My preferences for D&D are odd

[Dragonhelm]

Ferratus, I've known you for a while now, and I know that your tastes do not necessarily follow the mainstream. That's not to say they're bad, just that you're unique (which is a good thing).

The system you want, quite simply, doesn't exist. However, that doesn't mean you can't craft a system that meets your needs with little work.

What I'm going to recommend is Castles & Crusades. What's great about it is that it's a basic D&D foundation that allows for ultimate customization. What I like, though, is that it allows for you to mix and match. So if you like non-weapon proficiencies from 2e and feats from 3e, you can put those together with little work. Just choose what you want, and ignore the rest.

Some benefits that you might enjoy as well:
1. Ascending AC.
2. No skill system, so no diplomacy skill. You can pick and choose what skills you want in your game.
3. Allows for mini combat, but not necessary.

This will require some work on your part. However, if you want to get what you want, then C&C will give you the basic foundation you need while allowing for a mix and new and old school.

 

[Ariosto]

By that logic we should use a table to determine our ability to hit AC as well.

Not "we", since you do not share the valuation. Suit yourself!

I, however, see no reason not to avail myself of the Combat Matrixes that are conveniently adjacent to the others you mentioned.

Especially since you then have to divide the number of HD you affected by your table roll among the assorted undead beasties.

Not in old D&D. You turn a number of the subjects (2-12 in Original, in Advanced normally 1-12 but sometimes 7-12 or 1-2).

The saving throw table has a different problem of not being comprehensive enough, unlike Fort, Ref, and Will.

That's your opinion, and you are entitled to it. It is not my opinion, though.

That's a problem with bonus bloat, not with the underlying mechanic of the system.

Oh, for heaven's sake.

Are you going to tell me that I'm using a different "underlying mechanic" when I use the very same mathematical formula?

Someone who figures, "DC 19, +5 for level" is using a different rule than someone who just glances at a table and sees "14" immediately?

Someone who adds "+1 for dexterity, +1 for magic, +1 for other magic, -2 for weapon versus armor, -2 for range" over and over is using a different rule than someone who does it just once?

I think you are being much too particular!

 

[kitsune9]

The thing that makes me really odd I think, is that I want to incorporate 4e innovations onto old school play-style. It seems to be a very strong fissure where people who desire the old-school play style reject everything about 4e because it has a powers system. That's why you see a few 1e/3e blends but nobody seems to be itching to blend 4e and Basic/1e/2e like I am.

I don't think you're alone in this. I'm sure that there are some gamers that loved the old school 1e or BECM and like 4e.

I also think I'm odd because I don't want to scale upwards in character power ad infinitum, with bigger and bigger monsters and damage rolls. I like developing the character, but I'm bored of that after 6 months to a year, and then change either the focus of the campaign or start a new campaign. I find the idea of 20 or 30 levels of power-ups to be an insufferable grind.

Understandable. With BECM, I think the slow XP progression can be rescaled so that your players spend more time in the levels they are in. If you take the monsters in BECM, you can create a framework that will limit the progression scale to +20 at the most and it will work in most encounters.

So I understand now why they capped the Hit Dice of their classes at 9 or 10 HD. I just don't understand why they didn't develop rules for realm management and gave you henchmen and followers that you had to babysit rather than use and spend. Why not rules for followers giving XP to their lord through their adventures? Why not rules for how to play politics or build your own dungeon?

Back then, it was pretty much whatever TSR (i.e. Gygax and crew) thought was good design. A matter of personal taste for the game. In 1e, there was some rules on it, although not much. 3e did bring Strongholds Builder Book which was an attempt at building your own castle, dungeon, dwelling. If you can find it, use that for inspiration.

There was birthright I suppose (eventually) but that came with its own setting and rules assumptions that were different from the core game. I also don't understand why spell-casters kept getting exponentially tougher while the martial classes languished.

This was the only setting that I never got involved with or bought into.

As for my task of homebrewing, I'm finding the biggest difficulty for my D&D homebrew is blending non-minis and minis play. Sure, I can use minis with the editions 1-3, but it doesn't really take advantage of the medium for exciting skirmish play like 4e does. However, I don't want to have two sets of monster stats and character rules for all of the exploration encounters and the tactical miniatures skirmish battlefield.

But this exercise of meshing the two has to lead to one system. It's a lot of work, but once you've done it, then you'll have a more unified system that functions a lot of what you're looking for.

I gave you BECM as an example, but it's not the only system. You could reverse engineer 4e too to strip it down toward your system as well such as removing skills and other things. If you want to go Ye Olde Skool on the characters though and limit their HD and such, then at higher encounters, monster HD and combat will need to be changed.

Good luck!

 

[Ariosto]

My core dislike is the mini mandated nature of 4e combat. I vastly prefer narrative combat except for big set piece battles.

It would help to be able to substitute directly the main algorithmic advantage or disadvantage that accrues from a move, shift, slide or other spacial result. Is it setting up a figure to get a Combat Advantage bonus? Bunching personnel into the burst radius of an attack?

For clarity, let us stipulate that what it actually mandates is marks indicating relative positions. Even the square grid is not strictly needed, unless you're a stickler for absolutely literal "by the book" implementation. (Otherwise, a measure of any sort gets done the basic job of defining distances.)

In old D&D, the 20' diameter engagement zone around a figure means that most of the time everyone going at it with sword and fang is in a single melee.

