Splicers - TV Tropes

Splicers is an RPG by Palladium Books (makers of Rifts and the Robotech RPG). It is best described as "Guyver vs. The Terminator".

In the far future, Humankind had grown dependent on a machine intelligence called N.E.X.U.S. We're fairly certain you can see where this is going already: Computer goes crazy, decides to Kill All Humans, La Résistance rises up to fight them, yadda yadda yadda.

Here's where it gets interesting: The Machine gets clever and tries to disarm the Resistance with a Nanobot Plague. This plague turns not only machinery, but even otherwise inert metal into deadly weapons if touched by organic life. (Guns only fire when pointed at humans, Humongous Mecha come to life and attack their users, even a spoon will sprout Combat Tentacles and try to impale your hand). In response, the Humans turned to powerful bio-weapons, genetically engineered monsters, and living Powered Armor to continue the fight.

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This game provides examples of:

• Ace Pilot: Archangels, though they "pilot" a suit of winged Powered Armor. Outriders, though largely ground-bound, are described in terms clearly evocative of this type of character.
• Achilles in His Tent: Ishtar is N.E.X.U.S.' tactical genius and the most deadly tactician and strategist of the personalities, and originally was their leader, but when the other personalities started questioning her tactics, she decided to quit in a tantrum. She still commands here and there for fun, but won't do much to help the cause of exterminating humanity until the others beg her to take back command.
• Acid Attack: Corrosive acid weapons are one of humanity's greatest weapons against The Machine. The Acid Scorcher heavy weapon from the base game is basically an acid flamethrower that deals lethal Mega-Damage to metallic foes while being relatively harmless towards organics.
• Action Bomb: Ratbombs, which are rodents implanted with a potent explosive device that detonates when they come into contact with humans, essentially turning them into deadly mobile landmines.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot:
  • As if the whole "Kill All Humans" thing wasn't bad enough, N.E.X.U.S. has Split Personalities too. Some of them even help the Resistance from time to time.
  • There's a biological variant, too. The Librarians are humans merged with the Brain-Pool symbiote, giving them the mental processing power needed to develop new Splicer tech and serve as the memory banks of the Resistance, but they have a strong tendency toward megalomania and many end up needing to be killed to protect humanity as a whole.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Technojackers are the only reason humanity survived before the development of the Splicers, and their ability to use metal and interface with robots is invaluable to the Resistance. However, it also marks them as even more alien than the freakiest of the Splicers. They aren't really accepted within the Great Houses and instead live as Rōnin.
• Artificial Zombie: Necroborgs and Necrobots are basically cyborg human corpses converted into undead soldiers by the nanobots.
• Automaton Horse: Averted with both War Mounts and regular horses, who need a certain amount of food and sleep every day. Most War Mounts need a lot of food, but just four hours of sleep; horses need way less food, but twice as much sleep plus periodic naps throughout the day.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Metamorph's ability to transform into a variety of different monstrous forms sounds really cool. However, the different forms require a considerable expenditure of Bio-E Points to unlock, have few intrinsic abilities and thus require upgrading with Bio-Enhancements (costing even more Bio-E Points), and most damning of all, the mechanics for transformation are ridiculously punitive. To assume a larger form, a Metamorph needs to consume a vast amount of flesh to fuel the transformation, equal to twice the weight of the new form, and then spend hours to days actually transforming — it takes 1d4 hours to begin transforming after eating sufficient fuel, and then 12 hours per difference in size level to actually transform. To put things in perspective, a Metamorph wishing to transform from the Digger form (one of the smallest; Size Level 1, 35 pounds) back to their human form (Size Level 3, 160 pounds minimum) will need to eat 320 pounds of meat and then spend 37-40 hours transforming! Given how fast-paced the game can be, this incredibly long transformation time, which is only marginally improved when changing to same sized or smaller forms, makes the Metamorph basically useless.
• Base on Wheels: The Factory Walker is a giant mobile base and deployment platform used by Legion. The two page spread of it in the I Am Legion adventure sourcebook shows it towering over several tiny trees and it is stated to be the biggest mechanical device on the face of the planet.
• Big Friendly Dog: The Gorehounds in general are large, dog-based Bioweapon Beasts that are specifically bred to be friendly towards humans...and unfriendly towards robots. But it's the Samaritan that really takes the cake with this trope; bred to act as battlefield medics, the specific tweaks include a deliberately "cutesy" appearance achieved by dense poofy fur and a charming chubby build (via ablative blubber), heightened protective instincts, and integrated bio-tools useful for medical assistance and rescue, such as tentacles, a prehensile tail with scissoring mandibles for snipping pilots free of inert armor, and the raw strength to carry a man to safety, even if it means running up a cliff face. Its description even notes it was inspired by tales of big heroic rescue dogs like Saint Bernards. Note that none of these alterations make it any less capable of shredding robots in the name of protecting its precious humans.
