But this is in itself as question about the nature of morality -- do we judge moral actions by intent or outcome? I've always thought of D&D as intent based -- Silvanus might agree with a consequentialist pov but Lathander wouldn't.
Reactive / contextual morality fits pretty neatly into "neutral" territory and should have implications. If you want to wield a holy sword you should have to give up other choices (like taking the ability score buff from the hag)
D&D's approach is....inconsistent.
Whenever they've printed rules on shifting alignments, its been fairly heavy act-focused because the past systems have never really cared about the intention behind an act just that an act happened because that's easier to build a system around.
But novels and descriptions have been fairly intent-focused.
Such as the difference between just killing someone and murdering someone is the intent behind things. So like, if you kill someone as part of an effort to protect somebody or something then you didn't murder because your goal wasn't to cause death but to prevent harm. But if you're protecting someone partially because you hate their enemies and this is a chance to kill them, that's murder. Neither is good, but one is sin and the other isn't. (note that my upbringing is mostly Catholic American with a bit of oddball philosophy here and there). Anything pointing toward good would be the willingness to put yourself in danger on behalf of someone else.
However, there is no way for D&D alignment to be entirely intent-based because otherwise you couldn't really sell your soul and have it stick on its own....or have your soul damned by having stolen by a demon. Because in an entirely intent-driven morality, it has to be the soul's own choices that condemn it.
On the matter of selling one's soul to a devil or other entity. That's an action and many people enter a deal with devils with the best of intentions. Now, a devilish contract introduces a factor which is going to heavily push someone towards a slippery slope of questionable intent and eventually outright sin, so that could be one explanation if it were not explicit that the contract is binding even if the signer dies with having never done anything they intended to cause harm.
Likewise, you could just be hanging out as a soul waiting to be taken in by your god or judged by the god of death if you have no god (hope you weren't living in Faerun in that case) and some demon can just raid the area and snatch you away for torment. Or you might fall to a succubus's magic and life-draining. Or made into a vampire spawn...or anything else in that general theme of ways you can be damned without committing any sin.
So, from a standpoint of my upbringing, the Upper and Lower Planes aren't so much good and evil because they don't care about your actual intent so much.
I tend to view them as Love vs Hate which are both powerful forces that are still abstract but are closer to being possible to vaguely quantify....and Love is going to heavily encourage behavior and attitudes that are good and same with Hate being something that can heavily push one toward evil actions and behavior.
Being constantly victimized by personified Hate can push you to hate as well. And being soothed by personified Love can heal you.
So it sort of works to read D&D Good as Love and D&D Evil as Hate.
Law and Chaos are equally poorly named but I've ranted enough.
