It can be quite overwhelming for new players to navigate the complicated first hours of your campaign. There are so many mechanics to understand, currencies to earn and spend and systems to comprehend, that it takes hours to fully grasp the gameplay. And few variables affect gameplay more than your rulers’ personality traits.

This Tier List/Mini Guide purpose is to elaborate on the 36 personality traits of Paradox Interactives Crusader Kings III (2020), explain which traits is useful in which scenario, how they generally affect gameplay, and which ones are best avoided. This guide is by no means exhaustive and is more so supposed to give an easy-to-understand overview of the CK3 personality traits. With almost 1000 hours in CK3 I believe to have a decent understanding of the game and its mechanics and may hopefully share some of my insights with less experienced players. This guide assumes, that you have every DLC installed which was released prior to Chapter IV and that you have played at least for a little while. More obscure game mechanics will be explained. Everything in this Tier List/Guide is solely concerned with the Crusader Kings III game, which depicts the medieval period and therefore all the religions and cultures of that period. Any comments about these religions and cultures is only ment to taken in reference to the ingame representation of these actual religions and cultures as created by Paradox Interactive. Furthermore, torture, murder, executing and seducing are game mechanics in the Crusader Kings III game and therefore will also be discussed in this Tier List.

To begin, I would like to give a general overview of what personality traits are in CK3. For the most part, they are the largest factor in influencing your characters basic stats: Diplomacy, Martial, Education, Stewardship and Intrigue. They matter most in the early game but can still be vital in affecting how you play well into the late game. Usually, a character has three different personality traits, although in rare instances personality traits can be lost or gained. Personality traits are usually acquired during the first 16 years of a character’s life. When the player characters start as a child, you can choose between usually three different personality traits at certain points in your adolescence. At these points, a semi-random event will occur during which you can choose between three different traits that always appear in the same constellation (f. ex. One event, when appearing, will always give you the choice between Paranoid, Craven or Shy). As an adult, you have a relatively large influence on your heirs’ traits when being their guardian. Choosing the “Influence Wards Personality” allows you to “inherit” one of your player characters personality traits to your wards with a certain likelihood depending on their childhood education trait. When starting a campaign, historical characters personality traits can be locked while others are randomized. Some personality traits are mutually exclusive (such as diligent and lazy). Certain cultural traditions (such as Pragmatic Creed for diligent) affect the likelihood of a personality trait appearing in characters of that culture, while certain religious tenets (such as Hedonistic making glutenous a virtue and temperate a sin) turn personality traits into virtues or sins, giving them an additional buff or debuff. Additionally, certain cultural traditions (such as Monastic Communities for temperate) give additional bonuses to certain personality traits.



Each personality trait has a certain cost when chosen in the character creator, but the character creator will not be considered when ranking and explaining the personality traits. Also, the "Opinion of same/opposite trait character" modifiers will not be discussed, because they hardly ever matter. The traits are ranked from “universally useful” (S-Tier) to “never useful” (F-Tier). Certain traits have a use case only for certain playstyles or scenarios, those are in most cases ranked in the middle tiers. I personally considered stewardship to be the most important skill, because regardless which playstyle you choose you will always need money and the punishment for having low stewardship are the harshest compared to the other skills (at the very least you would want to have 8 stewardship on any character). Meaning, a trait that reduces your stewardship needs a BIG upside to be still considered good. Certain traits give you access to unique perks, those are ranked higher compared to those that merely give skill points as particularly in the late game you will be given ample opportunity to fix your stats through inheritable traits and artifacts. With all that out of the way, lets get right to it.

Its likely not a particularly controversial opinion to put diligent at the very top. For a largely irrelevant -50% stress loss (meaning, the amount of stress being lost from events and activities is reduced by half) you’ll get +8 skill points. This trait alone gives you a notable increase in piety, prestige, income and general opinion along with a host of additional bonuses through increasing your skills. And if that wasn’t enough, you’ll get a decision to increase the development in your capital for a small amount of stress. And even that is hardly a negative because for the most part, you would want to have one stress level to gain the bonuses from education perks such as Golden Aplomb (Stewardship Tree) or Thriving in Chaos (Intrigue Tree) for an insignificant downside (-10% Fertility). Additionally, diligent doesn’t cause stress on any common decision, but may cause stress for certain court events. An absolute necessity when playing tall or trying to increase your development as much as possible. And even when playing an intrigue or martial character, the additional gold and prestige are always useful. This personality trait has basically no downside, but insane upsides. There are few scenarios where you’d pick it over any other trait. The closest thing to a downside is that no religion considers diligent to be a virtue, but even then, a lot of great cultural traditions (such as Water Rituals or Pragmatic Creed) give diligent additional bonuses. Truly an absurd and wholly unbalanced personality trait that really has no competition.


Similar to diligent, ambitious gives you a lot of skill points for a small downside. This trait is essentially the “quick” inheritable perk, but stacks with it. It’s the definition of “universally useful”, there is no playstyle that wouldn’t appreciate the bonuses. However, while few, ambitious does have disadvantages. Negative Opinion of Liege is irrelevant, in most cases you would prefer to be independent, meaning you’ll have no liege. Reduced stress loss is preferable to increased stress gain (meaning, that when a stress increasing event occurs, your stress increased by an additional fourth), because you are fully in control of when you reduce your stress through activities and certain decisions (such as exposing a secret as a just character) and can therefore plan around it. However, there are a lot of unavoidable events, such as a friend or family member dying, that increase stress by a lot, and you can do precious little about it. This can lead to situations where your stress shots up uncontrollably when a lot goes wrong at the same time, and you’ll be forced to take unwanted coping mechanisms. Ambitious also causes certain common decisions, most annoyingly signing a White Peace during offensive wars (which sometimes is absolutely necessary to avoid crippling debt), to increase your stress. Overall, the downsides are however manageable, and the upsides are absolutely worth it. Just try to avoid the ambitious, diligent, paranoid character unless you like spending your entire characters life at max stress level.

