Assist

Assist

You can help someone achieve success on a skill check by making the same kind of skill check in a cooperative effort.

As a standard action, you can assist an adjacent ally on a skill check by rolling at least an Easy DC result on the same skill.

• If successful, the ally you are assisting gets a +2 circumstance bonus on his or her check.
• If you roll less than an Easy DC result, you instead inflict a -1 circumstance penalty to the check being made by the ally you are assisting.

You can't take 10 on a skill check to assist. In many cases, assists are not possible or only a limited number of characters can help at once. In all cases, no more than 5 characters can ever assist with a skill check. Note that circumstance bonuses stack with all other bonuses including other circumstance bonuses.

If a skill is trained only, you must have at least one rank in the skill to assist.

If you wish to assist an ally with an epic skill use of a skill (a skill use which requires at least 21 ranks to attempt), you must also have at least 21 ranks in the skill in question.

The assist action cannot be used when making Barter checks to negotiate prices with merchants, since ganging up on merchants will only result in the merchant bringing in friends of his own to assist him. The GM might impose further restrictions to assisting, on a case-by-case basis as well.

Assisting an ally with a skill use that provokes attacks of opportunity also provokes attacks of opportunity.

Note: to provide combat bonuses to an ally, refer to Aid Another.