Hellbred confusion

[j_spencer93]

I have always used the race as a base race, but while making a character today i noticed it references past abilities your character possesses, so that would (or should) confirm that it is supposed to be a racial template or something similar right?
Like if you are a human and the DM says ok you can come back as a Hellbred? If so would you retain your feats and everything?
Honestly this race seems to only be half done and explained.

[Fax Celestis]

Nah, it's a race. The reference to 'past abilities' is from the fluff.

[Nettlekid]

There was a thread a little while ago talking about Dragonborn, Spellscale, and Hellbred as being sort of hybrids between races and templates. Dragonborn is more template than race, because although you lose most of your racial features and gain a new set, old factors like stats and subtype do play into it. Spellscale is almost entirely a race, and breeds true and all that, but you can in fact go from being a humanoid to being a Spellscale. You lose nearly everything, stats are all reset according to Spellscale modifiers, if you had extra skill points from a race remove a number of ranks, stuff like that, but one singular exception is that if you had a racial Int bonus that you've now lost, you keep the bonus skill points that gave. Plus you have your memories and all that.

Hellbred is really just a race. It's as much a new race as Elan. In both cases, you don't so much take on the template as you are reborn into the race. Both of those have faint, foggy memories of their past lives, but start at level 1 and progress as normal. Hellbred is a race given a second chance, and so it's starting from the ground up. After all, if a Blackguard dies and becomes a Hellbred who wants to prove himself to be Good, he's not going to have Blackguard levels.

[Darrin]

Like if you are a human and the DM says ok you can come back as a Hellbred? If so would you retain your feats and everything?
Honestly this race seems to only be half done and explained.

The "past life" is fluff. The text states you only get "shadowy, vague memories". You do not get any previous skills, feats, or class abilities. Oddly enough, the only thing you keep after "The Scourging" is your languages. So there may be a niche of ex-Druid Hellbred trying to get into Fochlucan Lyrist, since they can still speak druidic.

I think it's explained well enough to be playable. Dragonborn actually has more rules ambiguity in it than Hellbred.

[j_spencer93]

Automatic Languages: Infernal. Hellbred gain the ability to speak Infernal upon their transformation, but they do
not lose the ability to speak languages they previously knew before the Scourging.

On second glance this is the only "crunch" that actually references it. So basically you pick a race and you could get the languages of it just nothing else?
I agree it is playable, just was wondering after reading it. But i made a mistake, i thought it referenced a past life more then once in the actually "crunch" but it does not.