Temperate this high up may be a controversial choice, however I personally believe temperate to be among the best personality traits in the game and I do have my reasons. The upsides to temperate seem relatively small but are substantial. The increased stewardship is always nice. The health boost is to your actual health, notably not to your disease resistance meaning it’ll be constantly active and will allow you to live longer and survive illnesses more reliably. The downside is non-existent, as hosting a feast increases the opinion of your courtly vassals significantly more than the opinion of any other vassal type. That alone would probably put is somewhere in the mid to lower tiers. Temperate however is a made a virtue through probably the best religious tenet: Monasticism. Playing a religion with the monasticism tenet is playing the early and midgame on easy mode. Monasticism allows you to ask your unwanted heirs to take the vows, removing them from the line of inheritance. If they don’t want to take their vows willingly, just throw them in prison and make them take their vows. It does not work when your children are already holding a title and comes at a cost, 150 Legitimacy and 350 Piety, however it is A LOT cheaper than disinheriting which also comes at a cost to your legitimacy as well as prestige and – more importantly – renown. Renown is very difficult to generate in the early game unless you start as one of the already great houses whilst legitimacy becomes increasingly more relevant in the late game but is relatively inconsequential in the early game. “Cleaning up” your line of inheritance is incredibly important as the vast majority of realms start of the with the Confederate Partition succession law, meaning all your children will inherit equal and the realm will split up into many small realms upon your death, which is a real nuisance to clean up afterwards with your primary heir. Later in the game you’ll get access to more ways to prevent this from happening, but even than few are more effective and cheaper than just having monasticism as one of your tenets and forcing your children to be monks. As a result, I rarely play a game where temperate is not a virtue giving it an additional +10 same-faith opinion bonus and +1.0 monthly piety. You can further boost the acceptance chance of asking to take the vows, by establishing the Monastic Communities cultural tradition which makes temperate even better. Often, highborn monks end up as your theocratic vassal, further stabilizing your realms as your children will (mostly) have a positive opinion of you. It is clearly not as powerful as the traits in S-Tier but occupies such a unique mechanical niche that I couldn’t help myself put to put it at the top of A-Tier.


Stubborn is basically “boring good” and quite similar to temperate. It trades one more point of stewardship for disease resistance (meaning the health bonus will only apply when having an illness). Stubborn isn’t turned into a virtue or a sin by any religious tenet. It does grant small combat bonuses for a handful of traditions, such as Winter Warriors, but those buffs are largely insignificant. However, the downsides are mostly non-existent. As mentioned above, negative liege opinion becomes irrelevant fairly early in the game as in most cases you would want to be an independent ruler. The negative opinion modifier for courtly, parochial and minority vassals are largely irrelevant. Courtly vassals can be placated easily by the occasional feast. Having minority vassals is fully under your control as you can simply not grant titles to characters from a different faith or culture (which is advisable anyways). Therefore, only the parochial vassal opinion modifier is a little annoying, but little more. A reliable, but unexciting personality trait that you can’t go wrong with.


Greedy is arguably the best perk when your goal is to make as much money as possible. Increasing your monthly income by 15% for the little cost of -10% fertility is absurd, particularly when stacked with Golden Aplomb increasing your monthly income by an insane 25%. You can further stack this effect with artifacts and the collect taxes councillor task, causing your income to completely explode… Well, in the late game. In the early game, this perk is a lot less effective. You must first build up your infrastructure in your holdings, before the real power of this personality trait kicks in. This can take well into the midgame, depending on what it is your planning to do, f. ex. if you start as a tribal or if you want to start as a specific character but want to be the ruler of a realm at the other end of the world. And during the early game, the reduced diplomacy hurts quite a bit, particularly as a tribal when prestige is your primary currency. Additionally, being forced to be at high stress levels for this personality trait to have any notable effect can have some unwanted side effects, such as being forced to take an unwanted coping mechanism when your stress gets too high because of something outside of your control. All Islamic religions consider it a sin as well, making it even worse in the early game in the Islamic regions. It also causes stress when giving away anything, including when granting vassals, which is absolutely required when trying to build a stable realm. Greedy is this high up because at its maximum potential it has likely the largest impact out of any personality trait, but at its minimum potential, well its pretty forgettable.


On first glance, cynical seems fairly balanced. +4 skill points for a harsh decrease in your monthly piety seems mostly fair. However, cynical becomes irreplaceable in one certain scenario: When reviving a dead faith. Reviving a dead faith requires hundreds of thousands of piety, you must stack every perk that increases your faith conversion cost to realistically achieve it at all. Cynical grants a -20% Faith conversion cost which can translate into thousands of piety and a lot of money and time saved. Cynical and its counterpart are the only personality traits that affect faith conversion, every other modifier comes from education traits or events, making it quite unique in that aspect. However, as soon as you have revived your dead faith, the faith conversion cost becomes somewhat useless and the negative -20% monthly Piety somewhat annoying. If your character has a sinful trait on top of cynical, you can easily end up with negative monthly piety. The negative zealot vassal opinion is also easily corrected by simply going on a pilgrimage, which you would want to do anyway because of the reduced piety. There are other scenarios in which switching your faith often is useful, f. ex. when playing as a pacifist, because having the same religion as the people around you, makes them easier to vassalize. In that scenario cynical is however by no means required, as switching between existing religions is much cheaper. Intrigue and learning are compared to the other three skills arguably the least useful, because their effect on non-intrigue or -learning characters are minimal and easily replaced. An irreplaceable perk when reviving a dead faith, otherwise only an overall average trait.

