Pathfinder Confessional

[captain yesterday]

I've always hated Paladins, always.

[Ventnor]

I think that Pathfinder stat blocks, whether for characters or monsters, are kinda ugly. They're just not very easy on the eyes.

[captain yesterday]

I kinda like them actually.

[godfang]

Hm, let's see.

I confess to facilitating the demise of a player character I was DMing for because the person was becoming disruptive and I didn't feel like kicking him off

I confess to getting really emotional for weeks after a bittersweet ending to one of my campaigns.

I confess to creating a gothic horror campaign that turned into a jane austen simulator....which turned into a harlequin romance/erotica simulator

[Unluckyblackjack]

I once made a CN cleric... In a evil party. He worshiped Nocticula, but still. Speaking of evil parties, I am actually okay with evil games on one condition: They must play as a party working on a big score. It helps with team trust (until the payoff), gives them a goal, and I don't have to worry about them playing the "SET ALL THE THINGS ON FIRE!!!" type of character.

Or at least keeping Wang Fire on a tight leash until he's not useful anymore...

[Alayern]

I am currently a player in a game where the GM doesn't know the rules.

It is still usually quite fun, but now she's angry I make most knowledge checks because she's leveled us up basically every session and now my skill points are out the wazoo.

(The worst bit is she isn't aware she's reflexively hamstringing me. We just came to a major trade city that doesn't have a library (???) Nor any sort of trade commission I could talk to (????????) about an item belonging to a school of magic the GM invented so I couldn't do Spellcraft on anything important (????????????????????))

[UllarWarlord]

Mine is a bit 'out-there', but...I like interspecies character shipping.

I don't really know why, but something appeals to me about a dwarf and a human being in a relationship (ASK AMIRI OUT ALREADY HARSK GAWD), or an elf/tiefling combo. I guess it's the 'originality' of it all.

[UllarWarlord]

Also, I like Oloch as a character and as a class.

ALL HAIL THE BLOOD KING

[Unluckyblackjack]

I have only ever came up with one character name. All the others, I just used a random name gererator or a default race names.

(It was a CG human bard with the sandman archetype. His name was Blackjack the Unlucky.)

[captain yesterday]

I have no idea what kind of character I'd make for Strange Aeons.

[C Yesterday, Spoiler Tag Police]

I resurrected this thread, but my name isn't Tensor.

[captain yesterday]

I've been getting complimentary Starfinder Society scenarios for months now and I've only downloaded two of them, of which I paged through one.

[Haladir]

Over the last few years, I came to the conclusion that I liked Pathfinder and D&D 5e about equally. Each system has strengths and weaknesses compared to the other, and which to use mainly depended on who I'd be playing with. (I prefer to GM 5e: Prep is so much easier.)

Now that I've played a bunch of Pathfinder 2e, I have found that like it a whole lot more than either PF 1e or D&D 5e.

But I have also come to the conclusion that if I want to GM a heroic fantasy RPG, the game system I enjoy running the most is Dungeon World.

[DM Lil" Eschie]

I confess I never saw this thread until today.

[Dire Elf]

I confess that I love playing wizards, but I’m pretty poor at playing that class. I can never seem to choose the right spells for the situation, I can’t make up my mind which spell to cast, I get analysis paralysis. Then when my spells fail (or more likely the other characters or enemies move in / out of range and ruin my plan) I get frustrated.

I also confess that I get whiny when my character gets knocked out or mind controlled.

[Master Han Del of the Web]

I confess that any use of supernatural mind control makes my skin crawl and I always think less of characters that use such methods.

I also confess that spellcasters vacillate between needlessly complex and way too easy in my mind.

[Haladir]

I just figured out why I have never liked the kingdom-building or crafting rules in Pathfinder, and why I rarely-if-ever make a charater that's interested in doing either.

Calculating/estimating Level of Effort and costs to complete a project, and careful tracking of resources and expenditures is my real-life job, and I play this game to take my mind off such things!

Give me an RPG that abstracts wealth, treasure, and equipment, and my enjoyment level goes up significantly!

[Jhaeman]

I confess that I've been on these forums for years, but until last week thought that "Gamer Life" was only about video games. I have no idea why.

[Haladir]

I confess that I'm pretty much getting out of Pathfinder. I really like the game world, and will continue to run games in the setting, but I've found that crunchy rulesets just aren't for me anymore...

