Teamwork Benefits

In D&D, PCs rarely stand alone. The wizard relies on the doughty fighter to intercept charging enemies, and the fighter in turn depends on the cleric's healing magic when battle is over. But over time, characters who adventure shoulder to shoulder together can realize teamwork benefits based on their long history together.
Experienced adventurers understand the value of specific tactics that take advantage of teamwork. However, teamwork also has a more general benefit. Once characters have trained with specific comrades, they're attuned to nuances of how they fight, move, and communicate. Characters who have spent time working as a team can derive a benefit simply from having their comrades nearby. A teamwork benefit grants an expanded use of a skill, a bonus on certain checks, or a battlefield action otherwise unavailable to the team members.

Gaining Teamwork Benefits

To qualify for a teamwork benefit, PCs must meet two broad categories of requirements: training time and prerequisites.
First, the characters seeking the benefit must jointly practice techniques relevant to the benefit for at least two weeks before acquiring the benefit. This two-week training period must be repeated whenever a new character joins the group, as the newcomer becomes accustomed to the operating procedures of veteran team members.
Second, some teamwork benefits have prerequisites such as skill ranks, Base Attack Bonus, or Feats. A prerequisite can take one of two different forms.

• Task Leader Prerequisites: These requirements must be met by at least one character on the team. If only one character qualifies, and that character leaves the team, the group loses the teamwork benefit until the character returns or is replaced by another character who meets the same prerequisites. The designation of task leader can vary from one benefit to another; a character who serves as the task leader for the Infiltration teamwork benefit might be a different individual from the one who functions as the task leader for the Ranged Precision benefit. In addition to the indicated prerequisites, a task leader must have an Intelligence score of at least 8 (while a task leader need not be a genius, nor have they particular need of a strong personality, they must be at least reasonably capable of communicating their thoughts to others).
  
• Team Member Prerequisites: Every character on the team must meet these requirements. Any character who joins the team must meet the prerequisites in order for the team to enjoy the teamwork benefit.

For example, the Infiltration teamwork benefit has a task leader prerequisite of 5 ranks in Stealth, and a team member prerequisite of 1 rank in Stealth. This means that at least one character in the group must have 5 or more ranks in the skill, while each other character in the team must have at least 1 rank in it. When the team is sneaking around, the task leader directs their less adept comrades in stealth techniques, covering any extra noise with environmental sounds, and so on.
A team (see The Team Roster, below) gets one teamwork benefit for every 4 Levels or Hit Dice the lowest-level member of the team has, so it earns a new teamwork benefit whenever that character attains a new level evenly divisible by 4.
Anytime a team gains a new teamwork benefit, it also has the option to swap out a previously known teamwork benefit for a new one for which the team qualifies. In effect, the team can elect to lose one teamwork benefit in order to gain two others. This is most often done when the team roster has changed in such a way as to make a previously known teamwork benefit no longer useful.
Unless otherwise specified, each teamwork benefit can be taken only once. The teamwork benefit applies whenever the characters on the team can communicate with each other, whether verbally, with gestures, or by magical means.

The Team Roster

Teamwork benefits are based on the notion that once characters have spent time training with their comrades, they respond instinctively to subtle changes in body language and can anticipate their comrades' likely moves. A group of people (PCs or NPCs) must train together for at least two weeks before all members of the group are eligible to share the same teamwork benefits. The PCs will undoubtedly occupy most of the positions on the team, but cohorts, animal companions, paladin mounts, familiars, and recurring NPC allies can also be members of a team.
A team must have at least two members and no more than ten. To join a team, a character must have an Intelligence score of 3 or higher.
To maintain their teamwork benefits, the characters on a team must train together for at least four one-week periods per year. These training periods need not be consecutive and can happen at the same time as training to earn the new class features of a given level (as described above), so in most cases PCs won't have to spend additional time to keep their teamwork skills sharp.
To add a new character to a team (often because a previous character died or otherwise left the group), that character must train with the other characters on the team for at least two weeks, learning the nuances and standard operating procedures of the team. This training can occur during the training time required to gain the benefits of a new level.
A character can join an adventuring party without joining the team that includes other members of the party. In this case, they don't gain any teamwork benefits, neither do their lack of prerequisites count against the team's qualification for the benefits.
A character leaves a team at their option or by consensus of the other members of that team.

Teamwork Benefits

Awareness

Your team knows where to look and what to search for to anticipate ambushes.

• Training: To train for this benefit, you and your teammates must run through scenarios in which half of you set up ambushes to snare the others. Through constant drilling, your team learns to listen for specific sounds and look for random visual clues. By regularly exploring dangerous locales, developing listening skills, and staying alert for the slightest movements, your team gradually develops a routine for examining an area to prevent enemies from getting the drop on the group.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Perception 9 ranks.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Perception 1 rank.
  
