Much to my surprise, several of the other players ganged up on me during last weekend's game.
Our group was losing a hard battle against a hoard of undead that insisted on using coup de grace against the PCs every time they fell (even while threatened). Finally when my character went down, I was asked if I wanted to use his last two hero points to "not die." I said it didn't matter, as the ghouls would likely just continue trying to kill him in the following round, and that I will save those points in the hopes of saving someone else (or myself if the opportunity presented itself in some other way).
Suddenly one of the other players accused me of being a hypocrite, reminding the entire table "of that time you spent over half an hour arguing against the GM about killing off your character who had already used two hero points to not die" (essentially defeating the whole point of using hero points to dramatically survive).
Thing is, the GM who I argued with before--the same one whose characters would shoot you in the head the moment they realized the first bullet caught on your sheriff's badge--was the same one hosting during this particular game.
I said I wouldn't bother taking that particular option because I'm already familiar with the GM's play style and knew what was coming. And, somehow, that makes me a bad guy. It was not long before the other players were swayed to the same stance as the one who spoke out. Though it was only a brief interruption this time and the game went on (ultimately leading to a TPK), I'm still left to wonder...
...what gives?
What exactly did I do wrong to warrant any of that?
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It was a stressful situation for the party; no one likes seeing the inevitable TPK coming at them. Stressful situations breed stressed people and stressed people lash out in anger at anything near them. Not knowing the specifics of your dynamic with the group and if this is an isolated event, I'd let it slide. Of course, if they do this often, then you might want to have a talk.
Yeah, that may be all it was.
Based on this thread and the last one, I suggest you might take a short break from your group and decide if you want to continue with them in the future. You might also look into playing a session or two with another group, to have something to compare your group to.
This next part is going out on a limb, but here goes. I don't know what the actual dynamic is in your group, but if you have become your group's "omega" then you should get out of there and find a group that more closely matched your dispostion. In my last group, there was one player who was at odds with another player (a close friend of mine) at the table for years. When my friend left the group, this player seemed to focus his attention on me. The strange thing was that in real life we got along well and acted like adults, but all of his characters verbally abused all of my characters. No one else did. It was a strange, kind of pathetic dynamic. I didn't mind at first and had fun with it, because I figured it was role-play - a department he didn't excel in (I was a warforged, he was a cannith artificer). By the third campaign I confronted him and he blew it off, only marginally cutting back. C'est la vie.
I not familiar with hero points (never used them,) but are they a character resource or a player resource? If it is a character resource, i.e., something that the character utilizes by way of his being a hero (or however it is described,) then I can see how your decision rankled the other group members.
What was the goal of saving the points? Its not clear from your post.
My gut feeling is that if a character is about to die, and he has some resource at his disposal that will prevent his death, he will use it 99% of the time. Not doing so smacks of metagaming or "I want to show this GM my disapproval of his way of doing things by acting out of character."
Hero Points are pretty explicitly a metagame resource, given that only PCs ever get them, and there's no in-game explanation for that.
That's not accurate - on a quick review of the rules, there are ways NPCs can get them. Second, do you consider feats to be a metagame resource? If not, you can choose to get a feat instead of hero points.
Seems pretty clear to me that these are character resources. There are spells that grants hero points, feats that enhance hero points, etc.
So I would tend to agree with the OP's group - the character should have tried to save himself.
That said, the real reason the group is upset could be many different things. Probably best to give them some time to cool down and then just ask them to explain to you what the issue is. Get them to delineate the problems they had with your (OP)'s actions. That will take out the guess work.
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Sounds like they're making excuses to try to get you to quit rather than growing a pair and addressing the situation correctly.
Them getting mad because you're sacrificing yourself to potentially save their skins makes no sense.
Sounds like they're making excuses to try to get you to quit rather than growing a pair and addressing the situation correctly.
Them getting mad because you're sacrificing yourself to potentially save their skins makes no sense.
You might be jumping the gun a little on that one... Like Murphy said, a TPK is a stressful situation. People can often times act irrationally when presented with a lot of stress. It's very possible that they were just taking the situation out on RD because him and his hero points were the center of attention at that point.
Not to say that they were right in what they did (they weren't), but I think it's a big much to claim Evil Conspiracy on this situation.
So I would tend to agree with the OP's group - the character should have tried to save himself.
Except that is not at all the point of contention. I was trying to save myself. I just didn't think spending two hero points to avoid death was the way to do it, since the GM has a history of killing characters who do that anyways (especially when there is still danger about).
Better to spend it to act out of turn to avoid getting knocked out, or use it from the floor to save another.
Worst thing I could be accused of, is using metagame knowledge about the GM to aid in deciding what happens to the character.
Except that is not at all the point of contention. I was trying to save myself. I just didn't think spending two hero points to avoid death was the way to do it, since the GM has a history of killing characters who do that anyways (especially when there is still danger about).
As I mentioned before, I'm not incredibly familiar with hero points. How does your character use one if your character is dead? I assume your character has to do something/take some kind of action in order to utilize the hero points?
Based on your description, it sounds like you broke an unwritten rule at the table. It sounds like a classic example of bad metagaming, but you know you're group better than we do - why do YOU think they're ALL upset at your decision?
Here are the rules for hero points.
It does not take an action to use. A character can spend 2 hero points to cheat death. How this plays out is up to the GM, but generally the character is left alive, with negative hit points but stable. For example, a character is about to be slain by a critical hit from an arrow. If the character spends 2 hero points, the GM decides that the arrow pierced the character's holy symbol, reducing the damage enough to prevent him from being killed, and that he made his stabilization roll at the end of his turn. Cheating death is the only way for a character to spend more than 1 hero point in a turn. The character can spend hero points in this way to prevent the death of a familiar, animal companion, eidolon, or special mount, but not another character or NPC.