[Mark Hoover 330]

I confess I'm done suffering bad DMs. Recently I've had my third bad DM in a row, and by "bad" I mean someone who tells me what my character is doing, where they're going, etc. This third one is in D&D 5e which is fairly "rules light" as far as D&D goes.

My experience has been that in games where MORE is left to DM fiat as opposed to less, I have even less of a voice and therefore run into MORE DM's who act like the deity of the game. I'm sorry, but I don't get the chance to be a player too often so I'm not going to be a pawn in the DM's ego-trip of patting themselves on the back for "surprising" me with their killer fight scene that only THEIR kindness allows me to get through.

Seriously, what is the DEAL with DMs doing this?:

DM: you see... A SHADOW!

Me: we're level 1 and have no weapons to deal with incorporeal creatures

DM: It's not incorporeal, this is 5e. Roll initiative

Me: 11

Paladin: 6

DM: The shadow has... a 13! He attacks the cleric... (to me) he hits AC 17

Me: That hits...

DM: you suddenly feel weak! You suffer 9 Necrotic and... your Str is reduced by 3!

Me: I'm unconscious at 0 HP. (To paladin) Good luck buddy; you used all YOUR healing earlier, we both already used Short Rest and this is a shadow you gotta face alone. I'm gonna go make myself a sandwhich…

(I come back a few minutes later)

DM: … and the shadow misses, AGAIN! I can't BELIEVE he keeps missing you (in a tone of obvious bluffing; rolls now being hidden)

Paladin: I attack... hit AC 14

DM: You HIT! Boom, it dissipates and the fight is over. In the corner, where you didn't notice it before, you spot 2 potions of a red liquid...

Potions turned out to be some kind of healing. We heal up, drag ourselves to the front of the caverns where kobolds MAGICALLY got ahead of us despite the fact that we'd searched for secret doors in and out of this area before, the paladin getting a 22 on their Investigation roll with the help of a Guidance cantrip.

DM: No, you didn't see any tracks for the kobolds ahead of you in the main tunnel, you're right.

Me: how did they get ahead of us if we were either in or beside the main tunnel the whole time, checked for tracks before we came back this way, AND this tunnel is the ONLY way into this main entry chamber.

DM: ah, but... you didn't spot their secret passage before!

Paladin: with a 22 on my check I didn't catch that?

DM: no, you needed a 23!

This DM later (and I'm not exaggerating here) laughed at the 2 of us playing because my cleric, at 8 HP left and -3 Str plus the Paladin down 1 HP, decided to attack the kobolds from range only to have the kobold leader use a patch from a FREAKING ROBE OF USEFUL ITEMS to throw up an Iron Door, locking us into the tunnel we were in while ALL of the kobolds escaped out the main cave, taking ALL of their treasure with them.

Basically, this DM crowed, up front, about how MUCH treasure the kobolds had, made it impossible for us to locate/defeat the kobolds, THEN weakened us with a shadow, took pity on us, then gave us the finger and allowed the kobolds and all their treasure to escape with our characters not being able to do anything about it.

Oh yeah, and then laughing at us that we were so dumb that we lost all that treasure. Also, the cherry on top; earlier in the cave we'd defeated a zombie that was guarding a font of what turned out to be low grade acid. Our characters came up with a plan to take the empty potion vials, fill them with the acid and at least try to weaken or eat through the lock on the iron door so we could escape.

The DM couldn't even give us that. In the 1 minute it took us to collect the acid and return (per the DM; 1 minute), all 15 kobolds picked up everything of value from their multi-chamber lair, filed single-file through their DC 23 secret tunnel, and escaped, but not before the kobold leader opened the iron door for us, presumably as a final thumbing of the nose at us.

I KNOW they escaped down the secret tunnel because again, the acid chamber we were in was right off the main tunnel, which the paladin was watching while I collected acid, AND we again checked for tracks and found no new ones before we left.

After the session in the spoiler wrapped, I asked my DM if he understood, like I do, how impossible a DC 23 check would be for our characters. He smirked and said he was trying to make it a challenge.

Make it a challenge... this seems to be the go-to excuse for many bad DMs. A CHALLENGE is, I don't know... a 45% chance of success versus a 60%? Where that DC landed, it would've required my character to roll a 20 on a D20 AND roll a 4 on a D4, or it would've required the paladin to pull together a 23 from a combo of 1d20, 1d4, and his whopping +1 Int bonus. The fact he got a 22 at all was miraculous.

