Well, I've never run a dungeon-oriented game in Savage Worlds, but my Firefly gamers ran into a booby trap in an illegal asteroid mine once, so...it was in fact a trap in a dark tunnel!
Here are my answers to your questions:
Yes, they get a Notice roll. There
are plenty of passive tests in RPGs -
rolls to notice, rolls to resist
poisons / toxins, etc..
Just decide how hard it is to spot and set your TN accordingly. Is the trap improvised or cunningly crafted? Is it hidden by piling up some trash or by being made to look exactly like the dungeon floor? Here are some examples of how I might set TNs:
- A bear trap with some leaves tossed on it: 4
- A pressure plate beneath a flagstone: 8
- An improvised trap consisting of a vat of acid balanced atop a slightly-open door: 6
Probably. If they're searching for traps because they succeeded at some test or figured out some clue and you want to reward their previous success. I'd give a +2 bonus, or +4 if they were operating in total paranoia mode: "OK, we've constructed our trap-tripper wagon. Now who wants to push it?" Don't forget to make their movement slow for the low bonus and super slow for the high bonus. And put time pressure on them! "Alright. You've made your way safely into the dungeon over 100 feet. You're not sure when the flood will drown the princess you're here to rescue, though..."
I don't remember the details of Danger Sense. I thought it was a roll to Notice at a penalty to surprise attacks or something. I would say that an untriggered trap poses no danger. Neither does a trap that another character trips. So if a trap goes unnoticed and is tripped by the PC with Danger Sense, I'd allow a roll. If noticed, that allows another roll to try to avoid or minimize the damage. If the trap was triggered by another PC and wouldn't hurt the PC with Danger Sense, I wouldn't allow a roll. Spidey-sense doesn't tell you when anyone is in danger!
As for rolls to avoid or minimize damage in other circumstances - it depends on the trap! The Indiana-Jones-style-rolling-boulder trap is all about initiating a series of rolls where the party races the rock! But a bear trap? Poison on a doorknob? Just use your judgement.
Also - this doesn't just apply to Savage Worlds. I would say some of these pointers apply to traps in whatever system you might choose.
Short Version:
Maybe P is overwhelmed by bookkeeping and it's distracting him from situational awareness. Help him make a mechanically very simple character without fiddly bits or conditionals to keep track of, so he can focus on making good choices rather than having good bookkeeping. Invite the other players to support P with advice and by being good role models for the behaviour he's trying to cultivate.
Long form answer, with rambling and details.
Back in my very first RPG ever--and also my first time as a GM--I had a player whose poor choices got him repeatedly killed. Let's call him Q.
Q knew the rules and mechanics quite well, but had a very hard time applying them intelligently to whatever situation he found himself in (like forgetting to heal himself as a cleric). Even more than that, though, was his role-playing: he really really liked to role-play his characters, but that got him in trouble because when Q got deep into his character's internal motives the PC would lose common sense and perspective about the surrounding context of his actions.
It got bad. Really bad. Q's second character was killed by the party for betraying them (he had a conversation about his friends over tea with a "nice" lady). At that point I shared Making the Tough Decisions with the group. He studied it carefully, had intense discussions with me about it... and as a direct result his fourth character perished of untempered curiosity: the characterisation "very curious" overcame the common sense "half these items are cursed and my friends are begging me to stop," until the pile of treasure he was investigating yielded up a lethal curse.
After that session I took Q aside and we talked. He knew he had a problem, and he was trying to "get better," but he needed help. I'd noticed that all his PCs so far were mechanically complicated and required in-game bookkeeping: advanced casters and races with lots of conditional features and spell-like abilities to keep track of. So we hatched the simplest possible character build: nothing to keep track of. No "if you're flanking, X also happens," no spells, no per-day abilities. If his character sheet said he could do a thing, he could always do it.
We wound up with a kind of Indiana Jones flavoured skillmonkey (a rogue chassis with homebrew mods to replace things like sneak attack because tracking whether you can deal that extra damage was beyond what we wanted for the build). He wasn't optimised in the traditional sense--but since another PC in the party had straight levels in the NPC Expert class, that wasn't an issue in keeping him relevant in the group. Instead he was optimised for what Q needed: a simple no-bookkeeping character to let him focus on situational awareness and making good choices.
At the end of each session he'd hang back --along with any other players who wanted to-- and we'd reflect on the game: what worked, what didn't. We'd consult (and if necessary research) and come up with what to make sure we did again, and what we'd change next time. (I've since found that any game I run which has some form of this "reflect and plan" dynamic after every session is improved by it.)
In tandem with another player rising to the challenge and being a kind of "teach by example" role model, it worked. A year later Q was successfully running complicated wizard builds with great party dynamics and great depth of character. He was a real joy to work with, and all he needed was to wade in at the shallow end of the bookkeeping pool instead of jumping into the deepest part head-first.
nota bene: My players have tended to treat the group dynamic as one of table-level cooperation between friends. However much their characters may be rivals, at the table they collaborate to tell the best stories, and I'm also one of the collaborators. In groups where players and/or the GM act as rivals at the table level of things, I'm not sure how much my experience will be useful. It sounds like your whole group isn't really on the same page in terms of their desired gameplay experience, and communication isn't really strong. Working on improving the "friends at the table" level of things might help your game in a number of ways.
Best Answer
What's wrong with what he's doing? As far as he can tell, this is a good strategy. He's exceptionally tough, and running through traps has worked for him in the past, so he believes it'll be fine in the future.
If you don't want this strategy to work, you'll need to try a different kind of trap.
A few options come to mind:
More Damage
You could always make traps that do more damage, so instead of shooting out arrows, the traps might shoot out massive ballista bolts. But like you said, this would make the traps much more dangerous for the squishier characters.
Different Damage
Instead of dealing out injuries, a trap could harm you in other ways. Maybe that was just a tiny cut, but now you're infected with a horrible disease. Something sprayed your eyes, and now you're blind. That goop you fell into is making all your equipment rust. Whatever got on your skin is attracting insects everywhere you go, and it smells so bad no one will let you into their homes.
Traps that Trap
Imagine a trap that does no damage (or very little), but actually traps anyone who springs it. Think of a pit trap, or a cage with a door that springs shut.
Tripping the trap is worse than disarming it. It leaves you in a position you don't want to be in.
Alarms
Some "traps" might not do any damage or trap anyone, but they might set off an alarm.
Imagine a trap that does nothing but sound a large gong, reverberating through the tunnels. Now the defenders of the fortress know someone's there, which is exactly what you didn't want to happen.