• Benefit: Every member of the team gains a +2 Circumstance Bonus on Perception checks if any other team member is within 30 feet.
  
• Tips: When moving into an area with poor lighting, or one that offers plenty of places for opponents to hide, it's best to spread out to the outer extent of this benefit's range. By doing so, your group presents a less attractive target to a hidden spellcaster. For example, if each character is exactly 30 feet (6 squares) away from the task leader, not everyone could be caught in a Fireball or similar effect.

Camp Routine

The regular routine your group has established allows you to setup, watch, and break down camp quickly and efficiently.

• Training: To develop a camp routine, the team must establish a regular schedule of tasks and responsibilities for each member. For example, one character might set up the tents while another starts the fire and a third prepares the evening meal. Your team must also set up a routine watch schedule so that everyone knows who goes on watch when, and for how long.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Survival 5 ranks or Self-Sufficient.
  
• Benefit: Your team can set up and break camp with an eye toward defensibility and efficiency. The team member on watch gains a +2 bonus on Perception checks, and each sleeping team member gains a +4 bonus on Perception checks to hear any sounds within 30 feet.
  
• Special: Be sure to put spellcasters on the first watch or last watch so that they can get enough uninterrupted rest to regain their spells. Your first priority when the party is attacked while you are on watch is to wake up your allies, so you should carry signal Whistle, Bell, or similar item.

Circle of Blades

The members of your team can combine their attacks to slice rough the defenses of a foe they have surrounded.

• Training: You and your teammates learn to anticipate each other's attacks and fighting maneuvers. By correctly timing your blows, you can strike at a foe's vulnerable points.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Weapon Specialization and Base Attack Bonus +6.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Sneak attack +1d6.
  
• Benefit: Any team member who readies an action to attack when the task leader does gains a +2 bonus on damage rolls against the same target.
  
• Tips: The circle of blades teamwork benefit works best against Undead, Oozes, and other monsters that have immunity to extra damage from sneak attacks.

Climbing Squad

Your team has developed a method to climb surfaces safely and quickly.

• Training: Your team must spend a great deal of time climbing as a group, studying each other's technique and learning from the team's best climber. With practice, members of a climbing squad can scale most surfaces easily.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Climb 5 ranks.
  
• Benefit: When encountering a surface to be scaled, the task leader must Climb it first. Upon reaching the top (or another safe point along the climb), the leader can use the Aid Another action to grant a +4 bonus (instead of the usual +2) to each other member who attempts the Climb. In addition, each member after the task leader can attempt accelerated climbing and take a -2 penalty to the Climb check. To grant these benefits, the task leader must direct each member for their entire climb (a Move Action).
  
• Tips: Despite the benefits, climbers who wear heavy armor and have high check penalties still find it difficult to scale smooth or slippery surfaces. Knotted ropes prove helpful in most cases.

Crowded Charge

Because you and your allies know when to step out of each other's way, you can Charge even when allies are blocking your path.

• Training: The members of your team learn to step aside whenever one of them begins a Charge.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Acrobatics 5 ranks.
  
• Benefit: Other team members do not block movement for the purpose of determining whether a team member can Charge. However, a charging team member must still end their movement in an unoccupied space.
  
• Tips: This versatile benefit allows the party's Rogue or Ranger to scout ahead in a dungeon or other constrained terrain without worrying about blocking a Fighter's or Barbarian's Charge. Furthermore, because the benefit also extends to mounted team members, a Paladin can Charge on horseback without worrying about trampling their comrades.

Cunning Ambush

Your team can quickly take advantage of terrain to ambush opponents.

• Training: The training for this benefit involves studying common environments, running through ambush scenarios, and devising strategies that take advantage of the terrain. Your team must spend a few days in the hills, then in the forest, and then - if possible - in the shifting sands of the desert.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Stealth 5 ranks and Perception 5 ranks.
  
• Benefit: If the team members allow the task leader to prepare their hiding positions, they can make a special Stealth check to camouflage them. This check is modified by each team member's armor check penalty and Dexterity rather than the task leader's, and the camouflage effect lasts until the team member moves. Hiding a team member in this manner requires 10 minutes of work.
  
• Tips: The ambush teamwork benefit is a great way to play smart. Instead of always going after the monsters on their own turf, let them come to you. Try luring monsters into your trap with spells such as Dancing Lights or Major Image. Failing that, buff up the party scout with defensive spells to protect them while they act as bait.

Cunning Ambush, Improved

When you are adequately prepared, your team can set a devastating ambush.

• Training: Same as for cunning ambush.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Stealth 9 ranks and Perception 9 ranks.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Stealth 1 rank and the cunning ambush teamwork benefit.
  
