Character Idea: Naiive Chaotic Neutral Cleric of Lolth

[MonkeySage]

My idea is that she believes, wholeheartedly, in the survival of the fittest mentality of most drow. She's been trained since childhood for this role, and is around about 70ish years old at this point- fairly young and very naiive. She's chaotic neutral, and while she believes in survival of the fittest she has moments where she demonstrates genuine kindness towards others. She doesn't believe in needless cruelty, and she's friendly towards others. It just happens that she serves a senselessly cruel and evil goddess(two things she vehemently rejects- she doesn't think Lolth is evil). She's just bought the party line that competition among the drow makes them stronger.

I think a lower wisdom score could help reflect her naivety.

[Wizard_Lizard]

I've done a similar thing with a half-orc zealot barbarian devoted to Gruumsh!

[hamishspence]

My idea is that she believes, wholeheartedly, in the survival of the fittest mentality of most drow. She's been trained since childhood for this role, and is around about 70ish years old at this point- fairly young and very naiive. She's chaotic neutral, and while she believes in survival of the fittest she has moments where she demonstrates genuine kindness towards others. She doesn't believe in needless cruelty, and she's friendly towards others. It just happens that she serves a senselessly cruel and evil goddess(two things she vehemently rejects- she doesn't think Lolth is evil). She's just bought the party line that competition among the drow makes them stronger.

I think a lower wisdom score could help reflect her naivety.

Liriel Baenre of the Starlight and Shadows series was very much this in the first book - less naive though.

[OldTrees1]

So in stereotypical Drow priestess society there are opportunities to get ahead over sabotaging a rival to fall out of lolth's favor, or murder someone higher up the ranks.

I suspect this naive priestess is unaware of those practices but was not a good target for sabotage (fewer attempts, fewer successful attempts) and is blissfully unaware of the murders. This also makes me suspect she is the youngest daughter. It also makes me suspect the houses immediately weaker than hers are weaker by a decent margin. This might be near the top (Baenre), near the bottom (maybe even the bottom?), or an unusual coincidence in the middle.

Did she avoid learning about the house struggles? Or does she see the city as multiple warring tribes rather than a single city full of codified murder? If it is the former, maybe that speaks to a period of paranoid peace, or maybe it speaks to a period of abnormally successful house struggles? If it is the latter then maybe she will be surprised at the size of aboveground nations being larger than 1 house.

I suspect this also means her house was further than normal away from the rest of the houses. That decreases the chance of witnessing anything.

She sounds like someone that is hard for others to fool (making her a harder target of opportunity), but struggles to see past her preconceptions (causing her to recontextualize things). This makes me think medium wisdom, high charisma, persuasion proficiency, and no insight proficiency. She has enough of an edge to give her a defense but she can easily overpower herself.

[RifleAvenger]

Lolth's original sales pitch to the proto-elves was "greatness," bundled with a lot of nasty addendum's underneath the gleam. "Positive qualities of ambition" would be a fitting aspect for this character.