Also this GM said they wanted me and the paladin to try "reasoning" our way out of this scenario. In the scenario we:

1. purposely avoided injuring several kobold eggs left unguarded, then tried to use this fact to plead for our own safe passage out of the caves

2. used hunting and tracking techniques to avoid walking into obvious ambushes

3. tried using acid to burn through the door to facilitate our own escape but were denied the chance

On a personal level though, with all due respect to Haladir and others who espouse the value of rules-light systems, I've found more bad gaming in systems with less crunch instead of more. The game in the spoiler was a 5e game, which is relatively rules-light compared to several editions of D&D.

The more GM fiat that is baked into the system IMO, the more bad DM's will take advantage. It's already easy enough for a bad DM to set arbitrary DCs and put impossible enemies against you in, say, a Pathfinder game but at the very least at the end of the session you can try to have a calm, reasoned discussion with the DM about rules like encumbrance, movement speed, DCs of relative skills and so forth.

If, during these conversations the DM flat out ignores those rules then you know where they stand. If, on the other hand, you're playing a game where several elements are left up to the DM or handwaved, you basically just have to sit there and take it when the DM hands something down.

I've been running games of my own since I was 10. Back then, in GRADE SCHOOL, I learned the lesson that just inventing new rulings when old ones didn't serve MY vision of what the game SHOULD be was no fun for the players. I had to be fair and just, respect THEIR input to the game as valid to my own.

This most recent bad DM is nearly 50. There is NO reason he or other adults like him should run games like a king throwing out scraps of entertainment to the peasants.

[Jhaeman]

I often run adventures because I own them (instead of buying adventures because I want to run them). I feel the need to justify my previous purchases by using them, which then allows me to give myself permission to buy more :)

[Haladir]

Mark Hoover wrote:

...a tale of terrible GMing...

I'm sorry to hear that.

That's... really bad GMing. If I were in your position, I'd quit the game.

This GM seems to be power-tripping, railroading, and doesn't have a firm grasp of 5e's game mechanics. He is also taking an adversarial position toward the players. Any one of those points is bad, but all of them add up to a really lousy play experience.

Mark Hoover wrote:

On a personal level though, with all due respect to Haladir and others who espouse the value of rules-light systems, I've found more bad gaming in systems with less crunch instead of more. The game in the spoiler was a 5e game, which is relatively rules-light compared to several editions of D&D.

A bad GM is a bad GM, regardless of the system they're using.

(And I would absolutely NOT call D&D 5e a "rules-light" system. Yes, 5e is slightly lighter than Pathfinder, but that's like saying a battleship is lighter than an aircraft carrier.)

The RPGs I mostly play these days are story-focused, where the game is more of a conversation, and the players have nearly as much narrative control as the GM. The GM also never touches the dice. (If the game even uses dice.) GM Principle #1 of the "Powered by the Apocalypse" family of games is: "Be a fan of the characters."

[Mark Hoover 330]

I confess, since the time I posted above, I have to stop hating on rules-light systems. It might not be MY bag, but I do see the appeal to them and I also fully concede the point that a bad DM is a bad DM.

My frustration comes solely from DMs, GMs, or whatever they're called, who decide for whatever reason that they are somehow above the players. In a system with lots of crunch, they just ignore whatever doesn't suit their narrative. In a system with more rulings than rules, these game runners just constantly reinforce THEIR vision.

Thing is, I'm not at a game to be some passive audience to THEIR vision. I want to play, not be entertained. As a player, I think I enjoy more crunchy games b/c it's easier for me to spot a bad DM.

With fewer rules I give my DMs lots of chances. Maybe they're having a bad day; maybe they made that ruling for a good reason; maybe they just don't understand MY side of things.

When there's heavy crunch like in PF... I quit one guy's game after 2 sessions. Both were long sessions, but both games revolved around our PCs dealing at some point with Difficult Terrain, once in a forest and once in an urban setting. After the 4th time in 2 game sessions that his rulings allowed his WIFE'S character and his own monsters to move unhindered through Difficult Terrain, but my character and the other PC in the game had to deal with half-movement, and neither the RAW abilities of said monsters or the class abilities or Feat of the Rogue his wife was playing allowed any freedom in Difficult Terrain, I knew I was done.