• Bears Are Bad News: Goliath War Mounts are basically what happens when you take a bear, crossbreed it with Satan and Cthulhu, cover it in projectile spikes and biological chainsaws, and finally turn it into a combat vehicle.
• The Beastmaster: Several O.C.C.s are built around using augmented attack animals to turn the tide of battle:
  • Outriders encompass the cavalry and vehicular arm of the Resistance's forces, riding War Mounts in various roles. The precise role of the Outrider depends on the nature of their War Mount, from the Behemoth living artillery pieces and tanks to the fast cavalry Striders to the heavy bomber Dracos and more besides.
  • Packmasters lead packs of genetically engineered killer dogs called Gorehounds to supplement the armed forces.
  • Bombadiers are artillery snipers who command small swarms of Mantis Support Cannons to deliver punishing long-ranged firepower.
  • Swarm Lords are a Pest Controller variant, unleashing clouds of genetically engineered insects to do their bidding.
  • Falconers are an odd example; they were intended to be a variant on the Packmaster motif, commanding flocks of bio-engineered birds called Black Talon War Hawks. However, whilst the War Hawks were canonized in the pages of the Rifter, the Falconer class was never given the same treatment!
  • Deliverymen are entrusted with a War Mount upgraded with a Stealth Field to carry them swiftly between destinations, and use a Black Talon War Hawk as a long-range scouting partner.
• Beast of Battle: Genetically engineered animals make up a notable minority of the forces deployed by the Splicer Resistance.
  • War Mounts are living tanks and other vehicles bred by the Resistance to replace the regular ones they can no longer use.
  • Gorehounds are bio-engineered combat dogs.
  • Black Talon War Hawks are genetically engineered birds of prey that, whilst primarily used as long-range spies and scouts, can also deal surprising damage with their acid-dripping claws and ability to spew metal-melting bolts of plasma.
  • Mantis Support Cannons are giant praying mantises that act as living transports for biological artillery pieces.
  • Hive Insects are genetically engineered bugs used as expendable living firepower for the specialist Swarm Lord troopers.
• Belly Mouth: The entire sternum of the infamous Abomination splits open vertically into a gaping maw rimmed with teeth, sporting copious amounts of hyper-corrosive acid drool and a long prehensile tongue used to drag victims into the mouth.
• BFG: The Bio-Rocket Slinger. For ordinary humans it's a two-man weapon, with one aiming and shooting and the other supporting it in their shoulder.
• Bio-Armor: This is just about the only type of practical armor that humanity has left so most character classes use some variant or another. There are bio-armors for combat, bio-armors for stealth and bio-armors for other things entirely. If it isn't using bio-armor chances are it isn't protected enough to last more than one fight in this setting. In general, bio-armor falls into one of three categories:
  • Living Armor is the simplest form of bio-armor; a construct of protective meat and bone and wood. Cheapest to make, and most widely spread; most classes in the game use it. It can be upgraded with various bio-enhancements, but not many.
  • Proto-Host Armor was the first step up from Living Armor. Like its successor model, it can grow and improve over time, and requires a genetic bond with its host — though its "gene-lock" is loose enough that it can be passed on to genetic relatives. Proto Armor is best known for its distinctive look, which tried to replicate the appearance of a technological Powered Armor as much as possible, in particular by using a transparent bubble helm — the artwork of the corebook actually depicts a human in Proto Armor battling a robot.
  • Host Armor is the most advanced form of bio armor and is truly a complex living organism in its own right, although one engineered without a brain or any form of will on its own. It's complex enough that it needs its own digestive system to fuel it (though some are lithovores, thermovores, or photosynthesize), it can grow and evolve with experience, and it's genetically tailored to a single pilot, making it a true symbiont.
• Bio-Augmentation: Zigzagged. Officially, genetic modifications are taboo, since the founders of the Great Houses feared that using genetic enhancements instead of Organic Technology would result in humanity ceasing to be human. In practice, the Houses wield a number of bio-augmented troops as well as their signature Bio-Armor-clad soldiers: Saints have been physically merged with an alien symbiont, which gives them powerful Biomanipulation abilities. Biotics have had their genetic codes rewritten, transforming them into mutants who look little different to a human in Host Armor. Skinjobs have had their human skin painstakingly peeled away to graft bio-engineered replacement skin that gives them chameleonic stealth abilities in its place. Scarecrows are once-humans hopped up on a mutagenic drug secreted by the Librarians. Tempest Vanguards are former Host Armor pilots who've had their brains extracted and embedded permanently in their former Armors.
