to compute though; Higher DRs are much, much harder to hit. For comparison, excluding any flat bonuses: The chance of someone hitting a DC20 with a d20 is 1/20, so 5%. A DC19 is 10%, DC18 is 15%, etc etc. The chance of someone hitting a DR18 in Hellborn is 1/6 * 1/6 * 1/6 = 1/216, which is less than 0.5% – 10 times rarer. A DR17 would be about 1.85%, and DR 16 would be 4.63%, and so on – this sort of non-linear progress means that GMs will have to be very careful with the DRs they set.

The upside to this, of course, is that you get a critical “Satanic Success” on a 6-6-6, meaning an automatic success – or a “Fiendish Failure” on a 1-1-1, which is an automatic failure. Still, I will say, I don’t know if the thematic allusion (and alliteration) is worth having just one crit per 200 rolls. (Fine, 2 crits, one success and one failure). Satanic Successes on attack rolls also produce an additional effect, chosen randomly by drawing a tarot card and using its corresponding effect from a table. I have a comment on this, but before that, let’s talk about Advantage and Disadvantage. Here, things get a bit stranger – it took me a couple of re-reads to figure it out, but again, it’s not that bad once you get it. You get advantage and disadvantage from various sources – not important how right now. You can get multiple, stacking advantages and disadvantages – they cancel each other out 1 to 1 (like in Open Legend, for example). If you have 4 advantage and 2 disadvantage, you end up with 2 advantage total. Each of them corresponds to a d6 roll – BUT, not for your main 3d6: you collect your (dis)advantage d6s in a separate pool and roll them. If you have advantage, you add the highest result of these to your roll – if you have disadvantage, you subtract it. Example: you roll with advantage 2. That means that first, you roll your 3d6 – add them up, let’s say your result is 10, now keep that and put them aside. Then, roll 2d6 for your advantage: one rolls 2, and one rolls 5. You take the highest, 5, and add it to your result – your total is now 15. An interesting mechanic, which also puts a hard cap on the bonus it can give: +6, and no more. However, it also has diminishing returns – the more advantages you stack, the less useful they are, except for the purpose of counteracting disadvantages. It also makes the probabilities even weirder than before – now you have a separate pool of dice to keep track of. However, here we have a very simple opportunity to fix the critical issue: Just make it so that 6s from the pool of advantages (and 1s from the pool of disadvantages, if you want to keep things symmetrical) count towards Satanic Successes – or advantages can contribute up to one 6 at most. I think this would make criticals a lot more common (3.16% for just advantage 1!) and also give players a bigger reason to stack advantages. Anyway, this whole thing sort of got away from me there – and perhaps you could already interpret the rules as working this way already – but I might as well point it out.

There are also some rules for Downtime – there are 4 possible actions, Acquire, Research, Train, and Work, to gain gear, information, XP, or money (called Limbos) respectively. Speaking of XP, players gain XP both as a group and as individuals, and rather than gain levels, they spend it to buy perks, attributes, and maleficas (essentially spells). I’m generally a bit hesitant when it comes to individual XP – it can lead to competition and powergaming, and honestly while you can probably balance it out as a GM and it can also encourage players to engage more with the session, it’s (in my opinion at least) more trouble than it’s worth.

Anyway, let’s get to the main part, character creation. The Quickstart has 7 steps to creating a character:

• Choose a species – Sinner, Balerkin, Tohri, Empusa, or Concubi. Each once has a bonus to an attribute, a unique trait, and a Malefica tied to them. Sinners don’t have a trait, but they can choose any attribute for their bonus and any Malefica.
• Choose your Attributes – you can do point buy, or just use the equivalent standard array – a split of 5/4/3/2/2. Attributes can only go up to 6. You also calculate your Derived Characteristics – Trauma (HP), Darkness (your resource for casting Maleficas), Defense, Malefic DR, and Movement.
• Choose your Tarot – Pick a card from the Major Arcana (only 10 of the 22 are currently in the quickstart). This gives you a +1 to an attribute, and a special trait, usually giving you a special action you can use once per mission. Then, you pick a reversed card – giving you -1 to an attribute, as well as a detrimental effect, usually with something the GM can choose to inflict upon you. Both tarot cards are supposed to reflect some aspect of your personality – for example, the Magician represents confidence and resourcefulness, but also arrogance on the reverse. (Sidenote: from my understanding, you don’t have to pick the same card for upright and reversed, although I would appreciate an explicit note in the rules, as someone might assume you do. I certainly did at first)
• Choose a Path- this is pretty much a Class, giving you access to the appropriate perks. The Quickstart has so far 5 Paths: Blade, Gunner, Malefic, Mastermind, and Wretch, covering some of the main archetypes – melee warriors, ranged dps, spellcaster, tactician, and sneaky thief rogue. You get two 1st level Perks and one 2nd level Perk for your Role upon character creation. You get more by spending XP, and the Quickstart has perks up to level 3 so far.
• Choose your Malefica – Your “school” of spellcasting. Every character gets this, but some can focus more on it than others. Each Malefica has its own Powers – you learn two 1st level Powers and one 2nd level Power from your Malefica. Using a power requires spending Darkness – a resource, let’s call it similar to Mana, which recovers between missions. There are 4 Maleficas available: Ignis (fire and destruction), Vita (life, healing), Adfectus (emotions, manipulation) and Vinculum (control and domination). Here, I believe things could be much clearer with a more detailed explanation. Each species has a Malefica tied to them – Balerkin with Ignis, for example. Learning powers from that Malefica is cheaper for them, but you can also learn powers from other categories. But does that mean that they have to begin with that Malefica as well? It seems that is the case, but I had to go up and down between pages several times to reach that conclusion, and I’m still not 100% certain.
• Get your equipment according to your Path.
• Finish up your character – backstory, personality, etc.

So while I think that it’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it, I do think that there’s some extra work to be done in terms of editing and clarification. There are some typos here and there, or flavor text in perks being cut off or repeated, but nothing too egregious. In addition, I have some reservations in terms of balance. Some perks seem quite powerful, while others are at best very situational/niche – for example, the Mastermind’s level 2 “Tactician” vs level 3 “Speak No Evil”. In addition, there are perks that are somewhat roleplay dependent, which can be exploited – for example, again from the Mastermind, the level 2 “Planned for This”, which allows you to succeed on a non-combat test regardless of difficulty. Some of the perks and malefic powers are a strange mix of soft and crunchy at the same time, if that makes sense – for example, a lot of actions allow you to specifically induce an affliction (dazed, burning, etc). but the Vinculum power “Flinch” mentions you can make someone’s limb twitch, tighten up, or loosen, and nothing more.

I think Hellborn Descended has a whole lot of potential. The setting gives a ton of opportunities to have fun, and while I think the mechanics can still use some work and clarification, that’s what the Quickstart is for – figuring out what needs changing and getting feedback. I tried to keep this in mind writing this post – and I hope I didn’t come across either as too nitpicky, nor as excusing things that I shouldn’t. I’ll be following Hellborn Descended’s development with interest, and I’m eager to see what Studio Hex have in store next.