Hi there !
Posting as someone who traps a lot (pve) and has succesfully use traps to get through many epic dungeons.
Nowadays I mostly use two types: Fire and Holy
Only rarely when in epic dungeons will I use a few electric, cold, spikes, negatives
Tangle and gas: never.
Haven't tried gas since immunity to poison was largely wiped, so would have to study a bit again. But I doubt It'd be worth using compared with others.
Tangle ... Tricky. Got trapped by my own despite high dex save. So would basically need FOM when using those. A lot of trouble when a rogue can simply throw a grenade.
Got to remember one thing: traps are large. 2x2 is a lot of space in inventory. So why bother with many kind of traps?
The recycling of traps has gone a long way to make those viable to use frequently.
On the matter of SF & ESF or Gearing:
- (very small) utility to make detect DC higher, because it avoids loosing the 5 DC effect on a foe that sees the trap.
- It counts toward recycling rate, but is actually not very useful since getting to the maximum rate of recycling is faisible without even reaching 33 in base set and disable traps (this is good thing, please don't change this)
Let's be frank, at this point SF or ESF would be a huge waste of feats, yes. And I also agree it's not easy to make these feats useful without making traps Op or making trapping impossible without the feats (that would be too bad).
A few idea for the sake of discussion:
- could impact the Traps DC. Could be that over a DC of 40 the surplus only counts for half (a bit like the calculation of parry damage)
- ESF could allow to craft the epic traps (perhaps with a costly material in the recipe?)
- SF & ESF could in some way make a better chance to recycle epic traps than the 50/50 that is rolled after the recycling skill roll.
- SF & ESF could grant some immunity toward some traps ... (perhaps 1 type for SF, 2 types for ESF?)
- SF & ESF could help in making traps "party friendly". Cause rn it is not at all sadly. They could give some at least partial immunities to your traps for friends. I guess a difficult thing to code. But clearly a field to study imo.
Got no more idea right now, will try to note down and transmit if I have more