• Benefit: During the Surprise Round, each team member who is not surprised and has been camouflaged (see Cunning Ambush) can take a full round's worth of actions.

Door Procedures

Your team is accomplished at identifying and eliminating traps and other threats at doors.

• Training: By studying common door traps, practicing listening techniques, and remaining alert for tiny clues that precede a triggered trap, you gradually develop a routine that enables your team to examine a door with minimum risk to the team.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Perception 5 ranks.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Perception 1 rank.
  
• Benefit: When listening at or searching a door or similar portal, the task leader gains a +1 Circumstance Bonus on their Perception check for each team member within 10 feet of the door. If the task leader chooses to take 20 on a Perception check made at a door, they can do so in half the normal time (as if they had made ten attempts, rather than twenty).
  
• Tips: The door procedures teamwork benefit is a good way to quickly adjudicate each door you approach in a dungeon. You can quickly make the rolls and get on with the encounter on the other side. Be ready to make these rolls when you find a closed door in the dungeon. Then make the Perception check, and either deal with the trap you find or get ready to open the door. Keep in mind that you might be able to take 10 or take 20 these checks.

Expert Mountaineers

Your team can work together to ascend difficult slopes and sheer surfaces with relative ease.

• Training: Constant training with expert climbers has made your team comfortable with ascents and descents.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Climb 5 ranks.
  
• Benefit: If a team member succeeds on a Climb check, every other team member adjacent to them gains a +2 Circumstance Bonus on Climb checks made to ascend the same surface Furthermore, each team member can make an accelerated Climb with only a -2 penalty on the Climb check. Finally team member can catch a Falling comrade by succeeding on a Climb check against the wall's DC (not against the wall's DC +10).
  
• Tips: Using the appropriate climbing equipment makes Climb checks easier. So, to ensure success, invest in Pitons to make your own handholds and footholds.

Fearsome Roster

By taunting your enemies and projecting an air of menace, your team can send them fleeing from the field of battle.

• Training: Intimidating enemies is more than an individual effort once the members of your team have practiced together enough to earn this teamwork benefit. Even in a fight, your collective body language exudes dangerous menace, and each team member responds to comrades' telling blows with war cries and demoralizing taunts.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Intimidate 5 ranks.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Charisma 13 or Intimidate 1 rank.
  
• Benefit: Enemies who can see at least two members of your team take a penalty on morale checks equal to 1 + one-quarter of the Hit Dice of the lowest-level member of the team (rounded down).
  
• Tips: This benefit most often applies to larger scale battles (see Strategic Combat and Warfare), but can also apply to larger tactical battles. If your team has acquired this benefit, you should be keenly aware of the conditions that force your enemies to make morale checks. Typically creatures roll morale checks when they perceive themselves to be losing a fight (whether because they are below half health or their total force is below half strength). Check with the DM whether morale checks are appropriate for a given fight to make sure they are rolled when applicable.

Field Medic Training

Your comrades can quickly stabilize grievous wounds so that a fallen ally doesn't succumb to blood loss and trauma.

• Training: To gain this benefit, your team receives instruction from accomplished healers and practices on the wounded.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Heal 5 ranks.
  
• Benefit: If two team members each attempt to stabilize the same Dying creature in the same round, the second attempt automatically succeeds.
  
• Tips: The fastest members of the team can reach a fallen comrade most quickly.

Foe Hunting

Your team is especially good at tracking down and destroying specific types of creatures.

• Training: The training for this benefit begins with intensive research on the specific creature type to be hunted. You and your teammates must drill on the various features and traits of the chosen creature until you learn its every idiosyncrasy. Finally, the team must stage mock combats so that each of you can learn to take advantage of the target creature's weaknesses.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Favored enemy (any one) +4.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Base Attack Bonus +4.
  
• Benefit: Each team member who assumes a Flanking position with the task leader against their favored enemy gains a +2 bonus on damage rolls against that creature.
  
• Tips: To make optimum use of this benefit, the task leader should wear light armor or use spells that improve their speed.

Friendly Fire Evasion

By attuning yourself to minute, almost subliminal changes in your environment, you get just enough warning to avoid damaging area spells cast by your allies.

• Training: During the training procedure for this benefit, the spellcasters on your team cast lightning bolts, fireballs, flame strikes, and other area spells in their arsenal, and other team members stand on the fringes of the spells' area, their senses perked for the whiff of brimstone, the crackle of static electricity, or the barely audible hum that occurs an instant before such spells go off. Then you practice ducking, dodging, and covering so that you avoid the damage from those spells.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Spellcraft 1 rank, Evasion ability.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Base Reflex Save +2.
  
• Benefit: You gain the Evasion ability, but only concerning spells cast by your team members.
  
• Tips: Use this teamwork benefit to keep tough characters in the front line despite allied damaging spells raining down around them. Of course, you still need a pretty good Reflex Save bonus to take full advantage of this benefit.

