Goblin Squad Member
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My first idea is inspired by the UO Champion Spawns. I'll call it for this "Hornet's Nest"
The idea is that some dungeon place spawns, such as a temple or altar or something, and instead of just killing everything and reducing it, by attacking it, it pushes it into activity.
So here's an example: A lizardman temple (because I like lizardmen)spawns deep in a forest, and they are performing a ritual to summon a god/demon/spirit/whatever it is this group is summoning.There are a few guards around the base of the temple, nothing much, they're just lookouts to make sure the ceremony isn't interrupted.
So along comes our band of heroes to investigate this temple they found. They kill the guards. And more come pouring out of the temple. The more they kill, the more and stronger their foes are, so it gets tougher and tougher, until eventually they have to fight the priest (a boss monster) or, if they've successfully completed the ritual, whatever was summoned.
Big epic fight, fun all round. But here's the catch:
If the heroes fail, there's now a very angry lizard cult, and the high priest will take his temple guards and followers and go on a rampage attacking everything in site for interrupting his ritual and hoping that will keep people away the next time. Or if they finish the ritual uninterrupted, there's now a big creature loose in the world.
So in short the idea is this: A dungeon type environment that increases in spawn rate and difficulty the more it is attacked ( probably a tier system) and eventually the big boss is spawned at the end to fight, big rewards for looting the temple and defeating the villain.
Second idea:
In dungeons, have a chance to spawn rare magical crafting apparatuses such as magical forges and looms that can create special rare magical items with unique and powerful abilities. They can't be moved, so you'd need to find it and use it before the dungeon despawns and get as much out of it as you can before it loses its power from use, despawns, or someone else captures it from you. Could have different types that give different types of bonuses and means sometimes you'll want to bring your crafters on an adventure (and if they're a specialised crafter without too much in the way of combat it gives you something to defend)
One drawback I see is somebody repeatedly attacking the dungeon and losing to create the powerful marauders, which is similar to the kiting concept of griefing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like the basics, except what might seems like a general lizards pouring out of the temple. If I would look at this with a DM's eyes, I would first look at the motivation and goals for their existence. For instance they struggle for survival and feel pushed from every angle and seek to establish their presence once for all. In the temple they found ancient clues to their ancestry. There could even be a quest encounter (alignment dependent) helping them to translate ancient text and reveal a summoning ritual which they will try to perform in order to become a powerful entity in the region. Other quests lines could be stopping whoever trying to help them or just enter and stop the summoning ritual.
I kinda like the basic idea of action and consequence, based on many factors. Imagine the possibilities of one person attacking or a group attacking. Maybe both of the guards think its a quick kill and attacks, or one attacks and one run back into the temple to alert the rest. Could be that if a group attacks both of them run back and barricade themselves, since they only have to stand off until they have finished their summoning ritual. Even of there is a group they might try to do a stealth kill of the 2 guards in order to evaluate the situation, but the clock should start ticking when the encounter starts. If you can implement this living and breathing combination of action and consequence you will make an adventure that can be totally different depending on how the players decide to proceed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That's just one scenario, but you get the general idea. I called it "hornet's nest" to evoke the meaning that by attacking them, you've agitated them into action, whatever the action is, trying to finish the ritual, trying to free something, maybe it's a war council of orc leaders, or lizardman leaders, maybe a group of goblins are torturing a prominent elf emissary and plan to use him for nefarious ends and the guards all attack you to stop you from discovering their little captive.
Maybe it's an elf necromancer concealing his identitity and sending waves of undead out to stop you from interfering with his plans... you get the idea... they have a reason for being there.
As for the using it to grief, I'd say it would have to be pushed passed a certain high point, these aren't meant to be brief little encounters where you fight for 5 mins before the boss comes out, doing it to grief would take a lot of time and be sort of pointless, because you've just done the majority of the work for someone else to take all the rewards.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think there is significant value in the idea of causing a bigger problem by attacking a smaller problem, and the 'Hornet's Nest' title describes nicely an interesting encounter concept.
Yes I wanted it to be something so it's not obvious, you don't know that the encounter is going to go the opposite way to what you'd expect, but it becomes an epic event when it does.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One drawback I see is somebody repeatedly attacking the dungeon and losing to create the powerful marauders, which is similar to the kiting concept of griefing.
Pretty simple counter-measure for it. In PFO's plans, not all dungeons are meant to be stationary permanant landmarks. The vast majority disappear when cleared or ignored for too long, if there is a major impact on the world for a failure, that dungeon could also vanish when that effect happens. So long as they aren't too common or too easy to find, repeatedly mass spamming hordes of monsters, shouldn't be possible.