Quote Originally Posted by pabelfly View Post
I kind of disagree with you there. This applies to all team members, so it's going to apply to both the Fighter that has no Spot and Listen, and the Ranger who has full ranks in both. If you've got a caster that wants to do stuff like alarms and whatever, this is less relevant, but if you want to use skill checks, this is pretty decent.

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I wouldn't pick Iron Will in of itself for a build or this ability, but there's a few different reasons to get it - classes like Incantatrix, Ur-Priest, and Runescarred Berserker require it, and you need it for the Reserves of Strength feat, among other less-likely use cases. If I got Iron Will on my build for some reason, this would be a nice secondary benefit I could pass around.
Fair point on Steadfast Resolve; I hadn't considered the case where you've got Iron Will anyway, and I really should have. It's pretty good then yeah.

As for Awareness: perhaps 'useless' was the wrong word, but 'pointless as a teamwork benefit' seems accurate. A teamwork benefit, by design, is meant to create synergy between a highly skilled leader and several less-skilled members; typically by the latter assisting the former, but sometimes the other way around. This doesn't do either.

If you've got one party member with maxed Spot and Listen and three with no investment, the only meaningful effect awareness has is that it gives +2 to the perceptive guy's skills. It's a 'teamwork benefit' that doesn't really involve the team at all - it just improves the PC who was going to be making the check anyway. Where's the teamwork?

If I had to make a teamwork benefit for spot/listen (difficult given how much spot/listen is a skill where you really only need one person to pass) my first thought would've been something more like Indirect Fire, and my second a way to prevent allies from being surprised/flanked/flat-footed if you yourself are not. If I was going to make it a plain bonus, I'd at least have it scale to the number of allies within 30 feet.