Friendly Fire Evasion, Improved

You have further attuned yourself to the subtle precursors of the area spells your comrades cast, so you can usually avoid their worst effects.

• Training: As described in Friendly Fire evasion, above.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Spellcraft 3 ranks, improved Evasion ability.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Friendly Fire Evasion teamwork benefit, base Reflex Save +3, Spellcraft 1 rank.
  
• Benefit: You gain the improved Evasion ability, but only concerning spells cast by your team members.
  
• Tips: As with Friendly Fire Evasion, this teamwork benefit lets tough characters stay in the front line despite allied damaging spells raining down around them. A good Reflex Save bonus isn't as crucial to take advantage of this benefit, but it still helps.

Gaze Aversion

When facing a monster with a Gaze Attack (such as a Medusa), you are adept at avoiding its dangerous gaze.

• Training: Your team practices concise verbal descriptions, often in code, and maneuvering according to those descriptions. Eventually you're able to avoid looking at your target except when it's absolutely necessary, keeping track of the battle through the shouted instructions of your comrades.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Perception 5 ranks.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Perception 1 rank.
  
• Benefit: As long as at least one team member is looking directly at the gaze-attack monster, any team member averting their eyes need not make a save against the Gaze Attack.
  
• Tips: To make this teamwork benefit as effective as possible, it's best if the spotter is beyond the area the Gaze Attack affects, is naturally immune to the effect of the gaze, or at least has the best saving throw among the team members.

Group Trance

You and your teammates reduce your susceptibility to sleep by learning the ways of the elves.

• Training: Your team members learn the secrets of elf trance and can slip into a trance state by establishing a physical link with the task leader. This trance state allows each member to gain the benefit of sleep by cleansing their mind and entering a deep meditative state.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Elf or Half-Elf.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Autohypnosis 1 rank.
  
• Benefit: When team members join hands, the task leader can create a trance link that allows each of them, regardless of race, to meditate in the same manner as elves do. Every team member gains the benefit of 8 hours of sleep after just 4 hours of meditation.
  
• Tips: Let all the spellcasters in the group rest while the warriors stay on guard. If the group's elf trances with half the team at a time, your party can get by with two well-manned guard watches per night rather than several shorter shifts.

Heavy Cavalry

Not only are you an accomplished equestrian, but your comrades are as well. You have extended your almost instinctive bond with your mount to the riders and steeds galloping at your sides. Your team can Charge enemies with your steeds running shoulder to shoulder. This tight formation often sends your foes scattering - if they don't panic and flee from battle entirely.

• Training: At first, would-be heavy cavalry team members simply practice running across an open field, four abreast. But as the riders and mounts grow more accustomed to each other, they gradually reduce the space that separates one steed and rider from another. Once they're galloping shoulder to shoulder, the team members practice sweeping turns and maintaining their formation despite Difficult Terrain. Training often concludes with practice in trampling enemies. Good-aligned heavy cavalry might practice by running down livestock, illusory enemies created by friendly spellcasters, or wood-and-straw jousting dummies. Evil equestrians sometimes turn prisoners or slaves loose as "trample practice" for heavy cavalry.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Handle Animal 1 rank, Ride 5 ranks, Mounted Combat, Trample.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Ride 1 rank. The members' mounts need not be members of the team.
  
• Benefit: To close their formation, the team members and their mounts first line up in adjacent squares, then move closer together so that each takes up a square half as wide as usual. For example, a Medium character mounted on a horse or other Large creature normally takes up a 10-foot square, and a team of four such characters would occupy a rectangle 40 feet wide and 10 feet deep. By contrast, if the same team had trained together and acquired this teamwork benefit, they could compress their line into a unit only 20 feet wide and 10 feet deep, making it harder for anyone they Overrun to dodge between the horses' hooves.
  All team members must act on the same Initiative count, so some members must delay to match the Initiative count of the slowest member in the team.
  As long as the characters remain in a cohesive set of squares and move at least their speed every round, they gain the following benefits:
  • They don't take the -4 penalty on attack rolls and to AC for squeezing.
  • Opponents can't avoid Overrun from team members; they must attempt to block.
  • The team members' mounts count as one size category larger for purposes of resolving Overrun. For example, a horse counts as a Huge creature (+4 bonus) rather than a Large creature (+2).
  
  For the purposes of area spells and determining position on the battlefield, each Medium character on a Large mount is considered to be occupying a space 5 feet wide and 10 feet long.
  
• Tips: If you have the heavy cavalry teamwork benefit, you'll want to know the Overrun rules backward and forward. Calculate the Combat Maneuver Bonus in advance, keeping in mind that your mount gets an extra bonus for counting as one size category larger than normal. In addition, have that hoof attack ready to go - you'll get lots of use out of it - and know what Prone characters can and can't do. If all goes well, you'll be facing a lot of Prone enemies.