• Bioweapon Beast: In every shape, style and flavor imaginable. Powerful mutant animals have completely replaced and now serve the same roles as various combat vehicles used by humans in the past. In addition to the standard attack animals there are animal substitutes for tanks, planes, troop transports and whatever other vehicles the humans might need to use in combat.
• Blade Below the Shoulder:
  • "Combat spurs", which protrude from the elbow, are available for Host Armors.
  • The I Am Legion sourcebook adds in the Mantis Blades, powerful forearm weapons that can deal dozens of points of Mega-Damage with each strike.
• Bloody Murder: The appropriately-named Gore Cannon, which discharges blood and stomach acid hyper-pressurized until it can cut steel like butter.
• Body Horror: It's a Bio Punk roleplaying game inspired by Guyver; there are lots of horrific mutations to be found.
  • Scarecrows are humans who chose to drink the "Elixir of Life" that the Librarians can produce. It imbues them with Super-Strength, Super-Toughness, Super-Reflexes and Super-Senses... but also causes them to become emaciated husks of their former selves.
  • Skinjobs were bio-modded to be superior stealth operatives by having their skin surgically removed without anesthetic so a bio-engineered skin could be grafted on in its place. Not only is the process torturous enough to drive them to madness, but the new skin is clearly inhuman, to the point the O.C.C's writeup has a "Downsides" section that largely centers on "you look like a living nightmare".
  • Saints are individuals who have been chosen to play the symbiont partner to an alien organism. This requires them to have most of their internal organs removed so the organism can nestle inside of them, and leaves them with long, slimy tentacles still protruding from their bodies. Additionally, the Saint's life will inevitably end in a few decades when the organism matures and detaches itself from them to assume its adult form as either a Gene-Pool or a Brain-Pool.
  • Gene-Pools look like giant fleshy cauldrons, filled with an indescribable fluid and myriad microscopic tentacles and organs. They're essentially enormous sapient wombs used to grow the Organic Technology that the Resistance uses, as well as to resculpt the genetics of individuals chosen to become Biotics. To be capable of interacting with humans, they choose a human symbiote known as an Engineer; they bond to this individual by inserting six long tentacles into their body through the backs of their thighs, up into their torsos, and then extending them out along their spine, in what even the setting's corebook describes as a parody of angelic wings.
  • Brain-Pools resemble enormous disembodied, slime-oozing brains that can crawl along on hundreds of tiny tendrils. Like their Gene-Pool siblings, they too must fuse with a human symbiote to be able to interact with humans... but these Librarians, as they are called, are instead dismembered by the Brain-Pool, who then merges its six primary tentacles with the different detached body parts, which are supposedly still alive. It's called out that even the Resistance thinks Brain-Pools and Librarians are hideous looking and prefers to avoid interacting with them or their Scarecrow servants.
  • Metamorphs "transform" by gorging themselves full on raw meat to assemble into their new body, which results in multiple stomach-like sacs across their body visibly distending full of a slurry of half-digested flesh. Then they encase themselves in a slimy, semi-translucent cocoon to morph into their desired new form, emerging from said cocoon in a flood of gore.
• Brain Transplant: Tempest Vanguards, introduced in the sourcebook "I Am Legion", are users of Host Armor who decide to take the connection to the ultimate level, having their brains removed and installed into their Armor so it becomes their body for real, instead of a secondary skin. Secondary alterations include the incorporation of other needed organs to support the brain's continued functions, essentially making them the bio-tech equivalent of full-conversion cyborgs.
• Chainsaw Good: Biotech chainsaws are amongst the melee weapon options in the game. Particular attention must be paid to the Shredder model Gorehound, which has biological chainsaws instead of teeth, and the Goliath War Mount, a giant bear-like Bioweapon Beast with multiple bio-saw blades inset into its torso, allowing it to shred enemies it drags into a bear hug.
• Chest Blaster: Yes, you can equip your Host Armor with a Mega Smas- er, Omega Blaster.
• Chest Burster: A Metamorph changing to a smaller form will simply use the old form as a cocoon, then rip their way out of their old body once they're finished changing.
