Detailing a scything blade door trap, a pit trap where the fllor opens and snaps shut, and a poison gas trap, we get the following situations.

“You note an amost invisible wire running down the side of the door.”
“The cracks in the mortar on the floor seem wider here than before, and you se the glint of metal from between them”
“You get a whiff of an alchemical mixture in the air”

Similarly, A remove trap roll is treated almost as a trap lore check.
“If you cut the wire, which is tense, it will probably be the same as setting the trap off”
“When you look closely, the metal between the cracks contains some small gears that certainly move at least part of the floor, if not more”
“you are certain that this is a Krff derivitave, and surely a dangerous one. You will need another find roll to determine where it is coming from.”

So even simple traps can be more interactive if you change the language and procedure.
I enjoy using this same procedure with larger scale traps. The Pc’s will find a keyhole (or they won’t) that shuts off the traps in a corridor ahead, but do not have the key. They know that something is coing, but they go into it in ‘trap solving; mode. But this is facilitated by the system mentioned above, where they might smell or see something out of place, or hear something, if they succeed in something.
I had a pit trap in one of these with really narrow (1′) walkways. The PC’s never bothered to check the walkways…but in the pit below, there were bones in the front and the back of the pit, but none in the middle. If they’d notated that, they would have avoidedit.

Like you can have just basic trap lore set up, so your rouge can say… figure out that the Acme brand was used for the cages over there, and seeing that they haven’t been opened and theirs movement, undead is a high possibility.

let alone I really don’t see how a rouge can disable a trap form across the room per-say.
Just figure out the gist of it how to disable, and say, throw a wrench in the gears.

You’ve nailed it, friend. Let’s rehabilitate the trap. Let’s make the trap-crawl RPG. I’m looking forward to seeing where you go with this in part 3. Examples?

Which has more tension, a party of adventurers standing before a golden statue, oblivious that their next steps will unleash a volley of poison darts, or the same party of adventurers, knowing that they’re steps from their goal, but somewhere between themselves and glory is some kind of devious, dangerous trap?

Trask

Those that are difficult are still easily seen by taking 10 (move action) from a skilled spotter, but could be difficult to do in combat, while distracted, or while running down a hall.

Those that are really difficult are still subject to discovery by a skilled spotter, but it will take a lot of time to find (can roll or take 20). So long as spot is a class skill and the skilled spotter has spent at least 1 pt per level.

Those who only have cross class ranks of spot aren’t immediately out of luck (and harshly penalized IMO). Taking 10 for these folks would still not likely benefit them, but taking 20 could be helpful as well as a lucky roll.

For those who don’t have any ranks in spot, they could benefit from taking 20, until about 6th level… at which point really difficult traps become impossible to find without some skill (at least 1 rank of spot).

… BRILLIANT!

No, seriously, you’ve opened my eyes. That never occurred to me before, and it really does make the “zap traps,” as you call them, infinitely more fun (not to mention fair). It’s definitely more interesting than, “Roll that die. Hmm, nope. Okay, now roll that die. Okay, you lose 3 hp as an arrow shoots out of the wall.”