Here are two approaches that don't require thief skills:

1. If you know what the trap is, prepare for it and trigger it on purpose. In the case of a lightning bolt trap, give one character some electrical resistance (perhaps with a spell), move everyone else out of the way, and trigger the trap.

2. Instead of trying to avoid damage, take the hit and heal up afterwards. This won't work with things like instant death (in which case, reload and try again), but will work in other cases. It helps to have a character with high HP trigger the trap, as such characters are less likely to die from damage, and you can then rest (or in BG2, just cast Heal) afterwards to heal up.

Also, to find the trap, you need to put your thief into search mode, or else cast the Find Traps spell. (Alternatively, make heavy use of the Quicksave feature, so you can reload if you trigger a trap you can't easily recover from.)

Yeah I know how to detect traps use magic and drink potions. You forget to mention options 3 & 4: saving throw vs spell buff and equipping electrical protection clothes.

The question was about disarming chests. Do you know for sure that it's impossible?

Solved, thanks!
100% was enough, but the detecting moment rate is not stable. I was standing near a chest with Imoen in detect traps mode for quite a while with no results, and now before I even tried to drink a potion she found a trap. Maybe just a minor bug.

Detect traps only works once per round, ie. once every six seconds. That is why you must take your time when detecting traps: it is not an 'on all the time' skill.

Oh it's you again, what a surprise;)

Thank you for good insight though, it really helped.

Do you know how this works with easy traps compared with hard ones? Let's say you have a trap finding ability of 80, and there is one trap with a difficulty of 20 and another of 80. Will both be found just as fast, and as distant (ie, either you can see it or you don't), or is there some kind of floating scale, so the 20 trap will be much easier to spot than the other?

Traps are nothing more than trigger areas. They have both detection and removal difficulties. The speed of detection is down to both the seeker's skill and the trap detection difficulty... and a dice roll, of course. The distance is down to the size of the trigger area. A player should also be aware that the game 'cheats' (big surprise), in that some traps are not actually traps, like the fireball trap in Durlag's Tower, and can be detected but never removed.

Actually, here's an interesting point: The ever-repeating fireball trap in Durlag's Tower, at least in every version of the game I've played, CAN be removed... but not detected. At least, not detected by a thief: the cleric's "Find Traps" spell works, but a thief even with 100% can't detect it.

Unless this was changed by the Extended Edition, of course.

But if it wasn't... Then guess what, there is exactly ONE character in the game who is both a cleric (to detect the trap with Find Traps) and a thief (to attempt the removal). TIAX RULES ALL! :-)

(Of course, you could detect it with a cleric, and then remove it with a thief, but that would ruin the fun of having Tiax in the party...)

There are a couple of traps which can indeed be detected but not removed: there are two of these, in particular, in Baldurs Gate 2. However, unlike the Durlags Tower trap, they are traps that fire once only, so the character opening them can take the hit and then safely get at the contents of the container Every "floor" trap in BG2 is both detectable and removable: as is every "floor" trap in BG1 EXCEPT the fireball trap in Durlags Tower.

Actually, in BG2, there are some floor traps that are detectable but not removable.

In particular:

Near the end of Irenicus's Dungeon, there are traps that can be detected but not removed. You can disable them with the wand keys, however.

Early in Spellhold, there is a trap that will crush those who enter. It is detectable, but not removable, and unlike the one I mentioned previously, there isn't any alternate way to disable it. Even worse, this trap seems to be treated as a gaze attack, so sending a Wizard Eye through it will kill the caster. (I actually have gotten a game over because of this. Did the Enhanced Edition change this?)

Sending a summoned monster through the crushing trap also works. Ever wanted a use for some of those fairly low-powered summons (Berserker from the Horn of Valhalla? Kitthix the Spider? Wand of Monster Summoning, which is only really useful for cannon fodder?) There's a use for it.

As does luring or scaring a hostile monster through the trap. :-)

(Also, that trap only fires once, you can walk through the corridor after springing it.)

Still, why does my character die when her Wizard Eye goes through the trap? I don't think that's fair.

There are a couple other uses for low powered summons I can think of:

1. Making enemies waste their spells. This works especially well in conjunction with Farsight. Cast Farsight where the enemy is, order your summons to move to the revealed area, and watch as the enemy starts casting Death Spell to destroy your summons. Summon again, and watch the enemy use its next spell, and by the time you are out of summons, the enemy should be out of spell. (Of course, this assumes the AI is fair and doesn't ForceSpell() its spells.) I actually did this in the Astral Prison once. (Another random tip: You can use a Wizard Eye to lure the boss out without the other enemies coming with it, allowing you to fight it alone.)

2. Setting up a polymorph teleport. To successfully pull off this trick, you need creatures around; the stats of those creatures don't matter. For extreme cases, however, you might need some that last a while and might also need to use other exploits (Project Image) to get around the summoning limit. (Of course, the example I am thinking of, polymorph teleporting into the trials of Throne of Bhaal, is no longer part of the speedrun route, and the biggest non-speedrun use of polymorph teleporting I can think of (avoiding stat losses) doesn't require taking things to this extreme.)

Not sure if he's all that much better since I've barely used him, but you can upgrade the Horn of Valhalla twice, and thus get a level 9 warrior instead of level 5, or whatever it starts out as. You can upgrade it at the merchant that talks about musical horns in Waukeen's Promenade. He's close to the art merchant that seems to have no use whatsoever.