Sadistic is frankly, a somewhat mediocre perk if not below average were it not for the last part of the trait description. Being able to use murder schemes against your own children is very useful in fact as this perk is granted only by the sadistic trait. Sadistic is nearly irreplaceable when playing – ironically – a pacifist playthrough. Not being able to declare wars, forces you to grow your realm by inheriting titles or through manipulating your liege. The quickest way under confederate partition to do that is the following: Marry another ruler, have a child of your dynasty with them, murder all children of that ruler born prior, murder your spouse, causing your child to inherit all their mothers/fathers title, then murder your child. This causes the claim to loop back to you, making you inherit whatever title your child held. Sadistic is the only way to enable this. When trying to get the “A.E.I.O.U. and you” Achievement, resetting until Werner of Habsburg has the sadistic trait is absolutely worth it. Outside of pacifist playthroughs however, the trait is good for intrigue characters but not desirable for most other characters. It can be used to clean up your line of inheritance but is by far the most inefficient way to do so. Murder schemes take time and resources, can you wrong and if so, will give you the kin slayer fame & murderer trait. Sadistic is considered a sin by all existing Christian religions, making it a disadvantage in these regions. Prowess is also about the worst bonus a trait can give, because its positive effects are so minimal, is reduced by age and can easily be replaced by weapon or armour artifacts. Dread is useful, because when you intimidate your vassals, they are easier to control. However, dread can very easily be grinded by torturing and executing prisoners without much effort, so the natural dread bonus is also rather useless. The General Opinion -10 hurts a lot, probably one of the harshest downsides out of any trait. Opinion affects everything, marriage and alliance acceptance, imprisonment chance, likelihood to join factions and so much more. For comparison, to gain a constant effect to offset the opinion penalty from sadistic you would require the final Glory Dynasty Legacy. It is only this high up, because it grants you access to a unique and useful perk.

Just is an all-around good trait. Intrigue is probably the best “dump” stat, because you can easily substitute a low intrigue skill with court position such as Bodyguards or with the counter measures. While yes, all these options come at a cost, they are there and easily accessible, which can’t be said about the bonuses granted by f. ex. martial. Unless you want to play specifically an intrigue character, you can safely dump intrigue. And for this inconsequential reduction, you’ll get quite the array of boons. Particularly the initial legitimacy combos well into using Monasticism to get rid of your unwanted heirs. Just is additionally made a virtue by Legalism, one of the better tenets, which gives you huge boosts when a ruler has virtuous traits. Additionally, with both the Jirga and Legalistic cultural tradition Just becomes easily the most impactful personality trait when combined with Legalism. When all buffs come together, your entire realm will absolutely adore you just for having this trait. However, no culture has both traditions, meaning you’ll need to either hybridize or reform your culture, which takes time and resources. And Just sadly has the downside of making a lot of very common actions to cause stress, including starting murder or fabricating hook schemes, both of which can be situationally really important. Overall, the trait is quite good, but reaching its highest hights takes a lot of effort for bonuses that you are not even guaranteed to get.


Lustful is this high up, because it does not have any notable drawbacks. Its only real disadvantage is that it is considered a sin by most Christian religions except for Messalianism (but we don’t talk about Messalianism). Lustful is the only trait that grants additional fertility and +25% is quite substantial. Only the Carnal Exaltation tenet grants a similarly large buff on its own. Having high fertility is always useful, because generally having more children is an advantage. When playing a female character, the more children you have, the likelier you’ll get the “Mothered Many Children”-Modifier, a permanent +5 General Opinion. Also, your goal for the late game should be to have your ruler have as many inheritable traits (such as Genius) as possible, which will take generations. However, because inheriting traits is not a guarantee, but chance based, having a lot of children is increasing the likelihood of at least one of your children inheriting the best possible set of inheritable traits. It’s also advantageous when your player heir is forced to take one of the awful personality traits such as paranoid to have a “back-up plan”. Furthermore, the more dynasty members you have, the more renown you’ll generate passively. While there is a cap (9 for woman, 15 for men with max. number of wives possible), unless you exploit perks like lustful, you will not hit that cap. The Bonus to Seduce Scheme is also useful, because you always want to seduce and then romance your wife/husband to maximize the chance for children. Lustful can also offset the fertility reduction by the first stress level, at which you would want to optimally always be. Dying without an heir can be game ending, dying with a suboptimal heir can set you back hours, so prepare! A nice, very reliable and useful, but overall, not game changing trait.