Indirect Fire

Your team has a forward observer called a spotter, who locates enemies and reveals their positions.

• Training: You and your teammates practice aiming at unseen targets using directions from allies. Eventually, you learn to fire accurately at targets that have Cover based on the body language and gestures of the spotter.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Precise Shot and Base Attack Bonus +6.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Perception 1 rank.
  
• Benefit: This benefit denies opponents some of the protection normally granted by Cover or Concealment. If the spotter has an unobstructed line of sight to the covered or concealed target, they can, as a Move Action, use hand gestures, spoken directions, and body language to alert allies wielding ranged weapons to the target's position. If the target has Cover, it gains only half the normal Cover bonus to Armor Class against the team's ranged attacks. If the target has Concealment, the attacker rolls the miss chance twice to determine whether their attack hits. A spotter who can see Invisible targets can use this ability to allow a reroll on the miss chance to strike an Invisible creature.
  
• Tips: Team members with Darkvision make the best spotters, since they can use their special sight to locate creatures that are taking advantage of Dim Light or Darkness.

Infiltration

You are adept at moving silently and unseen. You point out noisy ground to your comrades, identify good hiding places for one another, and otherwise move as unobtrusively as possible. You dart ahead while your teammates watch for enemies, then you cover your comrades while they advance. While this teamwork benefit doesn't help much amid the tumult of a pitched battle, you're able to sneak behind enemy lines to attack enemy leaders, sabotage siege engines, and otherwise give your army the upper hand before the trumpets sound.

• Training: Infiltration training involves hours of practice sneaking as a group. Elves and other woodland denizens often play elaborate games of stealth-and-seek (with the seeking team getting useful practice as scouts). Subterranean races stalk the caverns and tunnels of their realms, practicing the art of hiding in a pitch-black environment. With practice, members of an infiltration team get good at sharing hiding spaces, darting from cover to cover, and timing their movements to be as silent and stealthy as possible.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Stealth 5 ranks.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Stealth 1 rank.
  
• Benefit: Your team can move at full speed without taking a -5 penalty on Stealth checks. Other penalties (such as from Difficult Terrain) still apply, and you suffer the normal limitations on Stealth checks while attacking, running, or charging. Team members are always visible to each other despite their Stealth check results and the presence of anything less than total Concealment (although Cover might still block line of sight between team members). If you move to a position where none of your comrades can see or contact you, you lose the teamwork benefit at the start of your next turn and don't count as part of the team until you reestablish contact with at least one member.
  
• Tips: If you're part of an infiltration team, keep if mind that you can take 10 on your Stealth checks whenever you aren't being threatened or distracted. It's often easiest to just tell the DM what the lowest Stealth check results on the team are. Those check results set the DC for NPCs' Perception checks.

Invisibility Sweep

If you're aware of the presence of an unseen enemy, you can quickly move through an area and pinpoint your foe's location.

• Training: You practice finding Invisible enemies by swinging your weapons through empty spaces and making sudden movements that an Invisible foe wouldn't anticipate. More important, you quickly develop a short hand way of describing the location of an unseen enemy you have pinpointed - "At my 4 o'clock, 10 feet out," for example. Eventually, members of your team can quickly and effectively target a specific (apparently empty) square based on your verbal description.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Blind-Fight.
  
• Benefit: Each team member can check for the presence of an Invisible enemy by groping into four adjacent 5-foot squares within reach, making touch attacks in those squares (as described in Invisibility). Doing so is a Standard Action. If one team member pinpoints the location of an Invisible enemy (whether through groping, Perception checks, other means), every other team member within earshot also has that enemy pinpointed until that enemy moves into a different square (pinpointed Invisible enemies still gain the benefit of total Concealment; see Invisibility).

Joint Bull Rush

Shoulder to shoulder with your allies, you can blast into the ranks of your enemies, knocking them back with your combined force.

• Training: You and your teammates practice charging wooden tackling dummies all at the same time, moving in lockstep and delivering a powerful push at the same moment. Eventually you get so good that you leave only splintered and sagging dummies in your wake.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Powerful Maneuvers.
  
• Benefit: To perform a joint Bull Rush, all the team members involved must ready the Bull Rush action until the turn of the member with the slowest Initiative. Then all the bull rushing team members move to their target at the same time and make a single Bull Rush attempt using the Combat Maneuver Bonus of the best team member. Each additional team member involved in the joint Bull Rush applies their Strength bonus (minimum +1). The team members must end their movement adjacent to one another, and they all provoke attacks of opportunity from the defender as normal (although the defender can only make a single attack unless they have the Combat Reflexes feat).

