The Rogue's Trapfinding class feature says:
A rogue adds 1/2 her level to Perception skill checks made to locate traps and to Disable Device skill checks (minimum +1). A rogue can use Disable Device to disarm magic traps.
I've just realised, after playing for a year, that by RAW this ability implies that the rogue would add 1/2 her level to ALL disable device checks they make. Which would make sense, rogues are good at opening doors and sabotaging things etc.
But I've been playing it as only applying when the disable device check is used for disabling traps specifically, because of the name of the ability "Trapfinding".
The first makes more sense (grammatically and flavour-wise) but the second is what is implied.
Does anyone know which it is?
Best Answer
Yes, the Trapfinding bonus to Disable Device checks applies to all Disable Device skill checks. It says they get a flat bonus without circumstantial limitation, so that's what they get. If it was only supposed to apply to disabling traps, it would say so.
The name is just there to identify and flavour the ability, it doesn't have any mechanical bearing. (Well, names have mechanical bearing for some stuff, like determining what stacks, but they don't have any bearing in this case.)
Consider that if the name was really supposed to limit when you could use it like you've described, you're being overgenerous and applying the bonus where it shouldn't count:
By the time someone's disabling a trap, they've already found it, and the trapfinding bit is done. Accordingly, the feature doesn't count in this situation, and they don't get to apply the Disable Device bonus to disabling the trap. (As you can imagine, this makes the Disable Device portions of the feature entirely unusable.)