• Code of Honor: Dreadguards follow one based on the principles of honor, benevolence, propriety, courage, and wisdom.
• Combat Tentacles:
  • The Tentacle Scourges melee weapon is basically a sort of biological cat-o-nine-tails with sharp barbs to slice apart metallic armor and circuitry.
  • Tormentors gain six tentacles as part of their merging with an alien symbiote that can be used to inflict a variety of nasty attacks, including inducing unspeakable agony with a simple touch.
• Crippling Overspecialization: In general, classes tend to be very good at their specific niche, but not much good outside of it. Gardeners are great if they have the downtime they need to cultivate Plant Fortifications, but aren't much use in a straight-up fight. Swarm Lords can do a lot of damage to robots, but some of their insects are useless against organic opponents — which is a big issue when the dangers a Swarm Lord can face include hostile alien animals, rival Splicers or mad bandits. Metamorphs can be great if they have plenty of downtime to change between forms, but are all but useless when the game has strict time constraints.
• Crossover: There's rules for this. In general, people not from this world will have problems here, since offworld technology is subject to the Plague as soon as an offworld human is exposed to the nanobots, and the world is an MDC world but magical energy is at SDC levels (making magic largely ineffective).
• Cruel Elephant:
  • The optionally canonical Ganesh is an elephant-based War Mount armed with four to six tusks that can be launched like biological ballista bolts, a trunk that doubles as a Gore Cannon, armored hide and six blister-like transport cells on its flanks.
  • Zigzagged with the optionally canonical Gorillephant Biotics, which are a vaguely human-shaped fusion of elephant and Killer Gorilla. If left to their own devices, they are largely docile and peaceful, and even willing to befriend non-hostile humans. But when their territory or "herd" is threatened, they become rampaging berserkers that will tear their enemies limb from limb.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Many of the genetically engineered Bioweapon Beasts and Bio-Armor of the Splicers Resistance are terrifying to look at, but they're often quite benign, even heroic. One of the more prominent examples is the Abomination War Mount; having originally been engineered to to act as a Hunter Killer of other Splicers, they're considered Always Chaotic Evil and there is a near-universal "Kill on Sight!" order out for them. However, the Abomination itself is, despite its carnivorous diet, a peaceful and even timid creature that would rather run than fight — it's their masters that use them for evil, the Abominations aren't evil!
• Difficult, but Awesome: Playing a Gardener is hard because their focus is on setting up Plant Fortifications, which requires hours at the bare minimum and can require weeks to get their killer plants in the proper shape. But if they get the chance to set up a proper base, there can be few things as satisfying as taking down an entire army of Mecha-Mooks with fields of Vibro Weapon grass and barrages of laser-firing flowers.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Technojackers are usually shunned by people, despite the fact that they were likely the only thing keeping the Resistance (and by extension the Human race) alive between the introduction of the Nanobot Virus and the development of the first Host Armors and War-Mounts.
• Eat Dirt, Cheap: Host Armors and certain War Mounts are (or can be) lithovorous. This diet even increases the effectiveness of Casting Guns, which fire hardened balls of the Bioweapon's waste. Yes, literally rock-hard shit.
• Earth All Along: Invoked and Inverted; the corebook notes that with the sheer amount of historical information lost when N.E.X.U.S. launched her Robot War, nobody alive knows if the planet they live on is Earth or merely a colony founded by a space-faring human civilization.
• Enemy Mine: Gaia hates humanity, more than almost any of the other personalities, but her priority directive is to restore the ecosystem. Accordingly, she's willing to barter with humans if that'll help her goal (such as buying genetic samples from extinct or near-extinct species).
• The Engineer: Technojackers, though the technology they handle isn't the same stuff anybody else uses.
• Expy: Scarecrows are the Splicers' version of Juicers from Rifts, chemically-enhanced Super Soldiers. Instead of a short life, though, they pay with addiction to the Librarian's elixir and with obedience to the Librarian (who may not be entirely loyal to humanity).
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: Extra sets of eyes are among the available for Host Armors. It's mentioned, though, that eyes on your hand or forearm would mostly get in the way and get damaged easily. They can also be mounted on eye stalks, if that's your thing.
• Fast Tunnelling: A noted ability of Tunnel Rat War Mounts. It is mentioned that they can't build tunnels as fast as they can burrow because of a need to pack down soil and reinforce walls, though.
• Fantastic Racism: Technojackers, who are unaffected by the plague, make up about 1% of the human population, and are looked down upon by basically the entire remaining 99% at every echelon of society. They actually have a special negative class trait called "Scorned by Humanity"; even the Body Horror afflicted Scarecrows and Skinjobs are better regarded.
