Splat

A group or character classification in many Tabletop Games. The most well known splats are the typical 'fighter-mage-thief-cleric' classes, common to games such as Dungeons and Dragons, though racial splats are common as well.

The term comes from White Wolf games. Practically all of their Storytelling System games have a variety of character types, with a variety of names for these character types, and lots and lots of books about these character types, "tribebooks," "clanbooks," and so on. These came to be known as "*books," or "splatbooks."

The most common splats are typically known as 'character classes' or 'job classes', with the attendant characteristics and class-based abilities. Some of the more 'specialized' splats define a character's role within a group -- 'tanks' and 'healers' are splats, as well as (loose) definitions of roles within a group. There are also racial splats, such as human, elf, or halfling, which usually provide one-time permanent bonuses.

Outside of Dungeons-and-Dragons-esque games, splats are usually called anything else. A splat can be any group your character belongs to that defines their powers, suggested skills, and often something about their personality. Popular ones include different types of supernatural (vampire, werewolf, etc.), different subtypes of a supernatural, places of origin, allegiance to an organization, or place in a pantheon.

Frequently splats are delimited to form a Five-Man Band group of characters, though the number of splats (or combination of splats) is often greater than five. Changing from one splat to another depends on the game and which splat you're changing. Fluid splats, like character class or alliegence to a certain group, usually has a catch of some sort to keep players from cherry-picking all the good stuff. I's usually impossible to change permanent splats without extreme measures, Green Rocks, or other Applied Phlebotinum. Those who can tend to become insanely powerful.

For systems that have more complex character customization (such as a system that allows players to alternate levels in different classes, select different "trees" of abilities, or make their characters from whole cloth), the term "build" is more often used, as in a "character build".

An Adventurer Is You is a set of the most basic and common splats, which appear in one form or another in most games. Not necessarily related to the Chunky Salsa Rule.


