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I have recently had a somewhat heated discussion over the idea of a natural twenty versus another natural twenty with one of my fellow gm's and players. In the Unlimited edition it states that a nat 20 'can only' be beaten by another natural twenty.

The question arises from a situation as followed: I rolled a natural 20 (With modifiers a 30) to hit a guardian of a room. He rolled a nat 20 (with modifiers a 28). The GM called it tie to defender, but it wasn't a tie. The fact the rules said "can only" rather than "will only" or "will always" throws the question into the air of what to do in that unique (1 out of 400 shot) of getting a nat 20 versus a nat 20 in combat.

Is there any official ruling on this type of situation?

I question it as, to me personally, that means no matter how good and lucky the striker is, there will always be a 5% chance, no matter his strike, that he will miss, get parried, etc, even in the case of his own "critical".

To my knowledge, defender ALWAYS wins ties.
With the Natural 20, technically, you are not suppose to include bonuses.
I can see house rules allowing this, but by the book, not to my knowledge.

Agreed.

if there are 2 nat 20's, defender wins, the bonus's do not matter in this case UNLESS you have the specific Combat Mage spells (Rifts Mercenary Adventures), which specifically allows you to beat a natural 20 with high bonus's, in fact, you don't even need a natural 20 to beat a natural 20 as long as the total final is high enough over the defenders roll.

I wasnt aware you dont count bonuses on a nat 20.

Everyone I've ever played with always added them in as well.

desepchun wrote:I wasnt aware you dont count bonuses on a nat 20.

You do normally.

You don't when determining a "Who 'won' here contest" when a natural 20 is rolled; so even "nat. roll 19 plus Bonus 1 kagillion" loses if the other guy rolls Nat. 20.

I have always ruled that in the case of a nat 20 vs a defenders nat 20, you then compare the respective bonuses, high bonus wins, and having a strait d20 roll in the rare case of a tie still. Also if the defender rolls a nat 20 but his bonuses aren't high enough to beat the attackers bonuses, he gets hit for normal damage only, my reasoning is that his nat 20 canceled the extreme damaging effects of the attackers nat 20, even though he couldn't completely avoid the attack (therefore it's balance in my mind).