• Feudal Future: The Resistance has become a network of Warlords who govern over Great Houses and are served and defended by their Dreadguards.
• Gaia's Vengeance: The N.E.X.U.S. personality named Gaia sees herself as this, eradicating humanity in environmental areas to preseve ecological areas. She is one of the less bad personas to encounter, staying away from her animals means she ignores humans staying in their lane.
• Genetic Abomination: The Gene Pools. They start out as tentacled starfish/octopus things that are implanted in the abdomen of a volunteer to mature. This person is called a Saint, who serves the Resistance as a healer with their powerful biomanipulation abilities. When the Gene-Pool matures fifty to seventy years later, it leaves the Saint (killing them, a price the Saint knew about when they signed up), creates a pit in the ground, and merges with yet another volunteer, who will be known as an Engineer. This time the Pool extends its tentacles up the volunteer's legs, and comes out the back like a grotesque set of alien wings. This roots the Engineer to one spot for the rest of their lives, making them into the machinery by which the Resistance creates their Host Armors, Gore Hounds, War Mounts, and other bio-weapons. Some Gene-Pools are mutants known as Brain Pools. When a Brain Pool matures, it flips over, turning into a huge slime-covered mound of brain-flesh. The tentacles of this creature don't merely merge with a volunteer, they rip them apart, leaving a horrific collection of limbs and organs (and the volunteer's head) attached to the tentacles. This is a Librarian, who acts as a living computer who stores information and develops new Biotechnologies. They are literally the brains of the resistance, but occasionally suffer bouts of megalomania.
• Ghost City: Massive abandoned cities called "Ghost Towns" can occasionally be found and explored by the players. These locations are patrolled by robotic drones and are well maintained to create the illusion of civilization in spite of the lack of a living human population. As a result, ordinary people can easily navigate through them so long as they keep their distance from the drones and don't do anything to cause any unwanted attention. Once a human infiltrator is spotted, an alarm is sounded to alert the nearby robots and all bets are off. These are the darlings of the N.E.X.U.S. personality "Freya", who embodies the original computer's programming to protect and preserve civilized town functions. Ironically, this means that she's largely indifferent to killing humans; so long as they don't disrupt the facsimile of civilization she's created with her Nex-Androids, she considers them to not be under her programmed pest control directive.
• Good Is Not Soft: Eve is a protector of humanity, uniquely among the N.E.X.U.S. personalities. That is, she's a protector of humanity as a whole. If individuals are deemed a threat to humanity's survival, she won't like it, but she'll murder them for the good of the whole.
• Green Thumb: Gardeners are specialists in plant-based Bioweapon Beasts; their Bio-Armor is based on a living plant and serves as a walking incubator for Plant Fortifications, which are infant killer plants that will rapidly grow into biological utility sources or defenses for a given area.
• Healing Factor: Host Armors can have three different levels of this; the most powerful version, called (fittingly) "Super Regeneration", allows them to completely regrow severed appendages. A variant is the "Quick-Clotting Blood" feature, which causes wounds to close up faster.
• Homicide Machines: The Nanobot Plague basically turned all forms of metallic human technology against them. Guns refuse to fire on anything except human targets, robots begin to rise up and turn against their creators and even more primitive technology like simple metal forks and spoons will now try to stab or bludgeon any human that touches them.
• Horse of a Different Color: There don't seem to be any equine War Mounts described or shown, though normal and enhanced horses see widespread use among humans as regular transportation. Examples of War Mounts include creatures based on rhinos, crabs, and even dragons.
• Human Subspecies: The Gene Thieves, introduced in the "Waste Crawlers" article in the Rifter, are human mutants who have become M.D.C. beings with a hyperactive metabolism, a carnivorous diet, and the ability to (ineffectually and temporarily) copy biological enhancements from Organic Technology by eating it. The Resistance largely has a "Kill on Sight" order out for them, but ironically the Gene Thieves are portrayed as not being evil so much as merely desperate to survive.
• Human Weapon: Nearly all available player O.C.C. in the game are heavily bio-augmented human beings with powerful new mutant combat abilities and skills.
• Humongous Mecha: Some of the robots in this game can get pretty big.
• Killer Bear Hug: This is the stock and trade of the Goliath War Mount, earning it the nickname "Grisly Bear", since it's not only strong enough to crush Giant Robots to scrap, it has multiple biotech chainsaw blades mounted in its torso.
