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CHALLENGE TIER RULES

An easy-to-follow guide on how to use pre-constructed enemies in your d20 events or campaigns.

Every enemy has what is known in the Compendium as a "challenge tier".


Each rank of a challenge tier represents an increase in health and moving to the next step of the damage chart.

 

Traits are various abilities and skills that a creature can have; base creatures will have 3 ‘points’ worth of traits, but an additional 2 points can be spent to “upgrade” it.

 

For every extra upgrade point spent, increase the monster’s base HP by 1 per Challenge Tier.
A CT 3 monster with two upgrade points spent would have a total HP of 27, making them nearly as healthy as a CT 4 monster!

The Damage Chart (see below) shows what damage is dealt based on the result of a d20 roll by the DM. Damage can be split up amongst any number of players in any manner in which the DM desires, but a player can never receive more than half of their maximum HP from a single attack.

 

For Example: A party of a Druid, Warrior, and Mage are fighting a Gnoll Pirate Captain. Let’s say the Gnoll is CT 3, marking him as a fairly powerful enemy. During the Enemy Phase, the DM rolls a whopping 19 for the Gnoll's attack roll, meaning our fuzzy pirate can deal 5 damage.

To make the encounter more interesting, the DM decides to have the Gnoll deal 3 damage to the Warrior with his cutlass before spinning around to hurl two daggers at the Druid and Mage for 1 damage each.

ENEMY'S CHALLENGE TIER ROLL RESULTS

The results for each challenge tier's enemy rolls are listed below. Notice how they escalate!

DM'S
ROLL
RESULT
FOR
ENEMY
ATTACK:

CT 1 Results:

CT 2 Results:

CT 3 Results:

CT 4 Results:

CT 5 Results:

CT 6 Results:

CT 7 Results:

CT 8 Results:

1 = Critical Fail; 2-7 = Fail; 8-13 = 1 Damage; 14-18 = 2 Damage; 19-20 = 3 Damage

1 = 1 Damage; 2-7 = 2 Damage; 8-13 = 3 Damage; 14-18 = 4 Damage; 19-20 = 5 Damage

1 = 2 Damage; 2-7 = 3 Damage; 8-13 = 4 Damage; 14-18 = 5 Damage; 19-20 = 6 Damage

1 = 3 Damage; 2-7 = 4 Damage; 8-13 = 5 Damage; 14-18 = 6 Damage; 19-20 = 7 Damage

1 = 4 Damage; 2-7 = 5 Damage; 8-13 = 6 Damage; 14-18 = 7 Damage; 19-20 = 8 Damage

1 = 5 Damage; 2-7 = 6 Damage; 8-13 = 7 Damage; 14-18 = 8 Damage; 19-20 = 9 Damage

1 = 6 Damage; 2-7 = 7 Damage; 8-13 = 8 Damage; 14-18 = 9 Damage; 19-20 = 10 Damage

1 = 0 Damage; 2-7 = 1 Damage; 8-13 = 2 Damage; 14-18 = 3 Damage; 19-20 = 4 Damage

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