Homebrew - Teamwork Checks
RPGs are often a team-based game with players uniting together to foil the plots and machinations of their Game Master, but in a good way. Adventurers have different skills and apptitudes, some are really good at swinging a sword, others sneaking, and others shooting out spells. Each member of the team brings their skill and expertise to the game, but not every situation can be completed by a single member. When the quest requires the team to all get into a house late at night, leaving behind a member isn’t an option, even if their idea of stealth is about making as much noise as possible. At this point, its important for everyone to enter the house, and the team members to help each other sneak in without waking up the neighborhood.
Today, we are exploring how we can work together as a team.
For those that don’t care about the nitty-gritty:
For best results in GM Binder, use a Chrome Browser
Teamwork Checks
The basis for Teamwork Checks is that high rolls don’t have to be meaningless when someone rolls low. Instead, when the entire group makes a check and someone rolls poorly, the entire team isn’t hinging on a single individual’s pass/fail to decide their fate, but rather their fate hinges on how the entire team did.
I’ve heard paladins, knights, and more agree to a plan where they have to stealth, and then they look down at their sheet and realize they made a mistake. Dexterity was a dump stat, they are wearing armor, and there is a running joke at the table that they have the worst dice luck. Everything is working to make sure that they are unable to stealth and they may suddenly change their mind, that trying to sneak into the castle is foolhardy and they should just plow through the army of 1,000 strong as they are more likely to succeed at that then succeed on a stealth check.
On the other hand, we have the rogue who, at a certain level, just can’t roll low. They have so many modifiers that the only chance they are going to fail is if they somehow find negative numbers of the dice. There is no risk for the rogue because they can’t fail, or failure is so minute that it feels like there is no risk. All of a sudden, the rogue doesn’t see the danger in the situation and there is no suspense for them.
The purpose of Teamwork Checks is to make it so that the team can still stick together, and the rogue can experience a thrill of suspense. When a Teamwork Check comes up, everyone rolls the relevant check, and then totals their check together and compares it to larger DC than usual. This means that every point that the rogue gets is important because it can help cushion for the low scores that some of the party will get, making it so that either the team succeeds together, or fails together.
Set Up
Creating a Teamwork Check takes just as much time as a normal check. You still ask the table to all roll their own checks and inform that one player that “No, you can’t use your attack roll for your survival check”. While they roll their checks, you then come up with the DC based on the number of members in the team times the DC of the difficulty of the check. Then, you take everyone’s score, tally them together and compare it to the Teamwork DC, if they meet or exceed the check, they succeed. If they fail, the team fails. You then describe the events that unfold from their results.
Example of Teamwork
For example, let’s say that the entire team is trying to impress a noble. They have several hours to do so, but each person can only interact with the noble one at a time and everyone has to try and impress the noble. This might be the time for the adventurer who made Charisma their dump stat to be sad, as they just know they are going to fail, but all hope isn’t lost.
Each individual taking part in the Teamwork Check rolls the appropriate check, you might decide its persuasion, performance, whatever skill is required for hanging from a chandelier and chugging a keg of ale, and so on. You then have each member roll their check, interspersing roleplay here and there as appropriate, and then you take the cumulative total of everyone’s check and compare it to the DC for the noble, which might be as high as 20 for a very easy task or 150 for the nearly impossible. A moderate challenge for 4 people would likely be a DC 60, as DC 15 is a moderate check and you multiply that DC by the number of people taking part in the check.
For the bard, they can easily crush the check and get in the low 20s, weaving together a compelling story of when they were once an orphan and were adopted by a dragon. The fighter who hates storytime mumbles something about how they once used a troll’s arm as a weapon against the very same troll, and then rolls just under 10, wincing as they feel like they have failed thanks to their chaos rocks. The other members do fairly better, while no one near as good as the bard, still respectable rolls. We’ll go ahead and say the team as a whole got the following scores: 23, 8, 17, 14.
