It has been five years since I lasted ran RM and eight years since I ran the particular party I'm currently writing for.
I had cause to look at the Necromancer Commune spell list today. I am in the process of writing various solutions to a problem, one of which is to use necromancy to get the information.
However, aside from the fact it looks like the target may be a level too high (but I might waive that as what the players don't know...) I actually looked at Commune as it was stated that was how to communicate with the summoned/controlled or mastered spirit. Force information II is the lowest level spell that actually compels a spirit to answer a question (as funnily enough, the spirit is unlikely to want to tell the dudes what just killed him the password to stop the explosives).
It says: "Forces a first-level spirit or aware Undead to answer one YES or NO question. Chance of success is 5%/lvl of spirit/Undead." Bear in mind this is a 3rd level spell.
It is just me or is this hopelessly bad and really might as well read "you can't ACTUALLY get information out of ghosts?"
It would mean that, the professional Necromancer would have to risk casting three spells over his level (Summon Dead V, Control Dead V and Force Information V (and spend 8+8+9=25 PP) to have, at best, a 25% chance of getting a YES/NO answer out of a creature two levels lower than him.
I know Rolemaster's spells generally err on the horrendously underpowered side at low level (and have traditionally required me to bend over backwards for the casters to not be completely useless in the level range we play at, especially in sci-fi), but I feel like this might be a tad unreasonable, especially with the flat RNG chance of wasting it.
As I can and, if necessary, revise/update and amend, what might be a more reasonable effect for this type of spell? On the one hand, I don't want to make it TOO easy, but on the other, there ought to feel like this should have some reward for being attempted; especially as in the lore in question, this kind of necromantic interrogation is pretty standard.
