The party that I'm DMing for has access to a lot of remote manipulation abilities, such as mage hand, telekinesis, and familiars. Because they are smart characters and smart players, they have used these abilities to defeat a wide variety of classic traps and trap triggers.
For example, mage hand is easily able to remotely disable tripwires. A few extra rounds of telekinesis is enough to disable most pressure plates. A disposable familiar can easily scout out a new area, and summoned creatures can be used to tank otherwise unavoidable damage. All of these abilities can be used from a safe distance, or at least far enough away that it's hard to predict where the "real" target will be standing.
I don't plan to completely remove such traps--they still require good gameplay and table engagement, and can still be rewarding to defeat. I'm also aware that some of these solutions consume resources.
However, I find that the process is becoming a bit predictable and rote: players encounter something, back up to a safe distance, and then fiddle with it for a while until they're sure that it's safe.
I would like to mix it up a bit and design traps and encounters that are immune to this kind of remote manipulation. I'd like to try to come up with an encounter or trap that can't be defeated by fiddling with it from a distance. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to do this.
How have you designed traps that force your players to deal with it up close (or at least within vulnerable range)? How did they work in practice?