Joint Grapple Escape

You use nonverbal cues to time your struggles against a grappling enemy, applying force and leverage at just the right moment to escape the clutches of your foe.

• Training: In a series of wrestling matches, you practice techniques of suddenly shifting your weight and applying maximum effort just as a comrade outside the Grapple makes a similar effort - or at least distracts your opponent. Eventually, your timing improves to the point where you and your comrades are working in concert with split-second timing.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Base Attack Bonus +4 or Improved Grapple.
  
• Benefit: If you successfully use the Aid Another action to assist an adjacent team member's next Combat Maneuver Check or Escape Artist check to escape from a Grapple, you provide your teammate with a bonus on that check equal to +4 or your Strength modifier, whichever is higher.

Joint Ram

Your comrades and you are practiced at bashing things down, applying maximum force at the moment of impact.

• Training: To practice for this teamwork benefit, you have to wreck stuff together, practicing your timing and making sure you're applying the utmost leverage to the target. Eventually, you learn to break down doors and crumble walls that would be impervious to individual efforts.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Powerful Maneuvers.
  
• Benefit: When your team is employing a ram to knock down a barrier or destroy another Object, the ram deals an extra 2 points of damage for each team member wielding the ram. In addition, if a team member is trying to break down a door or perform a feat of Strength similar to ramming, they gain a +4 bonus on the check for every team member who assists with the Aid Another action. The DM should set limits for how many team members can usefully help break down a particular door (typically two Medium creatures for every 5 feet of the door's width).

Like a Rock

Like dwarves, the members of your team are stable on their feet.

• Training: Your team develops resilience against unbalancing attacks by working closely with a dwarf or some other sturdy member of the party. When the team stands together, its members are difficult to dislodge.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Stability (as Dwarf racial trait).
  
• Benefit: The task leader's stability bonus against Bull Rush or Trip attempts extends to all team members adjacent to them. This bonus stacks with that provided by stability.
  
• Tips: This benefit requires the team to bunch up, so if the enemy has a number of area attacks, be sure to beef everyone up with spells and abilities that grant Resistance To Energy. If you must spread out, don't move so far apart that you can't help an ally who is knocked Prone.

Long-Range Archery

Because you're attuned to the other archers on your team, you learn from the mistakes they make when targeting a far-off foe.

• Training: When you collectively train on the archery range, you spend time watching each other's form and providing pointers. After enough practice, you can see when your comrades miss a shot because they aimed too high or too low, and you can use that information to make your own shots more accurate.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Far Shot.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Base Attack Bonus +1.
  
• Benefit: When a team member misses with a Ranged Attack made against a target farther away than one range increment, subsequent ranged attacks any team member makes against that foe take only half the penalty for range (-1 per range increment). If the foe moves more than 20 feet, this benefit does not apply until a team member shoots at and misses the foe again.
  
• Tips: If you have this teamwork benefit, consider ordering your ranged attacks so that the team member who is least likely to hit fires before the more reliable attackers do. This tactic helps ensure that the benefit will apply to later attacks. Also, having a more accurate attack follow a less accurate one almost always takes the enemy by surprise.

Massed Charge

When your team charges, it smashes into the foe as a single great, implacable mass.

• Training: You and your teammates learn to Charge as one. You line up in a tight formation and time your strides to move in tight synchronicity.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Acrobatics 2 ranks.
  
• Benefit: The team can make a special Charge attack. All team members move on the same Initiative count, and each must Charge and attack the same target. Each team member gains a bonus on their attack roll after the Charge equal to the number of teammates participating.
  
• Tips: This benefit works best against a single, large opponent. A smaller opponent presents too narrow a point of contact for you to maximize this ability.

Missile Volley

Your team excels at firing as a group, unleashing a saturated wave of arrows and bolts. Each member places their shots so that the target cannot dodge them all.

• Training: Your team practices by taking aim at a number of small targets clustered together (representing different spots on the body of a single enemy). Each of you can learn to place your shots so as to cover every part of a target with a single joint volley.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Far Shot and Precise Shot.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Base Attack Bonus +1.
  
• Benefit: Every member of the team who readies an action to fire a missile weapon when the task leader does gains a bonus on the attack roll equal to the number of team members firing. The task leader also qualifies for the bonus, even though they did not ready an action. All these attacks must be made against the same target.
  
• Tips: Since everyone except the task leader must ready an action to fire, the other team members lose their additional attacks. Thus, the team is trading a high number of attack rolls for a smaller number of attacks that are more likely to hit. This benefit works best when a single, skilled archer (the task leader) uses their teammates' help to improve their accuracy.

Ranged Precision

You know the timing of your comrades' attacks so well that you can shift to the side for a moment, letting ranged attacks fly past you and into your enemies.

