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I always felt that the desire for absolute rules for all situations is what drove the evolution from OD&D to modern editions.

D&D 3/PF are very very close to the same thing (people like to call Pathfinder 'D&D 3.75'), and they both have rules for it. Basically, if your weapon has the Trip property, you can use it to make trip attacks without penalty. So when an enemy provokes an attack of opportunity, you can trip them instead of damaging them. Now.. standing up in a threatened square just happens to be one of the ways to provoke an attack of opportunity.....

And if you REALLY want to get silly, there's a Fighter feat (greater trip) that says that when you successfully trip someone, they provoke an attack of opportunity.

It gets ridiculous pretty fast.

Fighting defensively just means you are putting most of your effort into defensive maneuvers. That can be as simple as putting all of your attention towards blocking with your shield. No moving around needed for that, especially if you are in a formation with a bunch of other shield bearers.

As for pressing an attack from the second rank.. Have you ever seen a pike? Historically speaking, they were at LEAST ten feet long, and often MUCH LONGER (up to 25 feet). Even someone with no training and no prior combat experience (like me!) could mount a convincing stab attempt around an interposing shield wall.

My way around that problem was to determine that a high level magic user like Calcidius is intelligent enough to have contingency plans in place, like a Wand of Magic Missile with about 5 charges on it tucked into his belt. A single level 13 Magic Missile should be enough to intimidate a lower level party. Should outright kill at LEAST one character.

I've never had to use it though.. the one time I've run it so far, the PCs found all the treasure in the basement first, THEN found Calcidius, and used the logic that if he had THAT MUCH treasure, he must be REALLY high level, so they hired a mason to brick over the entrance to his room.

Yeah, I'll give them that much credit. They realized that this was a Big Deal™ enemy and apparently put a good amount of thought into how to resolve it. That is probably one of the very few possible ways to deal with him permanently, hehe.

They clearly didn't take the threat of an indeterminately powerful wizard seriously enough, so they should suffer for it! I would suggest coming up with a list of possible outcomes (4 or more) and let each player roll a die to see which one they get. Here's a couple suggestions:

-He needs a new servant to replace Argyle. He uses little or no magic to trap the character, instead relying on intimidation and the examples of what he does to the other characters.
-He totally wants to see what happens when he sends the character to the strange planet (which happens to be Carcosa).
-He needs fresh specimens for his experiments in the basement.
-He takes the character to the ghost's room and announces "Good news Rufus! We have a volunteer!" and either 1) you play a game of skill with that player that they have no idea how to play, or 2) Calcidius just uses magic to replace the ghost with the character.
-He offers the character a chance to work off their 'debt'. Choose a task that's almost guaranteed to kill them, such as polish the metal spikes on the roof (~2 hours to complete). If they live to complete the task, they're free to go.

I would probably only do a test vs falling on every hit if the ledge was extremely narrow or precarious. For more spacious ledges, I might call for one on an attack roll that came up natural 1 (goes for NPCs too), or as a special pushback attack (attack roll to hit, opposed strength roll to determine if pushed back maybe). For ledges in between those two extremes, maybe hits that do over a certain amount of damage knock you off balance enough to require a test.

As for what the actual test should be, I would lean towards a simple dexterity test I think. Situational modifiers might apply.

I would recommend against assuming that HP are 'easy' to regain. A party starting at level one only gets ONE Cure Light Wounds spell per day, per cleric. Also, there's no abundance of cheap potions and scrolls like in some other versions of the game.

It was a Kickstarter exclusive (not available outside of the campaign), and based on how James talked about it in the author's notes, it will remain thus.

Well, to be truthful, if this was campaign play, there's still the rule that you can only gain one level per session, regardless of how much xp you earn. Also, this is the complete treasure hoard of a 13th level Magic User, so you would expect it to be fairly impressive. And finally, the 13th level Magic User is still alive, still IN THE TOWER, and ABSOLUTELY knows exactly who all the player characters are, and is EXTREMELY pissed off at them.

If he ever escapes the circle, precisely none of that vast wealth will save the players!

At the game table, if artillery was in play, I probably wouldn't make much fuss over range, unless the players were getting silly with it (aiming for ships at the horizon, trying to fire in an arc over a mountain, etc). If you can see your target clearly enough to make out individual targets, you can hit it. And then just make up range penalties if they make sense. Trying to hit a specific target at a range of 2 km with a Falconet, probably going to be a -4 or more on the attack roll. Indiscriminately targeting a large formation of enemies at a range of 2km with a Saker, no penalty, possibly a bonus.