Craven is one of the more complex traits to discuss, it does have some very apparent downsides and some not so obvious upsides. First the negatives, attraction opinion only affects people that match your player characters sexuality (so when you play as a heterosexual woman, it only affects heterosexual man). However, in my experience playing, attraction opinion modifiers are one of the most common bonuses on artifacts, meaning that you’ll be able to offset this downside really easily. The Glory Hound Vassal Opinion modifier is somewhat annoying as this specific vassal group is placated only through war and tournaments, both expensive. The Prowess penalty is negligible due to weapon and armour artifacts giving a lot of prowess. The martial penalty hurts the most. Martial is the skill that is the hardest to increase outside of heritable and education traits, as the only traits that you can freely decide to get that boosts your martial is the Hastiluder Foot Level 2 trait or the shrewd trait (one of the rarest traits in the game). However, the upsides of craven are absolutely worth it. +10% Scheme Secrecy makes your schemes a lot more likely to work as scheme secrecy makes it less likely for your scheme to breached or agents to be removed. +25% Travel Safety (although its actually just 23% because of the reduction in martial) means that you’ll be able to travel through a lot more baronies without having to pay for your security. Overall, craven will save you a lot of money and resources over the course of a playthrough. The real high point however is the -50% Likelihood of dying in Battle. While yes, prowess and martial affect your performance as a commander, you can still get a sufficiently high martial skill through martial education and other perks like Thriving in Chaos and prowess can be fixed up easily, as said above. Dying unexpectedly is one the worst things that can happen to you during your campaign, but the bonuses from leading your armies yourself are just too good to pass off. Craven gives you an additional safety net, even though there is some obvious negative synergy going on. Craven also gives a negative same-culture opinion modifier through some of the best cultural traditions for warfare, creating some additional negative synergy. Additionally, when playing as a conqueror, craven reduces the chance of the conqueror trait being inherited. It’s a trait that you definitely need to plan around, it does not fit on any character but has some huge and unique upsides.


The newest personality trait and one of the rarer ones. The general monthly lifestyle experience +20% is the obvious amazing part. No matter what your plan is, to really play to any playstyles strength you’ll need the education perks and the quicker you’ll get them, the better. Eccentric is the only personality trait that grants additional monthly lifestyle experience and through that alone deserves a position this high up. However, this trait is otherwise really mediocre. A net zero skill point gain is whatever, stress gain and stress loss don’t cancel each other out exactly, but they basically do. The improved countermeasures are nice, but making your character unkillable through plots is really easy if you have the resources as there seven different court position that make it harder to kill you. And countermeasures are not free either. An overall good, but overall, just merely decent.

Zealous is one of the most recognizable traits because prisoners with this perk will always refuse conversion. On your player character, its pretty good. Increased martial is always good and the huge piety boost will make you swim in piety in the late game, which will shoot up your level of devotion quickly and therefore grant you a lot of useful bonuses. The negative opinion of different faiths can be a hinderance in certain scenarios, however in most cases you would want to have vassals only of your religion to stabilize your realm. And honestly, the neighbouring empire with a different faith having a low opinion of you may even be an advantage in the very late game, because when they declare a war on you and you win that war, you will get A LOT of gold (in the tens of thousands) for very little investment. Having many zealous vassals is also a prerequisite for establishing the By the Sword cultural tradition, arguably the most important tradition for a playthrough with a lot of conquering. Zealous most obvious problem is its negative synergy with learning characters. The increased monthly piety would imply it is a good perk for reforming or reviving a faith, but then the negative faith conversion cost renders this point moot. Its arguably the worst perk for reviving a dead faith but reviving or changing faith is the primary reason to accrue large amounts of piety. A slightly confused trait that doesn’t know what it wants to do. Quite a good pick overall, but disastrous in certain scenarios.


Impatient is a weird trait. For an intrigue character, this trait saves a lot of time. The increased hostile scheme phase length and the expedite scheme decision make your schemes go by very quickly, reducing the chance for your scheme to be discovered before it goes through. The additional prestige is also nice and quite a large bonus. However, percentage-based bonuses become increasingly better the later in the game you acquire them. In the early game, you generally would prefer “flat” bonuses (such as +0.5 monthly prestige). Travel Speed is nice, but a lot less consequential than travel safety because low travel safety causes very harmful events and costs money to prevent. Travel Speed just saves a bit of time, which can be very useful in certain scenarios, but this advantage can also be gained through building the stable building line in any of your holdings. Negative Liege and courtly vassal opinion is largely inconsequential as stated above. The negative parochial vassal opinion is a little harder to fix, but not impossible. Murdering one specific person, fabricating a hook or abducting somebody can be incredibly useful for other playstyles, but the latter two are unlocked only by the intrigue tree, so… Outside of the insane speed that you can chain schemes together with an intrigue playstyle, the perk is just sort of alright.


Gregarious is the final trait that is just good, every following trait has some obvious downside or does not provide a strong enough upside to counter the downsides. Gregarious is probably the most “just good” trait in the game. In the vast majority of cases, picking gregarious is a good but not game changing choice. Its neither a sin nor a virtue of any religious tenets. Outside of the Musical Theorist cultural traditions, the bonuses granted by other cultural traditions is minimal. The only negative is that failing sway schemes causes stress, which can be somewhat annoying when you want to increase your vassal’s opinion. However, just host a feast, get additional event triggers from being gregarious and bonus stress loss and the opinion of everybody will be up by a lot. No downsides, relatively small but still substantial upsides. ALWAYS pick this over gluttonous!

The best of the mid personality traits, but already very mid. Probably the most useful perk is the increased parochial vassal opinion, as that group is the hardest to placate. Liege Opinion bonuses are nearly completely useless for 90% of the game, unless you specifically play as a vassal for some reason. As stated above, any perk that makes it harder to kill you is easily substituted with court positions. That leaves a measly +2 learning as its selling point. You can basically replace this trait with a shiny rock your children will sometimes give you. It does provide some useful tax increases with Agrarian and Irrigation Expert cultural tradition as well as some combat bonuses for certain terrain-based traditions. It also a virtue of two, honestly pretty mid to bad tenets. Patient has no obvious downside, but also no substantial upside. The definition of a middling trait.


