HELLPIERCERS
HELL IS A PRISON. BREAK ITS BARS.
THE DEMIURGE IS DEAD
The War in Heaven is over. The Angelic Generals are dust. Humanity reclaimed its gnosis, shattered the chains of divine control, and stepped into collective divinity. For a brief moment, it felt like the end of history.Then the Council of Socialist Gnostics opened the wound in the world, and found Hell.Billions of souls lost. Cities made of suffering. Flesh-forged weapons. Vast empires ruled by bickering Demon Princes. The truth hit hard: most of humanity was never free. It was stolen.HELL IS A PRISON. BREAK ITS BARS.
HELLPIERCERS is a tabletop tactics RPG about post-mythic warfare, mechs powered by ritual and divinity, and the struggle for total, unconditional liberation. Gather a conclave. Descend into the Hellscape. Wield the hearts of stars, the corpses of angels, and the blade of your own truth. Fight hordes, rebuild the ruins of DIS, and uncover the forgotten truths buried beneath the ash.TACCOM combat is fast, positional, and frenetic. Players navigate a shared grid with dozens of complex and esoteric weapons, special effects, terrain features, and reactive conditions. Deep buildcrafting asks you to assemble the ultimate divine warrior-godling from thousands of combinations of weapons, armor, classes, equipment, gear, airstrikes, vehicles, mechs, and more. Cleft through hordes of disposable hellions, thrash yourself against the flesh-wall of a swarm, and humble yourself before the terrible might of the Demon Princes. Raid-like rituals and mid-battle AGNOSIA transformations drive constant build innovation and demand exploration of synergies and team tactics to overcome.
"Humanity’s gains have slowed, and many fear a stalemate. Irregular warfare, unconventional tactics, and rapid deployment of new technology are encouraged in hopes of preventing a counter-offensive."
STRATCOM gives players control over the broader campaign against Hell. Fight the War In Hell and tell your narrative on a grand strategy scale. Each faction comes with its own territory map, where GMs and players plan routes, draw enemy counterattacks, intercept supply lines, and launch surgical strikes on enemy fortresses. Not just a visual aid, the map becomes a living record of every hard-bought inch of victory in the final war. Missions stack up towards the endgame; piercing through the rings of Hell toward a final confrontation with the Demon Princes in their citadels.
“The Demon Princes are in constant conflict... which provides ample chance for a united Humanity to battle their superior weapons and numbers."
RECON drives the narrative systems outside of combat, taking players through the nightmarish realms of Hell and into the haunted catacombs and vaults beneath DIS, uncovering ancient weapons, forbidden ritual, and fractured histories. Roll tables generate strange encounters, horrific remnants of the war in Heaven, and factions twisted beyond recognition. Esoteric secrets aren’t just flavor, they can reshape missions, unlock new tech, or change the ideological nature of the conflict. Every ruined corridor contains something long forgotten and deeply important.
“Scout the ruins of DIS, uncover a terrible truth, scavenge from the catacombs, or attempt to reconstruct what this place was, long ago.”
HELLPIERCERS blends mythic scale with revolutionary ideals with a grand narrative stretching back to the dawn of time. Bask in a universe unlike anything you've seen before, dig in the remnants of divine warfare, and struggle with the cosmic consequences of humanity's newly-ascended hubris. This is a world where metaphysics have been shattered and repurposed; where humanity wields it's reclaimed Godhood like a vanguard party; elevating stars, and smashing infernal jails. The tone veers from high gnostic ceremony to violent liberation struggle to haunted memory. It’s part metaphysical horror, part tactical siege, part ancient sci-fi myth.
"When you’ve slain God, what’s left? Hell."
Errata
TACCOM and Game FlowEntering and Ending TACCOMHP, Effects, and any relevant combat currencies such as charges reset whenever you leave or enter TACCOM. There are some examples where attrition matters, such as in the use of Legendary Arms, but by and large the idea here is that your characters are capable of dispatching small encounters quickly and effortlessly, with difficulty scaling on longer engagements over larger spaces and with more complicated win states.LoadoutsPlayers may change their weapon, armor, class, equipment, gear, and any other unlocked build options any time the party returns completely to the city of DIS. During that phase of STRATCOM, players may essentially rebuild their entire character from scratch. The intent in HELLPIERCERS is that you are playing both as inherently malleable creatures, and you’re playing as a larger military squad of HELLPIERCERS, so feel free to switch things up as much as you want. Unlocking new options always requires you to pay that initial base building cost though.Unit Placement and MovementOccupacyUnits can only share tiles in contexts where it is specifically allowed. Special Environment Tiles, with the exception of Obstacle, and Void, can occupy the same space as other units without issue.VoidScale: 2 units and their equivalent Swarms must have every tile of their bodies occupying Void tiles for their instant death effect to take effect. Voids can be placed over an existing unit if an effect calls for it.ObstaclesObstacles can be targeted by basically any attack, and can be considered “enemies” in the terms of ability text. Since it functions a lot like a unit, its often best to say any ability text that summons one must find an empty tile to create one, but I would also recommend a much funnier option; the Obstacle takes 1 damage and inflicts 1 damage until either it or the opposing unit are dead, with the opposing unit’s body being moved to an adjacent tile if it’s a HELLPIERCER.Combat MechanicsEnemy ActionsEnemies have just a Move and a single Action, they don’t get Supports or Auxs.RezUsing a Rez action restores a defeated HELLPIERCER back to life and restores their HP completely. This uses your Main action, and must be done adjacent to the defeated HELLPIERCERS last occupied tile. If the HELLPIERCER died in a way that creates ambiguity as to their last tile (died off-map, to a void tile, etc), The Table should make a good faith decision on their last location and use that.Rez has no usage cap nor resource attached to it. Characters may rez whenever they wish as long as they have a Main action to spend. GMs may choose to create spaces where Rez is more restricted than this. Consider adding the following to an enemy:Special: Enlightenment Devouring Pose - 4th Form
