Wow I didn't expect this to blow up this much
To put some of the posters very touching fear for my characters life at ease..
This character is built completely around being an assassin...and the I have the greatest power on the world in this instance....INFORMATION!!!
I have a large amount of info on this dragon...my character found someone who had once been a slave of the dragon and escaped...I never really asked him how...may ask him now that I think of it
After many hours of torture he gave up all the information I wanted.
As for invisibility I probably won't be using it...again my stealth is very high as well as all the other skills I will need. The info I have is that the dragon hates sunlight and in game terms keeps his lair in dim light.
As an assassin I have HiPS so as long as I have some dim light near I can stealth.
The rapier of puncturing would be a quest to find or money/time I don't have. Also that would mean I have to hit him a few times...and I don't want to have to hit him more than once :)
Also my GM has told me that based on my Death attack DC the dragon has to roll ABOUT 12 or higher to beat it...so I have better than a 50% chance :) of course my GM has almost gotten me killed a few times with vague things like that lol
I think the most accurate answer is "it depends". Some disabling would be very quiet (disabling/bypassing a typical tripwire trap as an example). Some would be moderately noisy (sawing or drilling through wood). Some would be quite loud (anything involving a hammer and pointy bit of metal, such as using a chisel or spiking something, or using a drill on metal).I think your perception of what it takes to disable a device is excessive. You don't need to completely obliterate the thing to prevent it from working.
What if the rogue passes the check by more than 10? That allows the rogue to bypass it without disarming it, as well as letting allies bypass too. No idea how that works with a pressure plate, but obviously if it can still go off on someone else, there wasn't any serious damage dealt to the trap.
As a side note: There are separate rules for breaking a lock, instead of disabling it. This implies disable device is not destructive to the object, but merely involves disassembling it.
"Breaking a lock is sometimes quicker than breaking the whole door. If a PC wants to whack at a lock with a weapon, treat the typical lock as having hardness 15 and 30 hit points. A lock can only be broken if it can be attacked separately from the door, which means that a built-in lock is immune to this sort of treatment. In an occupied dungeon, every locked door should have a key somewhere."
What it takes to disable device from the outside is quite a bit different from having access to it from the "reloading bin" (or, in the case of a lock, when you have the key and are able to open the container/portal).
Derp-edit: These kinds of materials, as outlined previously, are not exactly quiet to interact with, especially with a paltry 1 or 2 pound "tool kit" to work with. Mechanically/RAW-speaking, there is no consideration made for it, so one need not worry overmuch about it. It is not...
Modern tools like electric drills may make drilling out a lock noise but a hand drill would be a lot quieter but would take more time. If you wanted to be quiet it is certainly possible. Speed may require you to be noisier and have to go the hammer and chisel route. But there is no reason you can't disable device and be quiet doing it.