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r/DnD • … • u/Kuro_Neko00

Help me nail down the alignment of a character concept

The character is a drow and proud of it. She has no issues with how drow society is run, though she has no real interest dealing with politics or knifing people in the back to get ahead. Her profession is as an underdark wilds guide/scout. The underdark wilds are her one and only love. She wouldn't consider leaving them for anything. She'll accept (most) anyone as clients and is willing to accept a moderate amount of risk on their behalf, as long as she doesn't feel they've wronged her. She'll steal anything that's not nailed down if she feels she can get away with it, though she won't steal from active clients. She'll happily engage price gouging though. If a situation looks to be taking a turn for the worse she'll work to minimize danger to herself at the expense of others. She'll hold off cutting and running as late as possible to avoid burning bridges but once the writing is on the wall she's gone. She's willing to do good for others as long as it doesn't cost her anything; Friends in odd places can be useful.

The character has the racial superiority complex most of her kind do. As far as she's concerned drow are the pinnacle and all others are lesser races. While she doesn't mind interacting with, or even working for, members of (most) other races she will be casually dismissive of them. She is also misandristic, though she will maintain a minimum professional courtesy, at least for drow males, as long as they don't claim to be better than her at the things she's good at.

This character is also a devout follower of Lolth. She accepts that the teachings of Lolth are right and true. This leads to the '(most)'s above: she hates surface elves. While she doesn't actively hunt them, if confronted with them she will go to considerable effort, and risk, to kill them. It doesn't have to be in battle, and in fact the opposite is preferred. If she can feasibly take one alive and deliver them to the priestesses for sacrifice she'll do that instead. She has no guilt over any of the surface elves she might kill, warriors or civilians alike. The exception is children, who she will kill but would feel remorse over, and given a plausible excuse will avoid it. So far in the character's history the issue of civilians or children hasn't come up, and probably won't since there's no reason for either of those to be in the underdark and she'd need an order from Lolth herself to leave it.

Everything but the last paragraph says chaotic neutral to me. But that last paragraph is at best neutral evil, probably chaotic evil. So what say you? Does one bad apple spoil the bunch when it comes to alignment? Or does majority rule? Or am I completely off-base and the whole thing is neutral or chaotic evil? Do thoughts or actions dictate alignment? If a character honestly thought "I'd kill a child in X situation" but X situation never happens are they still evil?

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