Other than the standard idea of pillaging interesting encounters from modules or adventure paths that you don't intend to run (I'd put something like dungeon a day in that category as well), what good resources are out there in terms of interesting or unique encounter ideas?
Alternately: post some of the favorite or most interesting encounters you've personally come up with.
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The media and books offer a plethora of different adventure ideas that can be easily tweaked to a pathfinder campaign.
Consider what type of campaign you want to play. Pick an appropriately compatible television show. Browse episodes and convert to pathfinder setting. Just the conversion process will make the encounter suitably different to keep players from realizing they're playing an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Books are harder, because people tend to remember those exciting scenes a little more clearly. Take extra effort to tweak it into something unique.
I'm more looking for combat or at least mechanical encounters. Fluff/story I agree can be inspired by a lot of different things.
Sit down and spend an hour reading the forum for the adventure path of your choice. Invariably there are a handful of encounters for each that people talk about again and again and again, even though there's probably a good 100+ combat/trap/mechanical-challenge-of-some-kind encounters in each. Some encounters are so unique or brilliantly conceived that players will remember them and talk about them fondly years later.
That's what I'm looking for.
Once had the hometown of the PCs attacked by a Barbed Devil (summoning ritual that had gone all wrong).
Though the PCs as a group were more than a match for the creature, it nevertheless burned down half the town before they could catch and destroy it. They used magic to protect against fire, so the clever demon played a game of cat and mouse while it waited for the spell's duration to run out.
It would teleport to various parts of town, use hostages (real or illusion) to lure the heroes into traps such as the following:
- Lure them into a burning barn, just as the ceiling collapses upon them.
- Lure them up onto a multistory building that is quickly burning down, using illusions to make the roof where he stands look far more stable than it really is.
- Split the party by forcing some of them to save innocent lives elsewhere while the rest try to stop him from harming others at the current location.
If ever the heroes got too close for comfort, it would take a hostage, use illusions to trick them, teleport away, or be conveniently separated by falling burning debri.
It took the heroes HOURS to stop the fiend, while he simply laughed in their faces, murdered their neighbors, and ignited everything as he went. Finally, just as the party's fire protection magic was about to wear off, the fiend lured them to the remains of a collapsed tower for the final show down (the tower, coincidentally, being the former home of one PC sorcerer).
The heroes were so furious at what the monster had done to their town, so absolutely focused on destroying it, that they didn't realize that the fires the monster had started (in strategic pre-planned locations) had flared up around the tower's remains, trapping them all in a blazing inferno and in clouds of choking smoke.
Though they did slay the fiend in the final scene, they were so worn down and ragged from fruitless skirmishes that it nearly TPK'd them despite normally being a relatively easy challenge.
Of the 6 man party, 1 died during the fight and 3 more succumbed (falling unconscious) to the smoke. The remaining 2 characters saved the surviving PCs and got them out of the inferno just in time (themselves being choked half to death, only able to act every few rounds as they burned).
It was a blast. As are all encounters when you play intelligent monsters intelligently and to their strengths.
I've thought up a couple that more involve rule play. If you have an interesting mechanic, it creates an interesting enemy, which can make a weird encounter.
Take a Demagogue 7 (bard variant) and have your PCs come upon him as he uses gather crowd to give a speech, that happens to be an Enthrall spell cast while using (10 rounds)bardic performance (oratory) to Fascinate audience members (if i got the rules right, he can grab 3 per turn and they stay fascinated that's 21 after 7 rounds) then in the 1d3 rounds of cooldown, drop 3 Good Hopes (1 creature per level, so 7 per cast)(or Haste, but that'd look even more suspicious) on the 21 Fascinated crowd members, switch to Inspire Courage, and after the Buffs, Incite Violence on the fascinated buffed civilians. over the next 3 rounds you send 7 Raging, Good hoped, Couragous (+6 to attack and damage) charging at the PCs and town guards per round for 3 rounds.
I see this guy as a Hitler like orator ranting about the system, seeming supernaturally reasonable and then sending his listeners into a supremely destructive rage, fueled by his hate-speech. Problem for the PCs is that these folks are all civilians, magically compelled to attack them until the bard runs out of steam?
My ninja PC has 2 personality quirks: He loves gruel and HATES lava!!!
I had a DM put us up against a horde of tiny rats. He represented them with d6s, using the number of pips on top representing how many rats were left in that square. It was a really fun, low-level encounter, and the mechanics of it were neat. Basically, every hit the PCs made was a kill, but there were so many rats, it made the encounter a challenge. This would be fun with all sorts of tiny or smaller monsters: spiders, centipedes, beetles, rats, bats, faeries, kittens, animated clockwork circular saws, etc. etc.