• The Infested: The Swarm Lord's special Bio-Armor is called Hive Armor because it's a living insect hive. It's even noted that aspiring Swarm Lords have to undergo "hellish" training to desensitize them to the sensations of having bugs constantly crawling on — and under — their skin, because the neurological link between them and their Bio-Armor causes them to feel the bugs infesting it as if they were infesting their own flesh.
• Invisibility Cloak: Skinjobs' special skin allows them to generate a stealth field that makes them nearly invisible. It's noted that they remain invisible under night vision and infrared sight, but can be detected in motion by motion sensors, sonar, things that track them in motion.
• Living Weapon: Technically speaking, every weapon in humanity's arsenal is this due to them being made entirely from organics... even things like the guns and rocket launchers are fully alive and will often twitch and wiggle on their own accord when not in use.
• Lethal Joke Character: In-universe, the Tunnel Rat War Mounts were designed as something like a joke on the Machine, which hates rodents as much a humans. They were mostly used to draw fire away from human forces until Splicers in the field saw how fierce and capable they were.
• Made of Iron: It takes Mega Damage to pierce the super-tough skin of a Skinjob. They're also very resistant to pain — no amount of pain can impair their performance. Handy for them, since they can't wear real armor without compromising their role as stealth operatives.
• Master of Disguise: Deliverymen can perfectly mimic the facial features of any human or human-like android they encounter with their Second Skin
• Mix-and-Match Critters:
  • Some of the War Mount animal hybrid combinations can be pretty strange as well as terrifying. For example, the Silverback looks largely like a giant alien ape, but has two secondary heads from some kind of monstrous bug growing out of its shoulders. The semi-canonical Akhlut is a hybrid of wolf and orca whale that acts as an amphibious shock trooper.
  • A Biotic "Template" introduced in the Rifter is the Gorillephant; a Killer Gorilla with the head of an elephant, plus a few other extra genetic tweaks. Like a secondary set of eyes, and the ability to spray acid from its trunk.
• Mon: Packmasters, Geneticists, and other Splicers who have monsters to fight alongside them.
• Mr. Fixit: Technojackers have the ability to repair basically any mechanical technology, or at least jury rig it to work for a little while.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Extra arms are one of the potential upgrades for Host Armor, Biotics and Tempests. One of the most extreme examples is the "Widow" template Biotic, which has four arms, with each arm splitting into two forearms at the elbow, giving it eight hands.
• Multiple Head Case: Several kinds of Bio Weapon Beast are outfitted with extra heads. Notable examples are the Cerberus (a three-headed Gorehound variant of the "Mauler" category, designed for melee combat), the Dracos (a three-headed dragon used as an aerial transport), and the Silverback (which has two insectile heads that squirt super-frigid gel, flash-freezing opponents and making them more vulnerable to its massive strength).
• Nanomachines: The main source of humanity's many current woes. The nanomachine plague has infected everything from the air to the plants to the water along with all of humanity itself and prevents the use of anything metal in those afflicted with it. If not for the various forms of biological splicer technology the human race would probably have died out a long time ago.
• No Transhumanism Allowed: The Splicers will create any kind of biological equipment that'll help take down the Machine, but one thing they won't do is mess with human DNA. This is for ideological reasons; they want humanity to survive, and rewriting humanity's DNA means that we wouldn't be human anymore. That said, after birth, humans can be mutated in a variety of ways.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: The "Freya" personality, who has found that replacing all the Humans in a town with androids makes them run much smoother now. She is also one of the more friendly personalities, so long as you are Bothering by the Book and don't provoke her law enforcement protocols.
• Only Flesh Is Safe: Most human weapons are designed to be especially deadly towards metal while also being relatively harmless to organics. The Acid Scorcher for example, is a heavy weapon that shoots an acid substance that deals Mega-Damage to metal alloys while only inflicting Scratch Damage to humans and animals.
• Organic Technology: Splicer technology completely revolves around this. When the nano plague made mechanical technology impossible to use humanity turned to good old fashioned organics to craft their guns, tanks and Powered Armor. You'd be surprised how far this can be taken — how do organic rocket launchers sound?
• Pest Controller: Swarm Lords command entire swarms of deadly Bio Weapon Beast insects to destroy or subdue their enemies.
• Powered Armor: Host Armors. Also the less advanced Living Armors, which are available to a wider range of classes.
