Local Man Realizes He’s a CR 0 Encounter After Losing Fight With Son’s Birthday Pony
OMAHA, NE – Local father and D&D player Phillip Grossman reportedly fell into a midlife crisis after an incident at his son’s birthday. Suffering a humiliating defeat at the hooves of a pony rented for the birthday, he realized he couldn’t defeat a single creature with a challenge rating below one.
The Incident
While celebrating his son Alex’s fourth birthday, Grossman was involved in an altercation with Mr. Trotsy, the pony he’d rented for the event. Witnesses state that the fight began when Mr. Trotsy stole a piece of cake off of Grossman’s plate. The enraged father took the theft as a personal insult. Emboldened by his knowledge of D&D power scaling and two light bears, he began a fight with the animal.
“I thought to myself, what would my character Dullgar the Dwarf barbarian do if a pony disrespected him like that?” Grossman shared. “So I downed the rest of my Miller Light and took a swing at that pretentious little horse. After all, even a lone level one adventurer should be able to easily defeat one monster of that CR.”
Reports reveal that the encounter did not go as Grossman hoped. “Phil whacked the pony on its nose once, then immediately got bit,” his wife, Laura, shared. “It bit his arm, and he started running around in circles, screaming about needing a cleric. That just freaked the pony out more.”
“It was hilarious,” Grossman’s best friend Larry added. “The pony kicked him right in the ass, and he fell straight into the rest of the cake. Went right through the folding table WWE style. Everyone was laughing at this tiny, cute thing terrorizing him. Poor guy told the pony ‘I yield! I yield!’ I wanted to help, but I was just laughing too hard.”
The Aftermath
Losing the fight against Mr. Trotsy had a profound psychological effect on Grossman. “I always saw myself as at least a first-level character, y’know. Maybe I couldn’t fight a dragon, but deep down I always felt like I could take a goblin or whatever. Losing to such a low-level monster. It really got to me.”
The humiliated man looked into the middle distance as he confessed, “Not just losing, but getting so easily defeated made me realize I must be in the lowest tier of power. A particularly weak NPC. The equivalent of a rat. Not even a giant rat, a regular sized one.”
Leveling Up
“For a while, he was just kind of brooding,” Clarissa Edelmann, who plays Dungeons and Dragons with Grossman, shared. “Then he got kind of obsessive about increasing his challenge rating. He started going to the gym, which is good, I guess. But he’s also started carrying a sword he bought at the mall everywhere he goes. He got really upset when I told him he didn’t have that weapon proficiency, but it hasn’t stopped him.”
“I’ve resolved to build myself up into a proper fighter,” Grossman explained. “I plan to work my way up through some other CR 0 creatures until I’m ready to try a rematch with that damn pony. I killed a spider the other day, all on my own. I think next I’m going to see if any local petting zoos will let me fight a sheep.”
Grossman was last seen preparing for his future fight by swinging his sword around in the backyard, making “whoosh” sounds. His friends are taking bets on the fight. The odds are 2 to 1 in favor of the sheep.
