I don't think there's any way to disable pausing. Pausing is something external to the whole game, basically it's as if time freezes when you pause. It should have no effect a all on triggers really, I think even sounds played with triggers get paused when you pause the game. If this is a SP scenario and you don't want people to pause the best thing is to say this in your ReadMe file.
It is possible to use Stat Value and other similar things in Quest Vars without doing anything outside the editor. Basically whatever you type in the box for the quest var triggers is pasted exactly like that in the XS script for your scenario. So Look in trigger.xml for the name of the stat value function and just put it in there (I think it's something like trGetStatValue(playerNumber, statNumber) - in any case if you do a forum search you'll probably find it).
[This message has been edited by Matei (edited 02-03-2004 @ 08:04 AM).]