Traps and Mage Hand Legerdemain

Quick Question but - does anyone else think that Mage Hand legerdemain sort of makes traps wholly redundant? The Arcane Trickster in my game has reliable talent (sleight of hand) with a +10 bonus and obviously has mage hand legerdemain. Virtually every trap just equates to - lets all stand 30 feet away while the rogue either rolls with a +10 advantage roll to disarm the trap and in the extremely unlikely event that fails well, its fine we are all 30 feet away.

It sort of sucks all the drama and tension out of the situation and makes the game feel more like a maths puzzle to be solved rather than a story. 

There are a great deal of traps that Mage Hand Legerdemain wouldn't work on. Namely, ones that the party doesn't notice until it triggers, but also magical ones and ones where the trigger is out of reach of Mage Hand. Traps that effect a huge area would also counteract it. In this case, it's the DMs fault for not adjusting trap design for this ability.

Also, it's fine if it does. This is the character's schtick. If they don't get something good out of their abilities, then what's the point?

That said, fine detail work like disarming traps seems rather hard to do without a clear view of what you're doing. Disadvantage or even "no" could easily be applicable at least some of the time.

That said, don't spring it on the rogue out of the blue. But also, traps just aren't a big part of most games, much less a major source of drama and tension, and also you're going to find a rogue with reliable talent and +10 to SoH pretty much neutralizes traps as a major element, mage hand or no.

This argument can often be repeated with any specialized character. Doesn't the bard's +14 in Persuasion make Social Actions pointless? Doesn't the Knowledge Clerics bonuses make History or Religion checks redundant?

It's their schtick. Let them shine at it. Give them plenty of those checks that they can blow through and know they are going to blow through them. Don't stop putting out traps just because you know that the rogue is going to easily thwart them. That removes his moments to shine. Instead, put them out knowing they won't stop anything.

Another thing, don't just make them a straight up roll. Require the player to think things through. Maybe the trap can only be disarmed from the other side of the door, forcing the rogue to find the secret panel in the ceiling, crawl through the tiny passage, and then hang down into the room like Ethan Hunt.

In short, don't view their great skill at defeating traps as a problem. Look at it as an opportunity and lean into it.

Really all you need to do is put more emphasis on finding traps, and 'where' the control mechanism to disable it is located.  Make the effort about reaching the spot to disable traps, and REMEMBER that the tools need to reach the location to disarm the trap.   You can make puzzles out of that, or set the DC very high and enlist other party members doing something to lower that DC.  Say for example, 2 party members prying pressure plate up so the thief can see inside.  If both pass athletic checks, the DC goes down and its automatic success.  If one fails, the the thief has to roll, and theres a chance (albeit slim) the trap goes off with 3 people in range.  Or put the mechanism 60ft up on a wall, or in a different room, and now its about getting the thief there to deal with the trap.    

And if you want to punish them for carelessness, set up a room where 2 traps would go off at the same time on related but different triggers.  This also require a major paradigm shift in procedures.  So rather then just rolling perception or investigation to find traps, describe things in the room and have the party pick which things they want to check.  Give clues to what the trap is, then have them guess at what kind of trap it is, and based on that, the thief has to decide how to approach disabling it.  If they only focus on one trap, the other one is still live without their knowledge.  If they realize theres two, then the hamster wheel goes into over drive to figure out how to safely disable both without triggering either.    If the thief wants to raw dog it without puzzling it out, make them roll with a very high DC on the first trap, still leaving them vulnerable to the second one.   But for every resource they spend/consume/risk significantly lower the DC.  Making the success free is fine, as long as they're invested in the process of making it so.  

It might even be beneficial for the party to set off a trap using a pole, and doing something in the reset period to work on the trap itself.  Or you can make a magical based trap that works on alternate solutions, or alternate tools that the party has to jury rig instead of using normal thieves tools.   Like magic icicle trap that regenerates every round, and triggers on a per square basis, but only if theres still ice on the ceiling.  So you don't use thieves tools on this, you have to figure out how to remove or expend all the ice in a single turn.   With smart lay out, a single fireball spell won't cover enough area to get all the ice, so the group has to get creative or spend multiple spell slots on the problem if they want to be lazy.  And so the thief won't feel like this is a hard counter, let them leverage thief abilities in any scenario as long as they can reasonably justify it.   Like using the hand to drag an object to set off multiple squares, holding a torch up against the ice to prevent an area regrowing, spreading oil, etc.  

I mean, a lot of traps can be thwarted without a rogue at all.  Unseen Servant can trigger large numbers of traps in fairly predictable ways while the party isn't close, and a wizard can cast it without a spell slot.  Many traps can simply be bypassed if found without triggering them at all.  And a vial of acid applied to a door bolt can bypass both the lock and needing to turn the knob.  (Then it's just tie a rope to the knob and pull from across the room, or even use regular mage hand).

If you're down to rolling to disarm the trap, you done messed up somewhere.

The other thing is - don't make finding traps free.  Searching takes time.  Passive perception should generally not be discovering any but the most obvious of traps. I recommend going back to old school dungeon timings: wandering monster check every 2 turns (a dungeon turn = 10 minutes), it takes a turn for a character to search a 10'x10' area, it takes a turn to advance and map 120 linear feet of dungeon with no searching.  A torch only lasts 6 turns, and if you're in the dark... even with darkvision you're at disadvantage on perception and investigation checks.  Make dungeons scary because there's time pressure.