The model assumes a lot of movement, exchanges of blows, and rests within the combined action. We can say, "They fence up and down the stairs, alternately pressing and being pressed, but Cloyer Bulse gets the better of it and his foe breathes hard as he desperately parries," without having to trace each step.

 

[Argyle King]

What are your opinions/feelings toward a game which doesn't have levels?

 

[fumetti]

I was the first modifier/mixer of DnD systems in my crew. We played the Basic Set system faithfully but were aware of the interesting ideas in 1st Edition. I was jealous that Dragon Magazine had so many new concepts but only for AD&D (such as the Archer class and Anti-Paladin). So I just created Basic versions of those NPCs and other rules.

We did eventually move on to AD&D, and I wanted changes to that too. Never implemented them tho. But I wanted to revamp Magic-Users so they had more to do each day.

Anyhoo, to your post...

1) Tiers of play that divide into dungeon crawling heroic adventures, paragons of legendary heroes, and epic god-like mythological battles. Always present in D&D, but solidified as a trope in 4e.

However, I want to mix it with...

From 1e/2e - Combat abilities (such as Hit Dice and Amour Class) largely cap at level 10, but a play style continues afterward that involves politics, wargaming and mass battles, and realm management.

Agreed that the upper tier should focus more on world-shaping. It can include combat, but XP and leveling up should be built on major socio-political achievements not just killing bigger monsters.

You could accomplish this on your own by telling players everything stops at 20th level, but I doubt they'd appreciate it. Even good roleplayers enjoy the leveling up process, and playing without XP feels like wasting time. So an XP mechanic would be necessary.

2) I want ascending AC... but I want to cap that at AC 30 and cap my to-hit bonus at +20. Why? I want the feeling that you are getting more skilled at hitting things at higher levels, not a ceaseless grind with the same miss chance.

Agreed, but mostly in the other direction. I don't like that it becomes almost automatic to kill (and almost impossible to be hit by) lower and mid-level monsters. There needs to be a point where the numbers slow down.

3) I want minis combat... but I don't want it every single time we fight.

As for minis, my beef is with how WOTC packages them. I'm not buying dozens of boxes when I don't know what monsters I'm getting. The "hidden prize" approach leaves me with so many I will never use. WOTC needs to start offering "Basic" monster mini sets such as a set of basic undead (skeletons, ghouls, etc) and basic humanoids (orcs, goblins, etc).

As for gameplay, the 3E/4E approach is so specific that I feel like I'm playing MageKnight--and that it takes even longer!

4) I hate the diplomacy skill.

Not agreed. Remember who RPG's biggest audience is. We all know the stereotype, and there's some truth in that stereotype. If a kid was charismatic and diplomatic on his own, he'd probably be somewhere else using those skills in the real world (school council, chasing girls). RPGs allow us to do what we can't do so well in real life. (My own dexterity is abysmal these days. But I get to be extraordinarily stealthy for a few hours a week.)

5) I hate the DC system. Most specifically, I hate the fact that you assign a difficulty class based on how easy or hard a PC finds a skill or task. If you are going to assign a difficulty low enough that they are pretty much assured success, then why not just let them do it? If you are going to make it impossible for them to succeed, just tell the PC's it is impossible. If you are going to make it somewhat likely that they will succeed, just have a pass/fail mechanic like rolling saving throws. Figuring out DC's is just a waste of time.

Remember the old days when TSR would always be throwing charts at us (most often in Dungeon Magazine)? In the old days, we'd have no problem finding a decent, massive chart that gave DCs for nearly every possible scenario. And then we just make small adjustments as needed.

Seems like a waste of money to buy a handbook that tells us to simply make them up on our own...

6) I love conditions, unreservedly.

Nobody, as far as I know, has shown any interest in adding 4e conditions to the rules systems of old school D&D or old school monsters.

Again, didn't these kind of things (conditions) appear in various Dragon articles? Or something close. I remember a weapon damage article once that my group incorporated. Heck of a thing to be fighting a dragon and your sword breaks because you didn't have it repaired after rolling all those "1s" last week!

7) I hate the powers system, unreservedly. At-wills are too repetitive.

Plus, every power is built on the very flexible system of combining damage, a condition, and an attack type (melee, ranged, area burst etc.).

I find them useful, but mostly boring after awhile. I keep doing the same damage and effect over and over and over and over again. And as you say, they're all almost identical in their structure--especially from class to class. I was very disappointed to see how similar all the at-will powers were between fighters, wizards, and thieves. Seems that the only hard difference between the classes in 4E is the armor they can wear.

True, they add flavor, but a PC should be able to choose from a larger list each turn. Or at least have some kind of drawback to using them--such as having basic attacks be penalty free but powers cause a penalty to initiative (-2 perhaps, due to the extra effort required to pull off all the effects).

8) But.... I love the idea of powers. I don't want to go back to the case where only wizards have special attacks. It doesn't make any sense why a wizard has a disintegrate spell that causes someone to instantly die, but a rogue doesn't have a "knife to the head" attack that does the same thing.

I don't have much of a counter argument other than I don't like every class having the same level of combat abilities.

Is there anyone else out there that also feels that blending the various mechanics of different D&D systems would be better than any one edition of the game?

Heck, if I had the time, I would do just that. I would use the Basic system as my starting point and build on that. Wouldn't require all that much adjustment since Basic was expanding all the time in the late 80s.

Didn't Basic actually introduce the first melee powers to DnD? Seems to me there weren't any such things until the Companion (I think) Set introduced the "Smash" attack option for Fighters (lose initiative, -5 to hit, but x2 damage).