Furthermore, I confess that I wish that Hala-Mommy-Dir-Est would run an IRL game, using a setting put together by DM Cal, that I could sit in on alongside, among others, the No-Glorious TOZ and the Captain of a Thousand Yesterdays. Seriously, I never thought I could fanboy over random strangers hidden behind avatars on a gaming forum, but if you all ever get a game together and need another player I'd likely pay to sit in.

Haladir, thanks for your advice and experience in this and other threads. You REALLY know your stuff when it comes to gaming, be it history, play-style philosophy, game design... heck, I bet if there was an algorithm that accurately calculated gamer age based on games played, I'd swear The Dir of Hal wrote it! I appreciate your insight!

[Haladir]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

...really nice things...

*blushes* Aww... shucks...

Thanks. Really. I am truly touched!

When I GM, one thing that I absolutely always want to be certain of is that we have player consent for whatever happens to their character.

The RPGs I tend to run these days have that concern baked into the rules. Generally, if something bad is going to happen to a character, I'll let the player define/decide what that is, according to the fiction. Sometimes, I'll provide a choice of options; sometimes I'll dictate the final result and ask the player to tell us how that happened.

And in case you were really wondering... I'm turning 51 later this year.

If anyone was wondering what my GM style looks like in practice, I've started recording my online play sessions with The Gauntlet Online Gaming Community. You can watch what I've recorded so far over at my YouTube Channel.

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

Haladir, thanks for your advice and experience in this and other threads. You REALLY know your stuff when it comes to gaming, be it history, play-style philosophy, game design... heck, I bet if there was an algorithm that accurately calculated gamer age based on games played, I'd swear The Dir of Hal wrote it! I appreciate your insight!

Glad to offer it! Believe me: In some of the other RPG circles I kick around in, I am absolutely the lightweight! I have learned SO MUCH about RPGs in indie game circles: Those games broke my brain in a good way. One nice thing about splashing around in a small pond is that most of the luminaries of the indie RPG scene are totally approachable, super-friendly, and love to share their insights.

And a proposal...:

Running a live online game for Mark, TOZ, DMCal, and Captain Yesterday sounds like a HOOT! DM me if you're really interested, and we can try to schedule a time for me to run a one-shot of something over Zoom/Roll20. If fantasy is your jam, the games I'd be most interested in running for you would be Dungeon World or Trophy Gold. Both systems are narrative-focused, where the game is a conversation between the players and the GM. The rules of both systems are very light: Everything you need to know to play the game is printed on the one-page character sheet.

DM me if you're really interested!

[Set]

DM Lil" Eschie wrote:

I confess I never saw this thread until today.

Ditto, with a later value for 'today.'

Edit: I confess that I lied. I just was scrolling back and found that I'd posted to this thread some years back and totally forgot.

Don't do drugs, kids!

[DM Lil" Eschie]

Quote:

Don't do drugs, kids!

, do a Calistrian! ^^

[Veltent]

I prefer unique characters to optimized characters. If I can make a weird multiclassed character that can do their things well, that's ideal, but I'd still rather play in a game where I can pair up classes that may or may not normally go together, just to see what kind of fun combinations I can make.

[captain yesterday]

I like Palladium Books RPGs.

They're cheesy, and a mess rules wise but they are fun to play!

[Haladir]

I confess that I buy WAY more RPG books and materials than I will ever use in my life.

[Haladir]

I also confess that one reason I like to back Kickstarters and pre-order RPG books is that when they arrive in the mail unexpectedly, it feels like I'm getting presents out of the blue!

And I confess that yesterday felt like Christmas when I got six different RPG books in the mail at once:

• Sorcerer RPG (2013 annotated edition) — Adept Press
• Candlelight (a Rooted in Trophy RPG) — Glowing Roots Press
• Acid Death Fantasy (a setting for Troika!) — Melsonian Arts Council
• Hypertellurians (an OSR cosmic science-fantasy RPG) — Motokrosh Press
• The Last Days of Angelkite (a setting for Dungeon World) — Magpie Games
• A Pound of Flesh (a setting and adventure toolkit for Mothership) — Tuesday Knight Games

[captain yesterday]

Haladir wrote:

I confess that I buy WAY more RPG books and materials than I will ever use in my life.