When we combine their scores, we get a total of 62, which beats a moderate DC for this check (since 5e defines a moderate difficulty as 15, we then multiply that DC by the number of participants in the check for a total of 60). This means that the team succeeds together rather than two people failing the check. It also means that the bard’s high roll isn’t ‘wasted’ in this instance because normally, on a check, additional numbers over the DC is pointless. Unless you are playing a game that grants you additional effects upon super-exceeding the DC, like Pathfinder 2e, additional points above a DC do nothing to help the rest of the team. Even in something like Pathfinder 2e where you would normally critically succeed at a task, if there are remaining points, they still do nothing to help further the goals of your team.
Benefits of Teamwork
The major benefit of teamwork is that it helps those less skilled by allowing the highly skilled to ‘give’ their additional points to the rest of the group to use. By combining all check results together, it doesn’t super-matter if someone gets low digits. In a Teamwork Check, every additional point matters and even a 5 or 8 can help push the team over the edge to reach the DC. By tallying everyone’s check together, the team either succeeds or fails together. It’s not a single adventurer who is at fault for failing the team, but rather the team as a whole failed the check.
This is useful in a variety of situations, with sneaking around probably the one that benefits the most from this. Now your character who has ultra-specialized in stealth, with modifiers so high that they could sneak past a deity, can use those extra points to help out the rest of the party. In this situation, that stealth character is helping all other members of their team, giving out pointers, placing armor in a better position to be silent, and more. They are using their expertise in sneaking about to the benefit of the team instead of just themselves, but this check relies more than just on them to roll high. Every member of the team must roll because the DCs are much higher, making every point every member gets important to successfully reach and exceed the DC.
Rules
There aren’t very many other rules to go along with this. Teamwork Checks are just simply a method to encourage teamwork within the party. With that in mind, these check should be done when the team wants to work together.
If the loner of the group has no interest in helping the rest of the team, then it doesn’t make sense to include them in the Teamwork Check or to have that check at all.
Teamwork Checks are best used when the entire team needs to succeed at something. Everyone needs to get past the guards. Everyone needs to impress the noble. In these situations, everyone must contribute and so a Teamwork Check makes sense.
Variety is key. If you offer situations where everyone can try a different skill, and it makes sense for them to do so, then you can use everyone’s check to help tell the story of how they succeeded or failed. Variety can help others shine, and it doesn’t even have to be just variety within a single Teamwork Check. You can use Teamwork Checks whenever you feel is appropriate, like when persuading someone, sneaking somewhere, clambering up a mountain, and more. Each situation allows someone else in the team to feel awesome because they are skilled in that type of challenge and can further help their team to succeed.
A Teamwork Check can be small or huge. It could have 2 people attempting to work together or have a whole village try to bring up a wall. It could take just a few seconds to accomplish, or take weeks and months. You can use rounds of checks to help define when time passes, especially if you create a nearly impossible DC. Every round the team rolls against it, they are only chipping away at the DC and each round’s results are cumulative. Each round might represent a single day as the party is traveling for miles or is attempting to study the contents of a library. Its important for the entire team to succeed at this, and so they are working together to try and tackle the problem.
Finishing Up
That’s the basics of Teamwork Checks and how you can use them in your games. They are similar to Skill Challenges, but different in that you are placing the importance on the cumulative success of the party, and not just the pass/fail of a single check. While this isn’t going to change everything in your game, it is a good tool to add into your toolkit when the team must accomplish a goal together and you hear that one player groan because they have a -2 to their check and with disadvantage.
If you want a printer-friendly PDF of this homebrew, or any other homebrew I’ve created, join us on Patreon! All homebrew, including tools, that I’ve created or will create in the future will be uploaded to our Patreon in printer-friendly versions. We appreciate any and all support!
Like what we are doing here?
Support us on Patreon!
You’ll get early access to deep dives, our Homebrew Hoard, Monster Thursdays, and more!
Follow us on Twitter to keep up to date on everything we talk about!