Content is THE perk you would want all your vassal to have. +20 Opinion of Liege is huge and usually means that they won’t join rebellious factions. And you can become the guardian of your vassals’ heirs and force them to become content. However, that is likely the largest advantage that content gives you: Realm stabilisation. Which is not nothing but can easily be replaced with other traits bonuses (namely those that give diplomacy) or frequent feasts. The increased stress loss is nice and can be used as a counterweight to traits like diligent, but the bonus is small. As you might be able to tell, it’s quite similar to patient. However, content is weight down by the fact that despite the stress loss increase it does cause a lot of useful actions to cause stress, most notably executing prisoners, which is one of the best grinding methods for piety with the Gruesome Festivals tenet. Its also a sin of Pursuit of Power, one of the better tenets for doing a lot of conquering and causes a large negative opinion modifier for common cultural traditions such as Martial Admiration and Futuwaa. A pretty average perk with some notable upside, but very few specific use cases.


Content and calm are really close, you could argue for either being higher or lower. Calm is lower because the bonuses are easier to replace. The real high point is the scheme discovery chance, the only (good) personality trait that grants this bonus. The skill point bonuses in its entirety can be replaced with the second level of Eager Reveller trait. Feasts are nearly unavoidable when trying to stabilize your realm because the opinion bonuses are just so large and no other activity grants that much opinion for that price, so getting the Eager Reveller trait often just happens without much trying. Dread Decay is a little annoying, but dread can be increased so easily by just being a completely unhinged tyrant that its largely inconsequential. Calm is a virtue of the Pacifism tenet, which is one of the better tenets when trying to play as tall as possible. It can also act as a counterweight for diligent and ambitious, but again, the bonus is small. It does enable the Meditate in Seclusion decision, one of the most nothingburger decision in the game. In most cases you just waste your time for nothing, because the good bonuses (such as loosing a sinful trait) are RNG-based and unlikely to actually trigger. And while you sit in the middle of nowhere, staring at the sky, you regent can do some real damage, so yeah… Not worth it. A trait that neither hurts you nor helps you much.


Brave is what I would call the “noob trap” trait. It seems amazingly good with no obvious downside. However, the increased likelihood of dying in battle is terrible. Of course, when not fighting wars or leading armies, the trait has no downside. But then why take the trait at all, all it does is boost characters that go to war. And the bonuses of leading your army yourself are so large that you really don’t want to miss out on them. Martial is hard to come by, so the bonus to martial is always welcome. But as stated many times before, a boost to prowess can be replaced by armour and weapon artifacts in which you will swim by the end of the mid game. You can stack so much prowess that being killed or injured becomes relatively unlikely, but a character without the brave trait can do that as well including a character with the craven trait who does not have to overcome the insane debuff. Being killed unexpectedly can ruin whole playthroughs or set you back hours, so you would want to avoid that at all costs. And even when you are “just” injured, the penalties are very harsh and can lead to becoming maimed, a permanent -2 penalty to all of your skills. You can further reduce the likelihood of dying through employing Bodyguards, but that’s a lot of effort and resources to offset a penalty that can be avoided by choosing really any other martial perk. It does give combat-bonuses through a lot of terrain-based cultural traditions, but that adds just to the confusedness of this trait. You are supposed to use this trait when leading armies while being punished for leading them at the same time. Overall, a very middling trait.


Deceitful is massively useful when playing as an intrigue character, because the +4 Intrigue is a huge boost on top of the decision making all of your schemes more likely to succeed. Probably the single best perk for that playstyle. But for every other playstyle, deceitful offers little to nothing. Deceitful offers small combat bonuses for the Forest Fighter and Jungle Warrior cultural tradition, but only when fighting in their respective terrain. Deceitful is made a sin by the communion tenet, a tenet that both Orthodoxy and Catholicism have, the two largest religions in the game. Meaning, when playing in these regions (which are also the regions with the most content thanks to Roads to Power), you’ll be always annoyed by the red glow around the trait. It’s made a virtue by Sacred Lies, but no existing religion has Sacred Lies as one of its tenets and is overall a middling tenet. Because its useful only for a single playstyle and then does not even provide something as concrete and uniquely useful as f. ex. Sadistic, it is overall just an average trait.

Wrathful on first glance seems a lot more useful than it actually is. It’s a sin in all Hindu, Jain and Buddhist religions and cannot be made into a virtue or neutral even by reforming any of these faiths, because no tenet makes wrathful a virtue unlike lustful. It can however be made into a sin by the Pacifism tenet which is one of the better tenets for playing tall. Meaning when playing anywhere in the south-east Asian part of the map, everybody will like you a lot less because of this perk. On what do you get for everybody hating you? Three martial and a useless decision. Wrathful is only this high up specifically because martial is hard to come by and this perk grants a large bonus. The skill point penalties can be countered with the Eager Reveller trait. Punish Criminal is one of the most useless decisions you’ll have access to. It causes a duel to start against a character that is considered a criminal and if you win, you will execute the criminal. The problem is that in most cases you don’t want to execute criminals, you would want to imprison them (without being considered a tyrant, because they are criminals) and then either revoke their titles, make them renounce their claims, ransom them or have them take the vows. Killing them will just make their heirs hate you for very little material reward. And even if you absolutely must kill a criminal, just imprison and execute them. Winning a duel is not guaranteed and can lead to you getting injured or worse. And when they revolt against you because the imprisonment failed, beat them and steal their titles. The increased natural dread is mildly useful at best, but increasing dread is incredibly easy through torturing, then executing prisoners. You can also somewhat substitute this trait with the Irritable coping mechanism. Most useful on martial characters for the large bonus, but overall, pretty mediocre.


