As usual, lengthy context!
I once again find myself returning to dealing with Our Favourite Party. This motley collection of nutcases, whom we've been playing once or twice a year for the last fifteen years or so, always provide me with some difficulty. The trouble is, mutant bunch of freaks in reaction speed that they are (as in enemy-must-be-magic-time-ninjas to keep up with them...), and blessed with an unfortunate number of players who will roll open-ended on a regular basis, and well equipped with weapons and gear always cause me problems in how to oppose them.
The party is sci-fi, playing a Hideous Hybrid of RM and SM Editions The Likes Of Man Was Not Meant To Know (but mostly on RM2/SM2/RMC, but bits pulled from RMFP and RMSS and later editions of SM), and so on top of everything else, have shields...
They have, in recent years, come up against and got the better of a maxed-out 20th level, fully geared up, Armoured Adrenal Defenced, shielded Orc cyborg hero, duel wielding Omega-Osirsis Plasmatic Repeaters (he was REALLY strong) and on one notable occasion, two Greater Black Reavers with Sianetic Harbinger Anti-Porton Cannons and shields.
And they are level 10-11...! (There are about ten characters, though only about six-to-eight usually out and about at once.)
That last one, admittedly, is the cause of their current woes. While they ran like buggery from the Reavers (even they weren't daft enough to try and fight that), and took the Reaves out with their starship guns, the Reavers did infflict critical damage on said starship. (If it wasn't for Fate Points, they'd have blown the ship up twice...!) In any case the PC's ship is well screwed and they are right out on the fringes of the galaxy with nowhere to fix it. They have spent the last several (mis-)adventures since then pottering about and trying to find somewhere to get the ship fixed.
They will this time be landing on an abanonded alien station and looking for components. What they don't realise is that the old inhabitents are back, preparing to return to the universe from their pocket dimension, and a handful of their special forces have come to see what these creatures on their station are up to and learn what they can...
Thus, that is the premise of this advanture. The race themselves are a nominally female technolgical (i.e. in the way most robot races otherwise tend to be "male")nonhumanoid group. Highly advanced: and as with many such races, magic is not unknown. (The PCs actually ran into a spectral Undead of one of their spellcasters in their last adventure, though they may not realise it - their onw Archmage took it out eventually, but in the procress had an unfortunate encounter with Black Channels III: Uurulic Eye...!)
That fight actually kept them on their toes, since it was immune to non-magic physical attacks and had a +200 DB verses non-magic energy attacks - mostly to give the archmage a chance to shine, though the party are not without a few magic weapons.
In any case, as with my D&D games (out 3.x rules have so many modifcations that I call it 3.Aotrs, so it's not any less mutant hybrid than our Rolemaster...!), spellcasting is doing a reasonable job of countering their spellcasting (as the Archmage is fond of using Haste...!) So I wanted to throw a caster in the mix with these aliens as well.
Anyway, my nominal plan is for the Yrgynela to be sneaking around (preferrably boosted with magical stealth, though they have some natural skills in that area, but scanners are otherwise a bugger to deal with!) and prod a bit at the PCs before trying direct confrontation.
In particualr, I thought it might be jolly to have them set up some impromptu traps - such as the old gem of a summoning trap: something that when triggered, summoned a pile of demons (because why not). (Part of the point is to NOT have something reminiscent of the Yrgynela themselves - because whay would you, human summoners don't! - so the reveal comes as a bit more of a surprise.)
And, finally, we come to the point of this post!
I am having difficulty in finding a way to accomplish that other by just DM fiat. With careful inspection, I found a Contingency spell (RoCom1), which could be with the background option Spacial Skills be moved from "self" to "touch" range. So that sets the trap option - trouble is, the summoning spells in Rolemaster leave rather a lot to be desired. The actual demon-summoning spells (Cleric or Evil Magician Base) are, well, crap. The best option is in the latter, and that gives you one demon of up to maybe type III without going well up into 20th+ level (and the inherent dangers of a high-level spellcaster's RRs being too hard for the PCs to make - they about managed against the wraith thing (which was 15th), but I wouldn't want to go much higher).
And the type III demons - unless I find something better in C&T II and III - are pretty rubbish, as about all they'll be ble to do with serious rebuilds as actuyal characters is flail ineffectively against the party's shields. Further, you can't have more than on Contingency, so you can't attempt to summon more than one - and on top of that, without being controlled the demons vanish after two rounds.
So that idea seems mostly out of the window.
I have instead been toying with the idea of Elemental summons from Elemental Companion - though the definition of the summons is a bit vague, I might be able to rationalise summoning a dragon (!) through Summon Lesser Elemental Being though again, without being high level, I doubt it'll last long as a single target!
The cleric Summon [whatever] spells would allow more numbers, but only of low-level creatures...
So, I'm at a bit of a loss. Before I give up and resort to fiat, I thought I would toss the question out to these forums and see if anyone could come up with a solution or perhaps a better idea.
