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Which teamwork feats are compatible with a ranged Inquisitor (Reaper of Secrets)?
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aaron infante-levy wrote:

Are you sure?

Escape Route reads...

Benefit: An ally who also has this feat provokes no attacks of opportunity for moving through squares adjacent to you or within your space.

So if you replace "ally who also has this feat" with "enemy", which is what Soul-Piercing Gaze & Mind-Game Tactics are intended to do, it reads...

Benefit: An enemy provokes no attacks of opportunity for moving through squares adjacent to you or within your space.

So it says nothing about ME not provoking. It says my ENEMY wouldn't provoke.

Therefor I think it's a no-go for this build.

I'm absolutely sure. The narrative fiction of how Escape Route normally works between two allies is that one of you is actively warding away enemy attacks in order to cover the other's advance. With Mind Game Tactics, you're not only treating a targeted enemy as though they're an ally to garner a benefit from your own teamwork feat, but you're also garnering the benefit of their "bestowed" teamwork feat. As Ryan Freire pointed out, you gain a benefit from either or both perspectives, the enemy gets nothing. This could be expressed narratively by you noticing an opening in an enemy's stance or positioning and exploiting it. Your movement is so abrupt or hard to track he's having trouble leveraging attacks against you. Either his feeble attempts at attacking you are inadvertently keeping his allies at bay, or they are afraid of hitting him by accident. This fulfills the mechanical benefit of not provoking an AoO for movement from anyone within those 5 feet.

aaron infante-levy wrote:

Just tried running the Reaper of Secrets in the game I was invited into, and... I think Mind-Game Tactics just flat-out doesn't work narratively.

I get the mechanical idea...but as far as role-playing a convincing narrative of "I'm your ally, share my teamwork feat", it only really works if I role-play with a sentient NPC in advance of fighting them.

The DM vetoed my attempted use of it during a surprise round, and frankly I agreed with him. Narratively, it just doesn't make sense.

It would help if you're more specific. Which Teamwork or Betrayal feat were you attempting to use in this instance? What was the situation that caused the narrative to not follow the fiction?

As others have pointed out, Betrayal feats don't really work with this ability or Solo Tactics by RAW, but when they do it's by exception and very limited due to the technicality. YMMV if you are trying to leverage Betrayal feats in this way. To be honest, there are a few cases where I can narratively imagine the Betrayal feat Wild Flanking working in the manner you are attempting to use them. Either way Mind-Game Tactics specifically calls out:

Quote:
She cannot use this ability to benefit from any teamwork feats that require particular actions from allies

Your targeted "ally" is not and can not be a willing participant. That's the main crux of why Betrayal feats as a whole do not work here, and may be why your group is running into trouble. It's the same reason the Betrayal feat Ally Shield doesn't work but the regular teamwork feat Back to Back does while being generally similar by narrative. Or why Swing About, Swap Places and Reckless Moves wouldn't work, but Escape Route and Stick Together would.

The narrative gist of the archetype's key ability is that you are so adept at reading your enemies' body language and intent that you can use the chaotic nature of a battle/situation to subtly manipulate and exploit them. With you always one step ahead, they cannot help but aid your efforts while impeding one another despite themselves.
Which teamwork feats are compatible with a ranged Inquisitor (Reaper of Secrets)?

As much as I think it totally fits the flavor of the archetype and wished it worked by RAW, I honestly do not think that the Betrayal Teamwork feats work in this case. You could only fill in as the abettor, which means you could use them as long as you were taking on the negative effect(s), ie using Ally Shield to allow a targeted ally/enemy to use you as a shield from an attack.

Target of Opportunity:

While this teamwork feat and Volley Fire would be easier to use with regular Solo Tactics, if you have an ally in your party who you know is going to be hitting regularly this feat can potentially give you an extra attack every turn as long as you have your friend targeted with your gaze. There's also the fact you can always target your gaze on an ally outside of combat so you have a body to work with right when a fight breaks out. While I don't think the following are a priority, pre-gazing an ally can also be beneficial with Stealth Synergy, Lookout and Duck and Cover.

Friendly Fire Maneuvers can be used with your abilities on friend or foe alike to negate cover bonuses from combatants getting in the way of your shot.

Enfilading Fire:

IIRC even if you have some method to flank an enemy with an ally (Armor Spikes etc) ranged weapons can never gain a flanking bonus. As such Outflank and Improved Outflank do not compliment your build. However, Enfilading Fire is a teamwork feat that gives you an untyped +2 to hit bonus against a target your ally is flanking. If you do happen to gain a means of threatening an enemy despite wielding your crossbow you could use one enemy's positioning with your Soul-Piercing Gaze to flank another enemy in between you both and thus benefit from your own flank with this teamwork feat. Though I would definitely recommend picking up Point Blank Master or some other method of eliminating the AoO you'll provoke for firing a ranged weapon in melee.

Distracting Charge
I don't recommend this one over the others, but if your party happens to have a member that charges all the time this might be worth picking up as long as you pre-gaze them.

Coordinated Shot:

This shares a bit of the same territory with Enfilading Fire but if you have the feats to spare both can stack for a total of +4 to hit with the right positioning.