Vengeful is an all-around mediocre trait. Its largest downside is its most useful bonus, the large +15 hostile scheme success chance, applies only when scheming against your rival. Meaning, its highly limited in its use cases as you will rarely have more than two rivals. Even with the vengeful trait which makes having a rival easier, having a rival at all is not desirable. Particularly when having a rival on the council hurts a lot as it makes their task 20% less effective. Rivals also join murder schemes against you more often and when rivals turn to nemesis, they will start the murder schemes themselves and constantly at that. The possibility to fabricate hook against your rival can certainly be useful, having hooks never hurt, however there are no options to make any one specific person your rival (unlike with friendship). So more often than not you will end up having a random courtier as your rival, a hook against which is largely inconsequential. And even then, this trait is most useful on intrigue character who will get the universal variant of the fabricate hook scheme through their education tree anyways. It is also a virtue of the Sacred Murder tenet and can be made one of the best traits for intrigue with the Eye for an Eye cultural tradition. The prowess boost is negligible and the intrigue boost is small. While the diplomacy debuff is easily fixed with something like the traveller or eager reveller trait, having your general opinion reduced may hurt when convincing agents to join your schemes. The dread gain is also redundant as you can easily shoot up your dread with torturing and executing. It is funny to go from the highest stress level to the lowest because you revoked all your rivals’ titles and then they died, but that aside this trait on its own is rather mediocre.


Humble is basically a virtue for every faith. It provides almost the identical bonuses as a virtue but is not restricted to any religion. But well, you can just have your character have an actual virtue of your religion and gain these bonuses plus whatever bonus the virtuous traits provide. So humble in most cases is completely superfluous. In the very early game, it can be a noticeable boost of piety and when playing as vassal can make your liege like you a lot more, leading to more opportunity to gain advantages from your liege. But even then, content does that do and way better. It can also grant you some small combat-bonuses for the Mountaineers and Warriors of the Dry as well as a rather large bonus for the Fervent Temple Builders cultural traditions. It’s also a virtue for one of the worst religious tenets, there’s also that. It doesn’t hurt you in any way, but it does very little more, which is why it’s still this high up.


This traits’ high point is the dismiss hook interaction which allows you to dismiss a hook somebody else holds on you. This can be quite useful when one of your vassals acquired a hook on you, something rather common when playing an intrigue character. However, the most annoying part about your vassals having a hook on you is that they will force themselves on your council or chance the vassal contract. You also cannot imprison or murder them. Which, at its worst, is bothersome. They will rarely use their hook for anything else and you always have the option to just expose your own secret, rendering their hook void. While there are scenarios in which you would want to avoid that, if you already have the murderer trait, being exposed as a murderer again does not change too much. And for that moderately useful interaction, you have to pay dearly with -2 stewardship and negative vassal opinion. The reduced stress gain is curious and can cancel out the stress increase from a trait like ambitious. Natural dread is, as mentioned above, pretty useless particularly for an intrigue character. Arbitrary is also a sin of legalism, a very strong religious tenet and one the most common tenets in Islamic religions. The next issue is that you can usually only pick three different personality traits and as an intrigue character, you are really spoiled for choice. And compared to deceitful, cynical, sadistic and impatient, arbitrary just doesn’t provide enough and remains mostly average.

Another mediocre intrigue trait. Callous is all about dread as I stated above, when playing your average intrigue character, you’ll usually be at you dread cap anyways. And as stated above, dread is easy to farm. Tyranny gain reduction is also always welcome, because while you’re playing your intrigue character it will occasionally be necessary to accrue some tyranny. Having that a little reduced doesn’t hurt. However, when your vassals are terrified, low opinion often becomes irrelevant. And on top, you can still gift money to a terrified vassal without loosing dread and just abuse the advantages of both systems. The negative opinion modifiers for close family, lovers and courtly vassals are largely irrelevant due to feasts and court artifacts existing. Making seduce and romance schemes harder is also not particularly desirable. Callous also does not provide any notable bonuses through cultural traditions nor is it a virtue of any religion. However, similar to arbitrary, an intrigue character has too many good traits too choose from and callous is all-around mediocre.


Fickle is a bit of a nothing trait. For intrigue characters, you have plenty of better choices and the skill point bonus is low. For a diplomacy characters, this trait is not awful, but you would rather have diligent, ambitious or gregarious for the additional bonuses provided by these traits. Fickle as well as arbitrary also grant you the Circumspect travel option, which is more or less completely useless as it will just make you slower for a largely unnecessary boost to your scheme resistance. The constant scheme resistance fickle provides can also be largely replaced with court positions like the Lady-in-waiting or your spymasters Disrupt Schemes task. And you have to pay for pretty mediocre bonuses with a nasty -2 stewardship. Not terribly awful, but not all that useful either.


Going -2 in total stat gains for a minor bonus in the easiest to generate vassal opinion is unsurprisingly not very good. It would be much fairer, although also a bit non-sensical, if like deceitful this would be +4 Diplomacy and -2 Intrigue. But sadly, it isn’t and therefore honest is really not worth it. At the very least honest is a virtue through the Communion tenet, one of the best religious tenets and a tenet of both Catholicism and Orthodoxy as well as their derivatives. Honest also causes all hostiles schemes to increase your stress, turning even a simple (and often quite useful) murder into a harrowing affair that will end with you having close to maximum stress, because even inviting an agent to a scheme causes stress. However, honest has the large advantage that you can use it to farm stress loss by exposing secrets. You can use the Finding Secrets councillor task to gain a backlog of secrets which you can then expose for free stress loss, saving you a lot of money. Merely discovering the secrets, does not cause stress. Only blackmailing. This trait is useful only on diplomacy characters, an archetype that can make better use of traits that grant unique decisions or bonuses because skill points are a non-issue for diplomacy characters due to their education tree. Really not worth picking in most scenarios.

