So long story short: yesterday our rogue found himself a scroll case. He saw that it was inscribed with runes so he read them. The scroll case was trapped with explosive runes and promptly blew up in his face.

The player had never seen the spell before and doesn’t read OOTS. So the more experienced players (me and the Dm) had to explain to him how the spell worked. Which lead to a discussion on what would happen if you try to tamper with the runes. Such as scratch them out or paint over them.

We came to the conclusion that the spell would probably detonate if it’s tampered with. I imagine that such a spell would be temperamental anyway since it'll go up in smoke when simply read. But I was curious what others thought about such a situation.

This is pathfinder, but I see no reason why this wouldn’t extend to other editions.