Range: 3
This enemy projects a labyrinth of false gnosis. Dead HELLPIERCERS within this field can not be rezzed.DefeatHELLPIERCERS are defeated when they reach 0HP. They may not move, take actions, be targeted by abilities, or suffer any further damage. It is better to understand this as a state of inaction rather than death; the character is still “alive” and capable of speech and limited interaction, but they have no means of dealing or suffering damage in this state. They continue occupying their last tile, and may not be compelled to move by an ability. Any effects they had active when their HP hit zero are dispelled, and any active summoned creatures are removed from play. Their turn is skipped when it comes up and play continues as if it didn’t happen.It may be useful, occasionally, for the GM to be able to move the bodies of defeated HELLPIERCERS. Perhaps they come up with a ritual their units are conducting that can be fed by HELLPIERCER bodies. Consider adding the following ability to an appropriate enemy:Special: Simulated Anointed Hand’s Technique
This enemy may spend an action picking up an adjacent Defeated HELLPIERCER. When moving, they must spend an additional movement point to begin moving while carrying the HELLPIERCER, and may drop them to a free adjacent tile as a free action at any point during their action.Keywords and TagsLingeringWhen an attack has the Lingering tag, the elements of its pattern that did not already target an enemy unit or Obstacle or other battlefield element remain in play. Think of it like a flamethrower or something. These tiles remain in play for as many turns as the Lingering effect lists (so, Lingering:2 tiles remain for 2 turns). Tiles timers are refreshed if reattacked, not added to.A tweak to the original targeting rules you may consider is taking one stack off of Lingering anytime a unit moves through that tile, ablatively.ProvokeThe intent with Provoke is to lock players down if they don’t maintain distance or clear space as a precursor to their usual lose state of being utterly swarmed. This can lead to battles feeling sluggish when players get caught or overwhelmed by enemies. While several movement options explicitly make the user immune to provoke, you may consider expanding that to all armour-triggered movement abilities where it makes sense.Typically, forced movement does not trigger Provoke. Provoke is primarily triggered on any movement taken intentionally by the moving unit’s controlling player. Some specific abilities contradict this, follow their text over this.If a single movement triggers several Provokes at once, allow the moving unit to select the order they go in, or just roll them all at once.Additionally, consider adding the following text to HEAVEN OR HELL:Special: Fury-Drawing Blows
Forced Movement from this weapon’s abilities trigger Provoke attacks against their target.WeaponsAmbiguous IntentionsIntentions has swung back and forth through development but in its latest incarnation has proven to be incredibly powerful, especially against single targets like Bosses. We tweaked the weapon just before launch but clearly that wasn’t enough to limit its explosive potential in wide open spaces. We recommend the following tweak:Terminating The Eightfold Path - When you attack, if one of the squares in your attack pattern is empty, you may immediately move into that square for zero movement cost and take a free chained attack with -1 damage. You may repeat this as long as you deal at least 1 damage to any target. Each chained attack suffers a decrement to its damage that doubles each step. When you move, Mark the spaces you step into. You may not move into a Marked tile in this way. Remove all of your Marks at the start of your next turn.Love Without ConsiderationLove Without Consideration should be creating a big walls of pain for the opposition, but doesn’t stay on the field long enough or inflict enough damage to really feel that way. Increase it’s damage to 4, and it’s Blazing to 3.Her Tears Formed Our WorldTears’s power fantasy is of a pingponging violent whirlwind of death, a magic axe of nightmares twirling around. It’s slow Spin Charge generation detracts from that; consider any or all of the following buffs.When a downed HELLPIERCER enters range during Opthalmos, Rez them and gain a Spin Charge.
When you kill an enemy on your turn, gain 1 Spin Charge.EquipmentTransient Force ProjectionThe target square must be empty when targeted.ElevationAny unit that isn’t capable of changing its Elevation by choice, ability, trait, or other good faith understanding begins Falling at the start of any of their turns that begins with them above Elevation:1. They lose 1 Elevation each turn, and take damage equal to their highest Elevation during the Fall. During the Fall they may not spend Speed to Move, but may use other abilities, including abilities that may induce movement.I might also suggest a tweak that lets you spend any Ability/Armor movement to travel downwards, Elevationwise, safely. I think this would be pretty fun.Graven Chirurgeon ("ASKLEPIOS")Their ability doesn’t synergize well with the faction. Tweak its main ability text to the following:“Remove all target's stacks of Wound to immediately trigger and tick down one Effect on the target a number of times equal to the stacks of Wound removed or the Effect's current stacks, whichever is lower. If the Effect is Bleed, each tick deals 1 damage.”FortificationsUnits with the Fortification tag don’t get Move actions, typically. They can be forced to move.