Coordinated Reposition:

This one is bit feat intensive. If you happen to go down the line of picking up feats like Snap Shot and Improved Snap Shot you could use this feat to re-actively move away from an enemy trying to five-foot step into you. I'm not sure it's worth it, given it requires the correct set up with your gaze, consumes up a lot of feats and uses up your immediate action. Additionally I don't see Step Up (a prerequisite) being much use to you. If you happen to be picking up those feats anyway it may be something to consider. I imagine most would prefer to avoid a situation where enemies could get into melee with their ranged character but even the best laid plans never survive contact with the enemy.

Back to Back:

You can effectively use this along with you abilities against a flanking enemy to negate the flanking bonus they'd get on you. There is a spell Inquisitors get called Countless Eyes that makes you immune to being flanked and lasts hours/level but you don't get access to that until 3rd level spells. Still, it's an option and can be pretty silly.

Considering some of these options, Combat Reflexes may be handy.

I know you said you are planning a ranged inquisitor, but once you get closer to your 2nd level spells take a gander at Ally Across Time.

Spoiler:
It basically lets you mark certain spaces on the battlefield from which you can summon a duplicate of yourself. During your turn you can spend a free action to summon this duplicate until the end of your turn. It would threaten the spaces around it, can be used to perform an aid another action to aid attacks, and possesses the same teamwork feats you do. It might not have as many applicable uses to a ranged inquisitor as a melee one, and I prob wouldn't use it in place of Divine Favor/bread-and-butter buff spell, but it can be handy in the right circumstances. If you do consider this spell, look at the teamwork feat Harrying Partners. That +2 to hit your duplicate gave you for a single attack would now last for your entire full attack.
Which teamwork feats are compatible with a ranged Inquisitor (Reaper of Secrets)?

From what I understand the way Escape Route works with Mind-Game Tactics and Soul-Piercing Gaze is like this: As long as you are within 5 feet of the target of your Soul-Piercing Gaze you never provoke for movement, ever, from anyone. You could spend a double move and just repeatably circle around a targeted enemy and you would not provoke, provided you remain adjacent for the entirety of your movement.
Which teamwork feats are compatible with a ranged Inquisitor (Reaper of Secrets)?

I'm currently playing a Reaper of Secrets/Sanctified Slayer in a Curse of the Crimson Throne game my DM is running. Even though our builds would have very different approaches I can still lend some advice.

Do note that Mind-Game Tactics treats the target of your Soul-Piercing Gaze as your ally only so far as to give you a benefit for your teamwork feats. The target of your gaze doesn't actually get any benefit from this ability. This means that you can target an enemy (or ally) and be able to move around them without provoking for movement with Escape Route and you wouldn't have to worry about the enemy using that ability against you. Undine Inquisitors with the Undine Loyalty trait are a fun time with Escape Route, even better when they're a Reaper of Secrets.

Also take care with your action economy with this archetype. Some of the really fun teamwork feats that work with this ability tend to use immediate actions. If you take that immediate action outside of your turn you use up your upcoming turn's swift action. That means no activating Bane/Greater Bane, and also means you can't activate or swap any of your Judgments. Not to mention you need to use a swift in the first place just to get your Soul-Piercing Gaze on a target. A Corset of Delicate Moves can help a tiny bit with this by letting you get an additional swift action once per day at the expense of giving up your move action.

I made a melee Inquisitor that focused on flanking for sneak attack so I'll have to look back through the teamwork feats and note which ones would work for a ranged character. It might be more difficult since Mind-Game Tactics states that it only works with teamwork feats that deal with "positioning" or "threatening", which to be honest feels a little vague. I'm not too familiar with the red-tape around "ranged flanking" and if that's actually a thing.

I would recommend Pack Attack if I actually knew for certain what it did, or what the author/designer intended it to do. It's a really cool feat that could work a few different ways, but it is worded loosely. I would recommend you look into that feat closely and bring it up with your DM to figure out how it will work. One of the issues with it is that the 'brief' description for the feat, where they summarize it at the beginning of the section in a table is very different from the actual text of the feat. The summarized description says "Ally’s attack allows you to take a 5-foot step", but the actual text says "When you are adjacent to an ally with this feat, the first time you melee attack an opponent, you can spend an immediate action to take a 5-foot step, even if you have otherwise moved this round." This text mismatch is consistent between the srd, nethys and the physical copy last time I checked.

I cannot discern if they meant for it to work interchangeably for either person, or if they truly meant for it to only work for yourself off of your own attack and forgot to amend the table description. It doesn't help that it's unclear what it means by "the first time you attack". Does it mean in this combat? In this round? In this lifetime against this unique enemy? I personally think it would mean "This particular instance of being adjacent to an ally who also has this feat", since that makes the most sense to me, but others may think differently. How you interrupt this feat could mean that if you're adjacent to the target of you Soul-Piercing Gaze and they happen to take one of their AoOs you may have to decide right then and there if you want to take your Pack Attack 5-foot step or potentially lose it for the remainder of the round/turn/combat.

I have to head out but I'll drop by again once I get some time later to look at the feats again.