About attacking or threatening or destroying the PC’s home base … it’s interesting.
I think campaigns benefit from having a Shire, the good place to fight for. Tolkien has the Shire threatened and overrun offscreen in LotR, but let the good guys clean things up quickly at the end.
And in The Hobbit, Bilbo returned to his relatives selling off his possessions, right?
I like that defending the home base leads to my PC’s recruiting troops, recruiting NPC allies, retiring old PC’s at the base, making (3.5e rules) or giving magic items to their officers/henchmen, etc.
I don’t go in for super duper magical defenses being a thing (and 9th level PC’s are typically as high as it goes), but seeing PC’s leaving their guards silver and magical arrows, and a jar of Keoghtom’s Ointment, when they go out on adventure, just in case, that happies this DM.
Oh, at our Keep on the Borderlands, the sergeant in charge of the gates is a retired PC who is a Paladin level 2 - just the right level to Detect Evil. Retired PC of a former coworker who didn’t play for very long, but it’s fun her character still serves.
And the Ranger scouting from the Keep is the retired high school main PC of a friend I met in college. The Ranger was revived as a PC for about a year in my game, with the goal of being a permanent NPC other players would meet. Characters living forever - or long as I shall DM - makes them and me happy too.