Hero Traits (Evil, Plutocratic, Altruistic etc), how do I get them and what do they do?

I'm intrigued by the new perk system in The Protectors. I have *some* familiarity with it now - the Proficiency you select will give your entire faction a bonus (Speed Proficiency gives +2% speed to all units per level) as well as unlocking a perk you can actively spec points in to (for example, Spellcasting gives the Traditionalist/Experimentalist perk - you can go both directions, Traditionalist raises spellcasting success and increases mana cost, while Experimentalist lowers spellcasting success but also lowers mana cost). Aside from that, you can also spec into your class' innate weapon skill (Staffs for mage types, melee weapons for fighters, etc).

What I don't really understand is the other six traits/perks you can unlock. You can't rank them up when you level up and nowhere I've found in the game seems to explain what they do.

I've noticed I have 5 points in Evil, and I seem to get one whenever I blow up a Shrine or a Mausoleum in enemy territory to stop those pesky enemy heroes from pulling more units/resources out of thin air. What this does, I'm not entirely sure.
However, I'm playing Knights at the moment, and all Knight units have the "Good" alignment. Interestingly enough though, my hero now has an outright Evil alignment, and all my Knight units have the "Good Evil" alignment, which probably means that both Archons and Demons can do double damage to them. But I don't actually know.

I have no idea how to get the other character traits, or what they do.
The others are "Traitor", "Plutocratic", "Altruistic", and "Daring".

I probably don't want the "Traitor" tag, but the other three look nice to have. Do I need to find more ingame quests from the Shrines and Mausoleums?

Perks are a work in progress, but you can see their effects from the file the protectors/english/perks.txt. The ones uninvestable can only be modified by certain quest, events and campaign choices (for example, you become more daring if you kill a lot of units with your hero).

Took a look at what the perks consist of, and almost all of them are mixed bags, which does keep things interesting. For example, Aristocratic (Increases unit cost by +5%, decreases production time by 7%) would suck for an Elven race or Demons - because Wisp spam would get more expensive and Demons already produce units insanely quickly (have you SEEN how quickly the AI can produce Reapers? It's literally one unit every three seconds!) - but it'd be great for Knights, because they could get their Cavaliers and Paladins out onto the field faster and you wouldn't have to build stables covering 30% of the map to get enough heavy cavalry for your late game wrecking crew.
Ironically, it's the Traitor perk (and it's counter, Advocate) that sounded bad that actually instead don't seem to come with their own downsides.

Daring is nice - kill more enemies with your hero, you and all your units have a higher chance of scoring critical hits - 1% per point of Daring. It has a downside though, that enemies also have a 1% higher chance of scoring crits on you and all your units. If anything, it'd actually be rather bad for a hero with a low base combat score who gets into fights a lot (such as an Assassin, perhaps?) to have the Daring perk, while there are few downsides for a Warrior, Monk or Chieftain who'll be dishing out crits left and right. For the same reason, I'm sure Minotaurs and Barbarians would love it, while Fey and Wood Elves would want to avoid it as much as possible.

You might have changed some things, but I remember alignment traits (Good AND Evil) being purely negative - it only allows certain units to do double damage to you, and special abilities to target you. For example, my Knights can probably now get wiped by Cathedrals using the Holy Word ability. We're going to find out, because I accidentally pissed off my own race by doing the Knight Hunt in Troll Country... which means I get to invade Siria while playing as maybe the Barbarians or one of the Elven races.

If it's still purely negative, then I suppose it's my fault to begin with for cynically destroying religious buildings just to deny my enemy advantages :^)

Talinoth wrote:

You might have changed some things, but I remember alignment traits (Good AND Evil) being purely negative - it only allows certain units to do double damage to you, and special abilities to target you.

We did change some things. Units don't get smite evil/good anymore and alignment-based spells affect all alignments now.