Your character’s general moral and personal attitudes are represented by alignment. Each alignment represents broad range of personality types or personal philosophies, so two characters of the same alignment can be quite different from each other. In addition, few people are completely consistent: good characters can lose their tempers, neutral characters can be inspired to noble acts, etc.
Each character’s alignment is made up of his/her position on 2 dimensions: Good, vs. Evil (with neutral inbetween) and Law vs. Chaos (also with neutral inbetween).
Law vs. Chaos (Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic)
“Law” implies honour, trustworthiness, obedience to authority and reliability. On the downside lawfulness can include close-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, judgementalness and lack of adaptability. “Chaos” implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, chaos can include recklessness, resentment toward legitimate authority, arbitrary actions and irresponsibility. People who are neutral with respect to law and chaos have a normal respect for authority and feel neither a compulsion to obey nor to disobey. Neutrality with respect to law and chaos is usually just a middle state, but some few neutrals espouse neutrality as superior to law or chaos, regarding each as extreme with its own blindspots and drawbacks.
I am happy for your characters to pick either Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic for this dimension of alignment.
Good vs. Evil (Good, Neutral, Evil)
“Good” implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others. Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil characters simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualm if doing so is convenient, others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil master. People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make personal sacrifices to help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships: they may sacrifice themselves for family but not unrelated strangers. Being neutral between good and evil usually represents a lack of commitment one way or the other, but for some it represents an active commitment to a balanced view (eg. Druids). These folk maintain that a balance between the two is the proper place for people, or at least for them.
Your characters should be either Good or Neutral (Evil is not allowed for player characters). Given that D&D adventures generally involve a certain amount of heroics, a Good alignment is often the easiest to justify taking part in many quests – a good character will have no issue claiming a reward for the rescue of the Talgen and Kerowyn Hucrele, but they might be further motivated by the opportunity to rescue Sir Braford and the ranger Karakas even though no reward has been offered.
Neutral alignments can often work with a bit of thought, however. Most neutrals would rather see good prevail than evil, and often rewards (see above) can stimulate their more altruistic sides. Because evil is more likely to despoil nature than good, neutral druids may well ally with good adventurers. While a Lawful Neutral cleric of St. Cuthbert may not have the compassion of a good aligned character their uncompromising battle against evil is likely to ally them with good heroes also.
The Nine Alignments (in brief, see page 89 of PHB for Detail.).
Lawful Good: combines honour with compassion. Eg. All paladins, most dwarves.
Neutral Good: does what is right without bias towards or against order.
Chaotic Good: combines a good heart with a free spirit. Eg. Most elves
Lawful Neutral: reliable and honourable without being swayed by demands of those in need or temptations of evil.
Neutral: Either a lack or conviction or bias or an active commitment to a balanced approach.
Chaotic neutral: freedom from both society’s restrictions and the do-gooder’s zeal.
Lawful evil: represents domineering, intentional and hierarchical evil.
Neutral evil: evil without honour and without variation.
Chaotic evil: destruction not just of beauty and life bit of the order on which beauty and life depend.
Where We are At:
As a human fighter, Tam can choose any non-evil alignment. (None currently chosen)
As a human fighter, Tam can choose any non-evil alignment. (None currently chosen)
As an elven wizard, Lareth can choose any non-evil alignment. (You have currently chosen Chaotic Good, which makes sense given elves are generally Chaotic Good and the chief Elven deity, Correlon the good of art, war, and magic, is chaotic good.)
As an elven druid Oreth can be either Neutral, Neutral Good, Chaotic Neutral or Lawful Neutral. (Currently chosen Chaotic Neutral. Elves are generally Chaotic Good).
As a human cleric of St. Cuthbert, Gregory can be either Lawful Neutral or Lawful Good. (Currently chosen Lawful Neutral, which matches the alignment of St. Cuthbert himself)
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