• Training: You and the rest of the team watch each other shoot ranged weapons, memorizing how much time it takes to draw an arrow from a quiver, nock it, aim, and shoot. Then you internally count to measure the time between arrows, shifting yourself when you know an arrow is being fired so you don't get in the way.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Base Attack Bonus +4, Precise Shot.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Base Attack Bonus +2.
  
• Benefit: The penalty for firing a ranged weapon into melee is cut in half (from -4 to -2) if every ally in the melee is on your team. The AC benefit your foe gets from Cover is likewise cut in half (from +4 to +2) if that cover consists solely of team members.

Scouting

Your team is alert for the slightest disturbance in your environment. While one of you watches straight ahead, another scans to the side, while a third pauses for a moment to search intently. By finding your enemies before they find you, your team can dictate the terms of an engagement - or perhaps avoid it entirely.

• Training: Trainees divide their environment into arcs, with one soldier looking straight ahead, another checking to the left, a third watching the right, a fourth the sky, a fifth behind them, and so on. The soldiers concentrate their senses on those arcs, doing their best to block out distractions elsewhere. Eventually, each member of the team instinctively knows which arc they are responsible for and which arcs their comrades are covering, and they can switch arcs subconsciously when their comrades stop scanning for a moment.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Perception 5 ranks.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Perception 1 rank or Alertness.
  
• Benefit: The team as a whole can make a free Perception check at the end of each round, regardless of whether any members of the team have already made such checks that round. Use the lowest check modifier of any member of the team present, with a +1 bonus for every team member beyond the first. In the middle of a combat when actions are precious, this team-work benefit gives the members detailed information about their immediate environment that they otherwise wouldn't have.
  
• Tips: If your team has this benefit, have your team's Perception modifiers figured out in advance. It's a good idea to designate one character to make the Perception check at the end of each round; making it a specific character's responsibility means the group is less likely to forget it.

Search Team

Your team is skilled at finding secret doors and traps much faster than normal.

• Training: By assigning members to look for specific clues, your team has developed a routine to find secret doors and traps quickly by alerting the task leader to any anomalies.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Perception 2 ranks, trapfinding.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Perception 1 rank.
  
• Benefit: As a Full-Round Action, the task leader can apply their Perception check result to every square searched by a member of the team (excluding the task leader).
  
• Tips: For this benefit to be effective, the task leader should have a high number of ranks in the Perception skill. Team members can use the Aid Another action to increase the task leader's check.

Snap Out of It

Because you know your fellow team members so well, you can help them shake off the effects of magical compulsions.

• Training: Your team is trained in a variety of effects that intentionally shake the psyche of your comrades - everything from a stinging slap to the face to an imploring "Remember us, Regdar? We're your friends...."
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Autohypnosis 5 ranks or Iron Will.
  
• Benefit: If a team member is known to be under the sway of a Compulsion effect, an adjacent team member can spend a Full-Round Action to grant that team member a new save against the Compulsion effect (as the slippery mind Rogue Talent, except that the second save need not happen in the second round of the effect).
  
• Special: No character can grant another team member more than one extra save against any one Compulsion effect. However, multiple team members can all attempt to help the same character.
  
• Tips: This benefit only works if you know that your team members have been subverted by a Compulsion effect. Spellcraft checks can identify that a spell such as Dominate Person has been cast, and a Sense Motive check can detect that the behavior of one of your team members is being influenced by an enchantment.

Spellcaster Guardian

You have a keen sense of the timing of the spellcasters on your team, so you can often protect them from enemies when their spells are about to go off.

• Training: Over a period of weeks, you closely observe your comrades as they cast spells, noting the exact gestures and phrases they use when they are at their most distracted. You learn the idiosyncrasies of your allies' spellcasting techniques so well that you know exactly where they are in the spellcasting process just by watching and listening to them, even if you don't know what the words and gestures mean.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Combat Reflexes, Spellcraft 1 rank.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Dexterity 13 or Spellcraft 1 rank.
  
• Benefit: If a spellcaster on your team provokes an Attack of Opportunity by casting a spell, a team member adjacent to the spellcaster can interpose themselves between the spellcaster and one or more attackers at the last moment, taking upon themlseves attacks of opportunity meant for the spellcaster. The team member can intercept a number of attacks of opportunity equal to 1 + their Dexterity bonus. Resolve each attack as normal, using the interposing team member's Armor Class. If the attack hits, it damages the interposing character but doesn't distract the spellcaster.

Spell Barrage

By coordinating the release of your spells, you're able to catch your foes when they're unable to evade the effects.

• Training: By observing your fellow spellcasters as they're working magic, you're able to time your spells so they finish when your enemies are off-balance from the first spell.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Spellcraft 5 ranks.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Spellcraft 1 ranks.
  