Forgiving is quite similar to honest but has however even fewer reasons to be picked. Prisoner Opinion is almost entirely useless as there is little to nothing to gain from your prisoners having a higher opinion of you. Minority vassals even existing is something that is fully controllable, because when giving away a holding, you can choose to generate a noble of your culture and religion, which will never have the minority vassal stance. This is also preferable as you will have a large opinion bonus with people of your culture and faith compared to those that aren’t. Forgiving is also a virtue for Christian faiths, but not through any tenet. Meaning only Christian faiths and their derivatives can have forgiving as a virtue unlike honest. The abandon hook interaction is significantly worse version of stress losing farming compared to honest, because to abandon a hook you’ll first need a hook. But blackmailing causes stress, meaning you gain stress to lose stress. Almost completely useless. And as a cherry on top, disinheriting, one of the most consistent ways to clear your line of inheritance also causes stress. Executions also cause stress, making one of the most effective piety grinding methods unnecessarily harder. The skill point bonuses are relatively small. As stated above, due to the diplomacy education tree granting a lot of extra skill points, a trait useful for diplomacy character must provide more than just points. And abandoning hook just isn’t enough.


This trait is useful only in the very early game for tribal rulers because the prestige boost in the early game is quite useful to counter the monthly upkeep of your man-at-arms. In any other scenario you’d rather take any other perk expect maybe those following arrogant. While it is quite easy to defend against hostile schemes, its considerably harder to strengthen your own hostile schemes. There are very few easily available buffs outside of the intrigue tree and your own intrigue points. So, the -10% Scheme Secrecy hurts a lot and will make your schemes a lot less consistent. The negative vassal opinion doesn’t help either. A terrible trait really, placed only this high up because it has a notable usage case at all.


Trusting and compassionate are very similar to each other and you could argue for either one being higher but trusting provides at least something moderately useful which is the +15 Vassal Opinion. It also does not cause your character to be stressed constantly, because trusting only causes stress when dealing with non-criminal prisoners. The hostile scheme success chance hurts quite a bit but can be mitigated with court position and councillor tasks. The reduced travel safety is also quite annoying as it will force you to take expensive safety precautions more often. Overall, you’ll need to spend quite some resources to patch up this traits’ downsides for a very minimal upside. Offering an agent a strong hook is something that you’ll never really find a usage case for because, for once, trusting disincentivizes the use of schemes anyways and there are so many other options to make somebody join your scheme, that offering a strong hook is rarely useful. Not a particularly good trait.


Compassionate biggest claim to fame is being a virtue for all Christian faiths and through the Christian syncretism tenet (probably the best of the syncretism tenets) can be made a virtue for any religion. But outside of that, it offers a smaller skill point boost than forgiving, completely tanks you dread and does not even provide a stress loss farming method. Yes, dread is easy to farm, but definitely not with compassionate as executing even a single prisoner will give you loads of stress. You can use this fact to try and get the lunatic perk from having the stress level 4 mental break, which is the only way how you can get the Monument of Glass building. However, you also have an even higher chance to get a debilitating county modifier, so try this at your own peril. In return, you get the two most useless vassal stance opinion modifiers and everything causes stress. With this perk you even get stressed when revoking titles, one of the most important tools for reforming and stabilizing your realm. At the very least it doesn’t hinder your stress loss unless you go hunting. Not worth choosing even if it’s a virtue.


+2 Learning is by far not enough to offset a -25% decrease in fertility and a massive reduction in seduction speed. I already explained the importance of high fertility when debating lustful, so I won’t go into too much detail here. I mean, you won’t be doing much seducing, because seducing also causes stress. Chaste is a virtue of the Christian faiths, but even that is hardly enough to counter the massive fertility decrease. Also, considering this is clearly supposed to be a trait for learning characters, you can just choose to become celibate thanks to a learning education perk. And that means no children at all. When you’re already well into the late game and your heir has the fecund and beautiful trait, it may be worth on a learning character, but in every other scenario you would do well to pick lustful.


Probably the best part about this trait is, that when the birthday surprise event triggers, you can choose to fling yourself out of the window instead of going to the party, which is quite funny. Paranoid does make you almost unkillable through schemes, the scheme discovery chance, reduced enemy scheme success chance and improved countermeasures ensure that. So, when playing an intrigue character, it can make for a decent layer of protection against enemy schemes when everybody starts hating you for murdering their family members. However, the price is insanely high as the doubled stress gain is almost impossible to counterbalance. You’ll constantly be stressed and your Royal Court becomes borderline unusable as almost every even vaguely social event will cause your stress increase. And worst of all, despite this being clearly a trait intended for intrigue characters, inviting agents to your schemes – now say it with me – causes stress. Stress loss is not affected, thank God (otherwise this trait would be “G”-Tier), but certain hunting event causes stress, feasts cause stress, traveling causes stress, so you won’t get rid of that stress ever not counting mental breaks. And guess what, the best stress loss farming methods Honest and Forgiving, cripple your intrigue. You can try to get a lot of mental break traits for the increased stress loss, but you’ll need five (5!) of them to just offset the increased stress gain. There are ways to affect which mental break trait you’ll get (such as lustful characters being more likely to get rakish), but for the most part, you’ll be stuck between a rock and heart place. The rock being Improvident and the hard place being abdication. Not to mention the horrible modifiers your counties and you personally can get, regardless which option during a mental break you pick. The other three debuffs, -1 to Diplomacy, reduced vassal opinion and travel speed, are all three terrible, but largely overshadowed by the stupid stress levels you’ll constantly be at. Unless you try to get the lunatic perk from having the stress level 4 mental break to try and get the Monument of Glass building, Paranoid is really not a trait worth picking.