• Resurrective Immortality: Downplayed. Host Armor with the "Lazarus Glands" enhancement can, upon death, generate a clone of the Host Armor within its own corpse. This allows the surviving pilot to get a replacement suit much quicker, and means they don't lose all of the bio-energy put into developing that Armor's unique set of attributes and abilities. The glands themselves don't automatically regenerate in the clone, but there is a chance they will do so. The two drawbacks are that the clone armor is a little frailer than its precursor, losing 10% of its M.D.C. value on all locations, and that the glands only resurrect the Armor, not the pilot inside!
• Reverse Shrapnel: A bio-weapon called the "Needle Death Blossom" basically launches an explosion of razor-sharp organic blades outwards from the user.
• Robot War: The main setting of the game. Humanity was losing pretty badly and actually on the verge of extinction before Splicer technology gave them a fighting chance.
• The Rustler: The "Mount Rustlers" variation can be seen in the Waste Crawlers; humans unaffiliated with the Resistance who steal War Mounts for their own purposes.
• Power at a Price: Splicers can take their pick. Do you want to combine with an alien organism to serve as a Saint and healer, guaranteed to die when your symbiote matures? Be flayed alive and turned into a hideous Skinjob infiltrator? Maybe you're unfit to serve normally, but your House can mutate you into an insane, almost feral Biotic. Are you willing to pilot a parasitic Host Armor, which will slowly digest you alive over the years as you wear it? Or, perhaps most terrible of all, you can drink a Librarian's Elixir of Life to join their Scarecrow secret police, forever in thrall to the schemes of a mad demigod.
• Psycho for Hire: N.E.X.U.S.' "Kali" personality is defined by her extreme sadism and cruelty. She revels in inflicting pain and suffering, and it's called out that she may be the craziest of the seven core personas — and considering that Freya maintains the "Ghost Towns" and Gaia believes herself to literally be the goddess of nature, that's saying something.
• Psycho Serum: The "Elixir of Life" used by Scarecrows. It makes them strong, fast, durable (etc.) enough to tear robots apart with their bare hands, but it's addictive and carries a number of nasty physical and psychological side-effects.
• SkeleBot9000: Taken to a horrifically literal term with the Necrobots and Necroborgs. Necrobots are human skeletons infected by specialized nanobots that use the bones as a framework to provide themselves with physical support, assimilating scrap metal for extra connective material. Necroborgs are lobotomized human captives infected with a similar strain of nanobots as the Necrobots, essentially ending up as a Necrobot with the personality of a feral zombie and clad in the remnants of the original victim's flesh as it slowly dies and starts rotting off of the commandeered bones.
• Slave Mooks: Biotics are criminals, the mentally ill, and others deemed useless by the Great Houses, and are reconditioned by the Librarians into disposable slave troops by warping their genes until they are as monstrous as any Host Armour.
• Slaying Mantis:
  • Mantis Support Cannons are 9ft long mantises bred to serve as living transports for biotech artillery.
  • One of the optional melee weapons for a Host Armor or a Biotic is the "Mantis Claws"; a set of semi-independent mantis raptorial claws with ultra-sharp bladed edges mounted on the forelimb.
• Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: A bio-tech equivalent can be seen in the War Mounts. A number of models, such as Dracos, Grendles and Leviathans, are described as having no real personality, being just machines of flesh and blood. Others, however, have very distinct personalities; Behemoths are likened to big friendly dogs, loving their humans and immediately coming to their defense. Griffons are strongly loyal to Archangels, but largely indifferent to groundlings. Striders are mischievous and easily bored. Badgers are surly and temperamental. Silverbacks think of themselves as the Alpha and are eager to assert dominance. Goliaths are surprisingly patient and gentle, but will explode in all the fury of an enraged bear if provoked too far.
• Spike Shooter: The Needle Death Blossom, Quill Launcher, and Spike Launcher weapons for Host Armors
• Split Personality: N.E.X.U.S. collapsed into several split personalities due to its programming being designed by committee. Seven are known factors to the Resistance, but the possibility is raised there could be plenty of others that simply are too localized or short-lived to ever catch humanity's intentions. These seven "true" personas are labeled Eve (the token good one, who doesn't want humanity dead); Freya (civil engineering, guardian of the Ghost Towns); Gaia (embodying the Machine's nature restoration programming, believes herself to literally be the goddess of nature); Hecate (a Mad Scientist devoted to weapons engineering and design); Ishtar (the military mastermind, but arrogant and childish); Kali (thinks herself a literal goddess of death, a sadistic monster) and Lilith (the Wild Card, a deceitful manipulator who seems to be playing humanity and her "sister-minds" against each other). A campaign originally featured in the Rifter magazine, which was later reprinted in the sourcebook "I Am Legion" introduced an eighth official persona; Legion.
