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Our group is working together at character creation to make sure the entire team has both the stealth skill and the stealth synergy feat. The plan is that rather than split the party with one character scouting ahead, we all keep together and hopefully reliably get surprise on the enemy.
It's been a long time since I last played so I'm asking what other tricks we can use to keep our sneakyness up to the task. We've already decided to use traits to ensure that stealth is a class skill for everyone, and we're looking at spells like blessing of the mole (+2 stealth and darkvision for the whole team) to buff the team. Any other suggestions?
Hellcat stealth. Stealth effectively doesn't work without it.
EVERYONE gets darkvision. You're not sneaking up on anything if you're carrying a torch.
Sorcerer over wizard for this. Have the Sorcerer be a shadow bloodline. That ability effectively gives him HiPS with a dimension door ability.
Because of the skill point requirements I would consider clerics, fighters, paladins, and non-sage sorcerers off the table.
You want a bard. All the benefits of silence with almost none of the penalties.
Or possibly a Samsaran witch or wizard to get the spell in question at level 7 rather than level 10. The lack of darkvision is a problem, though.
The bard under Zone of Silence does not need to silence his spells (which is a good thing since bards can't). He can use message to talk to people so he never has to dismiss it. The wizard standing next to him doesn't have to silence his spells either. He can use audible inspire competence on people standing next to him while stealthing, which means he can boost the party's stealth skill if needed. Since the radius is only 5' and it centers on a corner of the bard's square he can shift it around so he can also stand next to someone without letting them into the zone. From the silence spell, though ZoS doesn't reference it directly, we know that magically inaudible people get +4 to stealth checks, and again ZoS can cover multiple people.
Bards also have most of the other stealth spells, but wizards get them sooner. Still, having them on spontaneous cast eventually lets the wizard prepare other things.
It is actually not that skill intensive. You just need a high Stealth score (not that hard to do). With a shadow Sorcerer, you can very easily end up with a stealth roll even higher than the party rogue's (I believe it is Umbral that gives you some bonuses to stealth)
Stealth synergy is already amazingly powerful without much more focus than you already described. Assuming 4 lv1 pcs each have a trait that makes stealth a class skill and gives a +1 and all put 1 rank into stealth, your group stealth roll is (best of 4d20)+20 before counting dex modifiers and acps. At level 1.
Oh! If stealth is going to be your game, you probably want to abuse the darkness spell. Combine the sorcerer darkness spell with things like the Shadow Sorcerer's ability to swap places with people in dim light, the fetchling's DD ability (if you took the feat), and the shadow dancer abilities and you can get a nasty team. The moonlight stalker chain might be interesting to look at too.
Save on feats if level 3 or more: only Holy Tactician need Stealth Synergy.
Fun party for Greensting Slayer Magus with Dark Shifter arcana?
Dampen Presence feat to take care of blindsense/blindsight.