 * Dungeons and Dragons has races as splats, everything from Dwarves, Elves, Humans, Orcs, and Half Human Hybrids of every stripe. Changing splats was only possible with the Druid's Reincarnation spell, which reincarnated a dead person randomly into any kind of naturally occurring species. Of course, since D&D is replete with hundreds of naturally occurring mythological creatures because All Myths Are True, there's an even chance a resurectee could come back as a Troll or an Elf.
 * 4th Edition D&D has codified the roles even more specifically: Controllers control the field of combat to their advantage, Defenders block the enemy, Strikers are all about focused dependable damage, and Leaders heal and give bonuses to everyone. Monsters in the Monster Manual are laid out in a similar way as well, as an easy way to set up an encounter with just the right set of abilities to kill your players dead.
 * More specifically: if you play in any kind of formally-organized D&D 4.0 gaming league or the like that's sanctioned by WotC (such as Florida's SCRAGcon network, which runs monthly sanctioned games at local shops), chances are that you'll be able to sign up online for a given slot/table for an adventure, and that whether you're planning to play a "Controller", "Leader", "Defender" or "Striker" is one of the things they'll ask you, simply because it gives the other players a better idea of what they might need to play to make the party more balanced, and the Dungeon Master a better idea of whether they might need to tweak a session to make it fairer (or, if you have a particularly bad DM, to make for an easier Total Party Kill ).
 * And of course there's that one ritual that lets you sacrifice levels to gain species templates. Including Undead, Half-Dragon, Half-Demon, Half-Celestial, Abyssal, Celestial, Construct... All at once. Just keep in mind that this usually has the effect of making your character have so few actual class levels as to be unplayable.
 * Prior to 4E, there were generally held to be four main class archetypes, based on the four human classes from the original 1974 rulebook: melee specialist (Fighter), skill specialist (Thief/Rogue), arcane spellcaster (Magic-User/Wizard), and divine spellcaster (Cleric). In 2E, the psionicist (mental-powered character) was kinda-sorta a fifth archetype, but became more of a Wizard clone in 3E.
 * Despite the "iconic roles", prior to 4E, D&D was highly unbalanced and mostly dominated by spellcasters, leading to the (satirical) fan made "splats" of God (casters, the ones who get things done), Big Stupid Fighter (meatshield, stands in front of the caster to take hits), Glass Cannon (mops up the enemy with hitpoint damage after they have been disabled by the caster), and Useless Waste of Space (monks, CW Samurai, soulknives, commoners).
 * In the editions before 3rd, the splats were all so well defined it was virtually impossible to get anything done without a team containing all of the big 4 - warrior, wizard, cleric/druid, and thief. For example, no one but a thief could by the rules disarm traps or climb walls or pick locks. Ever. So many monsters had massive resistance to magic (which did not scale down with level - it was a flat percentile chance) that a party of casters was pretty much doomed as soon as they encountered them. If the party didn't have a required basic archetype and the GM challenged them on the grounds of that class' specialty, the party was pretty much toast.
 * Pathfinder initially followed the same mix of splat as D&D 1st-3.5, but attempted (Your Mileage May Vary on whether or not they succeeded) to tone down Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards. Their expanded product line includes classes which hybridize the existing splat to create some unusual classes with newer roles. The Inquisitor, for example, is a blur of Rogue and Cleric who can buff his party, the Cavalier and Samurai blend the classic fighter with D&D 4E's Striker and Leader, and the Magus is a straight up Magic Knight who studies like a wizard and then hefts a sword. Many fans who disliked 4th as D&D In Name Only took to it gladly and there's a lot of Fan Dumb and Hate Dumb between fans of both, though the two companies (Wizards and Paizo) are actually on good terms.
 * The satirical MMORPG Kingdom of Loathing has six classes -- Seal Clubber (aggressive fighter), Turtle Tamer (defensive fighter), Pastamancer (aggressive spellcaster), Sauceror (defensive spellcaster), Disco Bandit (aggressive roguey-thiefy type) and Accordion Thief (defensive roguey-thiefy type).
 * The New World of Darkness has formalized what might be called the dual-axis splat: the fundamental element of the character (other games would call it your race, but the nWoD equivalents are Clans, Auspices and Paths) and the socio-political element of the character (e.g.: Covenant, Tribe and Order). Thus, a Five-Man Band of vampire PCs might all join the same Covenant but come from different Clans.
 * There's even a recursive element to further differentiate characters (in case the players can't play them differently enough without help). For the Vampires, they're called Bloodlines; for the Werewolves, they're called Lodges; for the Mages, they're called Legacies; for the Prometheans, they're called Athanors; for the Changelings, they're called Entitlements. In many ways these are the equivalent of Prestige Class.
 * Some splatbooks aren't explicitly connected to a single line- these usually are written to be either usable with all the sourcebooks, or standalone. Innocents, a sourcebook focused around playing as children is a standalone example.
 * And the Hunter books are different still-their main splatbooks go in-depth about hunting and fighting different types of supernatural creatures. Night Stalkers, for example, is all about bringing the war to vampires, and what that war entails.
 * Even games without clearly-defined divisions between character types can often develop splats; witness Shadowrun, which tends to divide characters into specialist Archetypes such as street samurai, deckers, riggers, mages, shamans, etc. despite having a wide-open point-build system that gives the player the freedom to create a character however they wish. These archetypes stem largely from the sample characters included in the rulebook.
 * The same is true in the MMORTS Shattered Galaxy. Despite four different stats and a classless system, players inevitably end up (with their units) being either Stone Walls or Glass Cannons.
 * In the game 7th Sea, players can differentiate via nations or secret societies (sometimes both).
 * Dark Heresy divides characters mainly by their background, be they Adeptus Mechanicus adepts, Imperial Guard veterans, Ecclesiarchy officials, etc.
 * GURPS usually has a few sample splats in each... splatbook.
 * Exalted has the various types of Exalts -- the Solars, the Lunars, the Dragon-Blooded, the Sidereals, and so on. Each Exalt type is then split up into Castes (or, in the case of the Dragon-Blooded, Aspects) that help define their specialties and powers.
 * Legend of the Five Rings has Clans - the Great Clans (Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Mantis, Phoenix, Scorpion and Unicorn), the Minor Clans (14 of them, in the new core book), the Spider Clan, the Imperial Families as well as clanless Ronin and Monks, and a select few non-humans races (Naga, Ratlings). Most of these have their own splatbooks (The Minor Clans as a group). Most have more than one. And most of these are out of print...
 * Fading Suns has the five major noble houses, the five major Church sects and the five major guilds. Befitting the Feudal Future setting, the splatbooks divide the characters by social class, so there are three. There are also the books for other organisations like the military, spies, and revolutionaries, and the books for the aliens.
 * The BattleTech/Mechwarrior RPG gets rid of 'classes' entirely -- instead, character creation involves rolling dice to determine 'life paths', which chart your character's personal history (it's even possible, with the right (wrong?) choices, to construct a BattleTech/Mechwarrior character that dies as a result of a path selection).