Same here, and I'm not ashamed of that.

[TriOmegaZero]

It’s a common thing.

[Mark Hoover 330]

Haladir wrote:

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

...really nice things...

*blushes* Aww... shucks...

Thanks. Really. I am truly touched!

When I GM, one thing that I absolutely always want to be certain of is that we have player consent for whatever happens to their character.

The RPGs I tend to run these days have that concern baked into the rules. Generally, if something bad is going to happen to a character, I'll let the player define/decide what that is, according to the fiction. Sometimes, I'll provide a choice of options; sometimes I'll dictate the final result and ask the player to tell us how that happened.

And in case you were really wondering... I'm turning 51 later this year.

If anyone was wondering what my GM style looks like in practice, I've started recording my online play sessions with The Gauntlet Online Gaming Community. You can watch what I've recorded so far over at my YouTube Channel.

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

Haladir, thanks for your advice and experience in this and other threads. You REALLY know your stuff when it comes to gaming, be it history, play-style philosophy, game design... heck, I bet if there was an algorithm that accurately calculated gamer age based on games played, I'd swear The Dir of Hal wrote it! I appreciate your insight!

Glad to offer it! Believe me: In some of the other RPG circles I kick around in, I am absolutely the lightweight! I have learned SO MUCH about RPGs in indie game circles: Those games broke my brain in a good way. One nice thing about splashing around in a small pond is that most of the luminaries of the indie RPG scene are totally approachable, super-friendly, and love to share their insights.

** spoiler omitted **...

Just saw this today; check your PMs :)

[JaysonFour]

I wish there were more opportunities in PFS for roleplaying.

Way, way, way back in the day- pre 2000- there was the RPGA, which ran a number of different "living" campaigns. The most famous (I believe) was "Living City", which was based around the city of Raven's Bluff in the Forgotten Realms (used D&D 2nd edition as its go-to set).

Usually it was a weekly thing- you showed up, played an adventure, and added in your stuff and counted XP. But sometimes, at bigger events and conventions and game days, you could find "interactives", where you could just hang out for a few hours, in-character, meeting and trading stories, trading gear, buying things and meeting NPCs for induction into orders and societies and things like that. You had your bigger ones where people would dress up in-character and everything, and it was a lot of fun.

It's literally one of the only things I hate about PFS- that there's no incentive, no opportunity to go for greater roleplaying opportunities that aren't just sitting around a table waiting to roll dice. I wish there were opportunities- even just at conventions- to give a chance for people to just go out and roleplay in-character, maybe have some interactions and things.

I guess this is why I kind of prefer playing online text-based and play-by-post over in-person- because there's more freedom to play the character you want to play, one you want to tell the story of, rather than one you feel that you can actually play in-person around others- you could craft up someone with a pretty intricate backstory and things and really let your writing and story-telling skills shine without having to worry how you come off to everyone else at the table. How many characters with great stories to tell get cast aside simply because we get nervous about how we're going to roleplay them in-person around other people? Maybe you want to play another gender, maybe you want to play another race, but when you think about it, you just roll up another whatever and go for it.

[Haladir]

I confess that I've never been a fan of organized play.

[TriOmegaZero]

We're a microcosm of society on the whole.

[captain yesterday]

I'd like to give organized play a try, as soon as in person gaming (outside of my household) is safe again.

[Mark Hoover 330]

I confess the same as Halamoose upthread; I've never gotten into organized play. Tried at conventions, had more negative than positive experiences with either what I subjectively call bad DM's or chaos players ("some people just want to watch the world burn")

I played a couple Living Greyhawk games but found the folks I was playing with, for lack of a better term, pretentious. Like, I grew up with Greyhawk but obviously we put a homebrew spin on it. When I went to games my fellow players were like "if you don't know the inner secrets of the Valley of the Mage then what are you even DOING here?"

PFS was weirdly inviting and inclusive; I really liked the people I met through these games! The only downside was what Four Times the Jayson said - the games were basically use this skill, at this time, and survive combat... and you get a cookie at the end.

Funny enough, I didn't get into massively online games either. I played WOW a couple times, but getting slaughtered by jerkwads that were running around in god armor and just wanted to kill noobs was enough to convince me that sometimes the online communities of my hobbies can be... challenging.

[Haladir]

I've only ever played PFS or SFS games at PaizoCon.