• Benefit: This benefit is triggered when a team member first casts a spell requiring a Reflex Save. Whether they succeed or fail on the save, all enemies within its area take a -2 penalty on Reflex saves for each subsequent Reflex Save attempted that round against an effect created by another member of the same team.
  
• Tips: Obviously, the more Reflex-save-requiring area spells you can cast during the round, the better. Consider giving team members that are secondary spellcasters or have ranks in Use Magic Device a scroll or wand with an area spell for such occasions.

Steadfast Resolve

Your team members can use their camaraderie and shared experience to shrug off the effect of fear.

• Training: Through long experience in dealing with adversity, you and your teammates develop the trust and support needed to bolster each other's minds when subjected to magical fear.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Autohypnosis 5 ranks and Iron Will.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Base Will Save bonus +2.
  
• Benefit: Any team member who must make a saving throw against a Fear spell or effect gains a +2 Circumstance Bonus on the save if they can see or hear at least one team member.
  
• Tips: Some fear-based spells affect areas. If you cast such a spell on an area that includes both allies and enemies, your teammates are likely to make the save while the foes run away.

Superior Team Effort

When your team works together on a task - whether it's battering down a door, talking a nervous innkeeper into allowing everyone to spend the night, or sneaking past a guard - everyone on the team does a better than average job of assisting each other's efforts.

• Training: Your team focuses on improving a particular skill. Each team member watches the task leader and learns a few specific actions that can help them succeed.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: 5 ranks in a skill and Skill Focus for the same skill.
  
• Benefit: Any team member who attempts to Aid Another member's check with the relevant skill must make a DC 5 check to succeed rather than a DC 10 check.
  
• Special:
• Special: This teamwork benefit applies only to checks made with the skill to which the task leader's Skill Focus feat applies.

Team Melee Tactics

Because your group fights as an effective team in melee, its members can use the Aid Another action with greater than normal efficiency.

• Training: Your team studies each member's tactics, fighting style, and tendencies. These hours of focused observation allow each member to understand how best to help the rest of the team.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Base Attack Bonus +6 and Dodge
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Base Attack Bonus +6.
  
• Benefit: Whenever a team member uses the Aid Another action to grant another member a bonus on attack rolls, that bonus increases by an additional 2.
  
• Tips: The Aid Another action allows an ally to strike with superior accuracy at the expense of the aiding character's own attacks. Thus, the ally who receives the assistance should be the best qualified team member to take down the foe - whether by virtue of Damage Reduction, high AC, or the ability to use Power Attack for extra damage.

Team Rush

Your team travels faster than normal as a group. The efforts and assistance of the faster characters allow the slower ones to keep up.

• Training: Your team must march for a week as a group, traveling across roads, dells, forests, and mountain passes. In so doing, each team member learns how best to help everyone to move together.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Survival 5 ranks and Endurance.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Survival 1 rank.
  
• Benefit: When the entire team is traveling overland on foot, each team member moves at the task leader's speed. This benefit does not extend to combat and similar short-term movement situations, or to mounted characters.
  
• Tips: A Barbarian is the best task leader for this teamwork benefit. At the cost of a prerequisite feat, they allow their allies to travel much more quickly across the countryside. In campaigns that feature frequent wilderness or underground travel, the time saved might prove to be a major benefit.

Team Shield Maneuver

When your team fights as a group, its members can close ranks to protect a badly injured ally.

• Training: Your group learns to react quickly when an ally falls. You drill in pushing aside a wounded team member before they tumble to the ground and moving them out of harm's way.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Shield Specialization.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Shield Proficiency.
  
• Benefit: When a team member's hit points drop to -1 or lower, any teammate adjacent to them who carries a shield can use an Immediate Action to push them out of harm's way. The injured team member moves 10 feet before falling Prone.
  
• Tips: Tip: This tactic works best if one of the group's second line characters has a potion or wand ready to heal the fallen character. In this case, even a character who isn't a member of the team can play a valuable role in making the most of this benefit.

Wall of Steel

By closing ranks and locking shields together, you and your teammates form an impenetrable barrier to shield a more vulnerable team member from enemies.

• Training: Your group stands in a tight formation and locks shields while a hired mercenary or assistant pelts everyone with blunt arrows. Each bruising shot reminds you to improve your form and teamwork.
  
• Task Leader Prerequisite: Tower Shield Proficiency and Base Attack Bonus +8.
  
• Team Member Prerequisite: Shield Proficiency and Base Attack Bonus +2.
  
• Benefit: As a Swift Action, any member of the team can lose their Shield Bonus to AC and grant it to a single adjacent team member instead. This bonus stacks with the recipients existing Shield Bonus, if any.
  
• Tips: Any arcane spellcasters who are frequently exposed to missile fire might want to take the Shield Proficiency feat to gain this teamwork benefit.