I’d agree it’s counterintuitive that a system that seems intended to reward roleplay can in some situations apparently do the opposite. Not that I’d encounter many examples like that given by the OP in a single player game, as I’d more likely not do things that felt out of character for my PC, but in a multiplayer game I guess the current background-based system could have our Cleric of Selune character inspired by a party member destroying the gem when more likely they’d be appalled. I think we get some examples a bit like this with virtual party members: I have to squint a bit to make sense of Lae’zel being inspired by saving everyone at the grove gates or helping the incompetent tiefling swordsman, for example.
I’d certainly not object if the system were made more sophisticated, though on the other hand it’s not a priority for me and I am okay to be pragmatic to handwave and/or stretch logic for the occasional oddity. I find the background-based system works pretty well in the majority of cases, there’s no obvious (to me) easy systematic way to establish exceptions so eliminating them feels like it would take a lot of work on a case-by-case basis, and even if huge amounts of work were put into it it feels as though there’d still be niggles as not every crucial roleplay aspect of our characters is represented in-game. Perhaps there is a cost/benefit justification for at least some improvements to the inspiration system, but it’s not something I’d particularly agitate for.
That all said, there might be a way of addressing issues specifically like that raised by the OP systematically if there were a mechanic for tagging certain actions as in accord (or not) with different deities’ prescriptions and that trumped the inspiration system where they clashed. Such a mechanic might be a nice-to-have anyway especially for clerics, paladins and monks (including the latter two classes as I think they should be able to pick deities too), and help bring to life their relationships with their gods. But obviously that’s not going to happen if it’s not already planned, and feels rather unlikely given we’ve not seen any indication of it. And it would open another can of worms as the game would then need to decide whether to permit clerics to flout dictates of their deity, and if it did then it would raise expectations that the game had some sort of mechanic for consequences of that (analogous to that for paladin oathbreaking).
But I’m definitely going off on a tangent now!
