From reading the angst on the DM spice thread, I suggest that if possible, the scripted quests be made somewhat variable.

I know they are tailored to take party size and levels into account. Would it be possible to make them 40% of the time slightly harder or easier, and maybe 20% fairly harder or easier? Along with a parallel increase or decrease of XP and/or loot?

This would encourage more RP as characters would respond accordingly. Also, the difference on a DM spiced scripted quest would be less shocking and players will be more used to judging whether something is too tough or not.

If this is possible, it will remain mysterious and vague to me for some time.

Not feasible?

Whatever script that factors party levels, could you make the quest sometimes harder, sometimes easier?

Let the level 3's that snooze through Boggs' quest get nervous when he starts knocking the piss out of them.

You can add a particular random value to the number that is generated by the script that determines the value of the levels in relation to the difficulty of the quest.

Though I'm not even sure if that's even how this script works.

I think that small ramps of difficulty caused by simply adding in more or stronger creatures won't really do anything in training people to factor danger and risks. People just want to win and beat all the creatures. If it's just more NPCs and regular AI they are against, people will start to deviate towards more exploitation of game features, mechanics, AI, settings, etc., so they can keep winning like they have been.

Gross ramps of difficulty will cause the players not reading this thread or expecting the challenge variability to get angry, discouraged, and either leave or complain since they are not used to facing unbeatable challenges. It is difficult to express an unbeatable situation without DM presence where we can help out with obvious clues or wisdom rolls or what have you. Unfortunately, it's generally accepted that if it glows red you are supposed to kill it. It would therefore be a non-trivial undertaking to really explicitly convey the message that some quests you can do and some you can't, and this is determined randomly, make these changes, and also adjust the rewards to coincide with the challenges, or we are effectively reducing the overall utility you can get from questing.

Agreed, instead of there being say 5 gnoll mages and 10 crossbowmen, they would be replaced with 10 gnoll mages 15 crossbowmen, it just means more things to kill and no challenge at all since they have poor AI and sometimes get lucky hitting that buffed up dwarf you send in first.

What you're proposing makes things even worse, unfortunately. How do you possibly balance a quest when you have to factor in as much as a 10% alteration in difficulty? The simplest quests suddenly go from cakewalks to being impossible to accomplish and the harder ones become cakewalks or utterly inconceivable for even the higher end powered/looted playerbase.

Besides, I think that the real issue is that the scripted quests are simply too easy, and too many players get lulled into a false sense of invincibility. Thusly, when they finally confront even a medium level of difficulty presented to them by simple possessions by a dungeon master, it seems almost like an assassination attempt. This despite us DM's having the wherewithall and knowhow to check each characters inventory previous to spicing and finding in some cases tens of thousands worth of equipment and gold unused as they once more flee the scene.