I've had fun, but Society play doesn't really give me what I play RPGs for.

The story:

Okay, technically not true... I (attempted to) play PFS twice during Season One back in 2011 or so at a long-out-of-business FLGS. The first try was such an absolutely awful game that I walked away from the table about 90 minutes in. [General immaturity of the GM and other players: They all knew each other and it was one in-joke after another.]

After having a chat with the local venture-officer, I tried again two months later... and had an even worse time, quitting after 45 minutes. News Flash: Rape jokes are not funny.

I didn't try PFS again until PaizoCon 2018, and that was because I didn't get into very many non-PFS lottery games. I had fun, but Society play is not the style of RPGs that excites me. (And I had a very frustrating time with my first SFS game at the same con, where I found the rules completely stymied what I thought would have been a cool scene.)

[captain yesterday]

I prefer playing video games on easy difficulty.

[Mark Hoover 330]

I've never been to Paizo Con. I've been to cons in MN, WI, IL, and IN, but never Paizo Con, despite being on these boards singing their praises and even once in 2012 being IN SEATTLE on a family vacation when the con was happening.

[captain yesterday]

I've never been to a con, though I have been conned. They are unrelated, fortunately.

[Wei Ji the Learner]

I am incredibly way too excited to be physically going to SKALCON this year.

I haven't been to an in-person convention-scale get-together of my fellow gaming brethren since February of 2020, just before everything went crazy (and even then there were hints of how crazy it was going to be).

[Tim Emrick]

I confess that beyond a certain point, theorycraft makes my eyes and ears bleed. A couple of the people I regularly play with will agonize over every miniscule scrap of optimization they can wring out of a character concept, and they don't make it sound remotely fun to do all that work. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE making up new characters, and when I'm running a game (and even when I'm not), I'll stat up a new weird NPC idea at the drop of a hat just to see what they can do. But eventually there's a point where the tinkering stops bringing joy, and only playing the character will bring any more.

Naturally, I will try to optimize my characters enough that they're reliably competent at what they're supposed to be good at, because playing a schmuck gets old REAL fast. But it was only a year and a half ago that I put some real effort into building a seriously DPS-focused character, including a rough outline of what class features and feats to give him for 15+ levels. He's not as fine-tuned as some of the other PCs in his party, but he does reliably dish out a scary amount of damage, and that's good enough for me.

I will also confess that the other extreme irks me even more. If you've been playing this game for years, we should expect you to be able to build a character who is at least occasionally effective, right? I could go off on a lengthy rant about this, but the original post did ask for no mocking or shunning, and too many of the examples that come to mind would tempt me far too much to go there.

[TriOmegaZero]

I agree, if it takes more than a couple minutes to decide on an option (reasonable given the wide breadth of choices) I'm wasting my time. Get that character slapped together and start making funny voices.

[Planpanther]

I dont mind spending tons of time making characters. I try to make an campaign related and effective character. In PF1 that takes time.

[TriOmegaZero]

Not as much time as fine-tuning every little modifier of the character. Grab greatsword, take power attack, effective character done.

[Wei Ji the Learner]

I've lost track of the number of characters (mine and others) that were 'perfectly crafted'... and then after a few games became 'lost' in the wash of better, more vibrant characters.

Also, my -1(slayer/cleric) in PFS1 is far less optimal than my -10(a bard), which seems less optimal than my -31(Bard/Pathfinder Delver)

(-20 had problematic build aspects due to repeated rules changes, -30 had problematic build issues due to incredible number of questions about how the archetype worked)

The rare times I get to play my -1 it almost feels like I'm going back to CORE play due to how the character design thoughts evolved. Not that it's a bad thing, just a noticeable evolution of character creation over time.

[Bolt Vanderhuge]

"I am thinking that there are many restrictions in mighty aasimar blood, but what is not of the happening is any of mine companions forgetting the glorious presence of Bolt Vanderhuge!"

Yes, hi, barbarian who cannot be enlarged normally and didn't take power attack here.

[Agraic]

"'ll go big 'f i' 'elps th' par'y, bu' i' 'ar' t' 'efen' tha'". 'lso, HI BOL'!"

Translation:

"While being 'enlarged' has some definite tactical advantages, the overall benefit of 'offense' over defense tends to mitigate the efforts I make to protect myself, so it is a situational circumstance that at best comes up rarely."