They buffed this trait recently, but just barely enough to get it out of F-Tier. On the surface, this trait looks reasonably. Sure, -2 Diplomacy hurts, but you’ll get quite the number of bonuses. In particular the increased travel safety is quite useful and can save some money. The slowed enemy schemes are also certainly not a negative. So why is this trait so far down. Well, because you’ll pay for it with the functionality of your Royal Court. Holding court a single time can get you from zero stress to level 2 if you’re really unlucky. Basically, any social interaction of any sort will cause you stress. And in a game were basically all central mechanics revolve around having social interactions, well that’s bad. Really bad. Outside of the court just in its entirety, inviting claimants also will cause you a lot of stress. Inviting claimants is the fastest way to expand your empire, because pressing their claims can get you whole kingdoms under your control in just a single war. All the stress means you’ll get mental breaks very often, so you’ll get the chance to obtain the Reclusive trait, which grants you all the same relevant bonuses. Yes, Shy can almost be completely replaced with Reclusive without losing access to your Royal Court. While yes, getting Reclusive is not guaranteed, farming mental breaks for reclusive is honestly still more fun that playing a single lifetime with Shy. And that goes for the rest of the bonuses as well, almost all of them (with the exception of the learn league bonuses and parochial vassal opinion bonus) can be easily replaced on any character with money (= travel safety), the hospices line of building and personal physician (= Plague Resistance) and your spymasters disrupt scheme task (= Enemy Hostile Phase Length). It resembles Paranoid in a lot of way, but at least paranoid makes you unkillable through schemes, freeing up your spymaster. Shy just gives you stress and a lot of it for no notable upside.


Perhaps a controversial placement this far down the list, however a trait that can be almost completely replaced with the second level of the Eager Reveler trait is NOT worth -10% monthly income. Recking your economy for +3 General Opinion and +3 Monthly Prestige is laughably awful. Furthermore, Generous gives you access to a stress loss farming method through giving gifts. But well, gaining less money means giving less gifts means losing less stress. And Generous doesn’t even make gifts less expensive. It also makes generating money more difficult as demanding money (f. ex. when demanding payment for hooks with the Golden Obligation perk) causes stress. Same with revoking titles, the best method to clean up your realm. It is a virtue of every Islamic religion and religions with the Ritual Hospitality and Vows of Poverty tenet. Vow of Poverty is the contender for the worst tenet by the way. There is a point very early in the game when you don’t make that much money anyway and when playing in the Islamic regions, when picking Generous may be a good decision. But even then, just pick Honest if you need diplomacy and a stress farming method. Having Muslims like you is not worth loosing -10% of your income every month (and they’ll like you much more with the Just trait anyways).

Going -1 in every skill and -10 Travel Speed for increased stress loss is – unsurprisingly – really terrible. The +50% stress loss is admittedly a rather large bonus, considering its worth 2.5 mental break traits in stress loss or equal to eccentric. It also doesn’t interact with any religious tenet or cultural tradition. So, there is at the very least an upside (which can’t be said about the last trait on this list). You may be tempted to use Lazy as a counterweight for Paranoid, Diligent or Ambitious on your late-game beautiful, genius, herculean, fecund, pure-blooded, consecrated Blood heir with the Child of Destiny modifier when skills don’t matter anymore. However, in any other scenario, you would rather pick any other trait than lazy.


Gluttonous is easily the worst personality trait in the game and its honestly not even close. You can at least find a realistic usage case of Lazy and the stress loss is big. Gluttonous gives you +10% Stress Loss, half of the stress loss that any other mental break trait would give, many of which are honestly better than Gluttonous. You want to lose LESS stewardship for MORE stress loss? Farm mental breaks until you get Comfort Eater. Also, Gluttonous increases your characters weight and when your character reaches obese status, you’ll suffer a large health penalty. You can get rid of weight with the “Lose Weight” decision, but guess what, that causes you to gain a stress gain increase modifier. Yes, this trait does LITERALLY nothing positive. And if that wasn’t enough, Gluttonous is considered a sin by any religion with the monasticism, mendicant preachers, asceticism and Gnosticism tenets. Asceticism and Gnosticism are both garbage, but the other two? Oh, only two of the best tenets in the game. It is made a virtue by the Hedonistic tenet, but unless you plan to roleplay as the average postmodern city dweller, wasting a tenet slot on hedonistic is never worth it as it’s just the Temu version of Ritual Celebrations. Complete garbage. Worst trait in the game.

And that, in fact, is it. Only 20 pages and ~10.000 words in, my “easy-to-understand” god-forsaken essay of a guide comes to an end. I do hope I was able to help out at least somebody out there struggling to understand the finer complexities of Crusader Kings 3. If you have any question, I’ll try to answer them in the comments to the best of my abilities. The CK3-Wiki is also always a useful resource (https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Crusader_Kings_III_Wiki). Although be careful, the information is not always accurate and also not always up to date.

If anybody out there finds this Guide useful at all, I may be swayed to do Tier Lists on the Tenets and Cultural Traditions of CK3.

With that said, have fun reviving Hellenism and reaching 100 Development in Iceland!