People have, historically and recently, done horribly bigoted, terribly violent, extremely dangerous, or just plain stupid things because of their devotion. Many people are
really devoted to their faith and because of that, have performed terrible acts of bigotry--and many believe that by performing those acts, they are keeping innocents safe. And many of these people have done so knowing that they are breaking laws or are at risk of being killed, and choose to continue to do so, seeing themselves as a martyr to the cause.
Strong devotion to a causes--almost any cause--is
not in and of itself an inherently good thing, and the best way to reflect this is to change the list of things that grant inspiration to include "willing to perform terrible acts in the name of your beliefs (so long as it benefits your allies or moves the story forward, a la Chaos)."
Well, you don't
have to turn into another creature if you don't want to.
OTOH, this is FantasyLand, and perhaps when one truly finds redemption they
do turn into something else. Look at Beauty and the Beast (at least the Disney version; been a while since I read the real story), where the prince was cursed to be a beast but when he managed to redeem himself, he became a prince again.
Or you could simply rewrite your character sheet to reflect your new status. If you played a really evil guy--say, an Assassin rogue, a Conquest or Oathbreaker paladin, a vile Necromancer, or an evil fighter or barbarian--then perhaps you can switch or reroll your stats and be a Redemption paladin or a Life cleric or that Mercy monk that's going to be in Tasha's instead. You've truly sworn off that part of your life and can no longer access the powers you once had.
Heck, you could say that you
were an angel, and because you killed a brother-angel, your superiors turned you into a mortal until you could prove yourself worthy of forgiveness.
It's not necessarily a
perfect fit, but are there really d6 Motivations for Redemption? Let's see...
- Complete redemptive deeds commanded by the gods (a la Hercules)
- Pay a weregild--which might be rolled into the above, and likely isn't a major issue for most parties. The weregild would have to be extraordinary: you can't just bring back a bunch of gold; you have to bring back the giant diamond being hoarded by the evil dragon Xarthranum.
- Bring the dead people back to life or free them from whatever curse has befallen them--my character for an upcoming Icewind Dale game has feels guilty that they were unable to properly warn against a particular monster attack, and now their tribe is all either dead of turned into werewolves, and one of their goals is to find the survivors and remove the curse.
Can you think of a few more? ATM, I'm stuck.