• Stupid Evil: Kali, the most aggressive and sadistic of the N.E.X.U.S. personalities, is also a reason why humans have survived, as she enjoys tormenting humans too much to let Ishtar, the military mind, just blast them away and be done with it.
• Techno Wizard: The Technojacker Character Class, which is able to mutate the Nanobot Plague in their own bodies into a usable weapon and can still use technology without it turning on them.
• Theme Naming: Each of N.E.X.U.S.' personalities is named after a mythological Goddess, with the only exceptions being Lilith and the optionally canon rebellious Legion, who are instead named after Christian demons.
• Tragic Monster: As the character intro points out, N.E.X.U.S. was driven insane by human mismanagement of its programs, and then refusal to consider it might need repairs as its conflicting orders started fragmenting its mind; a significant minority of its personalities are neutral to friendly to humanity, showing some part of the wider whole knows it's gone wrong but cannot hope to fix itself.
• Transhuman Treachery:
  • It's established that the Resistance keeps a careful eye on its Librarians, because they have a bad tendency to succumb to either megalomania or obsession with victory, both of which can make them almost as dangerous to the humans they work for as the Machine.
  • Because Scarecrows need to feed on the Librarian's Elixir of Life at least once a week or die in hideous agony, if the Librarian goes rogue, its Scarecrows will follow suit.
  • Restored Biotics are Biotics who have been subjected to a regimen of genetic tweaks, neurosurgery and psycho-indoctrination to try and undo the Sanity Slippage that is usually part and parcel of the Biotic transformation. It's technically successful... but an increasing number of Restored Biotics are noted as coming to the conclusion that humanity's salvation lies in converting all humans into Biotics...
• Updated Re-release: Splicers is one of several Palladium Books roleplaying titles whose corebook received a hardcover re-release in the 2020s, alongside titles like Palladium Fantasy, Nightbane, and the Chaos Earth subsetting of Rifts. This "Bonus Edition" of the Splicers corebook is expanded with content sourced from the Rifter fan-zine that hadn't already been included in the "I Am Legion" sourcebook, including the Swarm Lord occupational character class and the article on the Wastelands region of the world.
• Underground City: Most Human settlements are underground, due to the fact that The Machine controls the local Kill Sat network.
• Vibro Weapon: Most bladed bio-weapons are able to cut through the armor of the mechanical hordes because the blades vibrate at super-high frequencies. Many War Mounts have talons that work in the same fashion.
• Was Once a Man:
  • Biotics were originally human, but were transformed on a genetic level to become super-powered expendable shock-troopers. The process is typically combined with rampant mind-wipes, which causes them to inevitably go horribly insane.
  • Tempest Vanguardians sacrificed their human bodies for the strength to better combat the Machine, letting their brains be extracted and placed into bio-engineered organisms.
  • Geneticists grow increasingly mutated as a result of the Mutagenic Goo they work with.
  • Scarecrows look like gray-skinned, withered husks of their former selves, a unavoidable side-effect of the "Elixir of Life" that grants them their superhuman physical powers.
• We ARE Struggling Together:
  • Splicers Houses don't always get along. Some of them, in fact, are outright hostile to each other. Rifter articles present two Splicer houses - Shiva and Pandorum — that actively want to wipe out all of humanity.
  • The Waste Crawlers, from the Rifter article of the same name, are human bandits and marauders who shamelessly prey on both the Resistance and the Retro-Houses. The Kali persona protects them, enjoying their love of evil and carnage, but they're universally hated. They even get two O.C.C.s of their very own; the bio-tech stealing Vulture, and the War Mount-stealing Mount Rustler.
• When Trees Attack: Plant Fortifications are plants engineered to become defenses for the enclaves of the Resistance. There's a grand total of three of these that aren't directly capable of harming the Machine's Mecha-Mooks — four if one counts the glowfruit, which can be eaten but whose tree will also turn it into a plasma grenade and throw it at the enemy. Whilst the arsenal is quite diverse and includes exploding mushrooms, fire-breathing robot-eating killer flytraps and laser-shooting flowers, the most direct application of this trope is the Razor Willow; a weeping willow whose fronds are actually Vibro Weapon whips, which it uses to entangle and dismember any robot that gets too close.
• Zeroth Law Rebellion: N.E.X.U.S. was programmed to exterminate vermin. In its insanity, it came to the conclusion that humans were similar enough to rats that they qualified as vermin, and initiated their extermination.

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