So I just hit lvl 20 on my t4 Fighter from volcano and I must say, boy I’m amazed. The first perk he got was “Fit” which give a laughable amount of THREE Vitality. (Hmm ok single perk why not 5? visible confusion) second perk “Nearsighted”. Give -5Acc +8 Agi (OK NICE that’s what I call impact, good perk) now the fun begins… This man who is so dedicated in combat and his wealth and has bad eyesight… He chose to become a “Warden” SACRIFICING HIS VITALITY (-5) to learn how to AIM A FCKN BOW ( +8Acc). If this is as intended I’m really losing it.
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I think it is just the typical sandbox spirit from Funcom. They often forget that sandbox is a concept to be built upon, not the end goal.
TLDR: Yes it’ll be frustrating when it goes against you. It’ll feel correspondingly awesome when you do manage to find a good combination of attributes and perks @ level 20.
Longer version:
Yeah I think it’s intentional, for all that it’ll be frustrating, particularly for those of us who don’t have 4-8 hours per day to invest in training new thralls.
On the other hand, it does add to the longevity of the Thrall level system - the old Thrall system topped out at finding the right named out in the world, after that everything was deterministic. Now you have to go through a selection process at “birth” (are their level-up percentages good enough) AND spend a fair amount of gametime with each thrall to realize their potential.
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It certainly adds to the longevity - over all, I think it’s an excellent addition to the game. But given the number of thralls you’re going to need to level up to help survive purges in the Northlands, I think it just takes too darn much time to level them.
Add in the “welp, this one turns out to suck” factor and you’ve got a recipe for more frustration than fun, I fear. It’s not a “burn things down and start again” level of problem, but I do think they need to adjust thrall leveling speed.
Alternatively, they could allow you to feed yellow lotus portions to a thrall, and then let them get three more “levels”, each of which re-picked a feat. That’d be faster than starting all over from scratch every single time you got a lousy set of traits.
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I see your point, but let me play devil’s advocate and counter that you won’t need every Guard thrall to be the best possible in order to use them. The follower(s) you usually bring out and about with you, well - yes, you’ll want to get ones as close to peak as you can manage. But the 50ish remaining (for a single player) or 90ish remaining (for a full clan) don’t need to have the perfect stats and perfect perks to function.
Yeah, but just think how awesome it will be to finally find the perfect thrall after hours of knocking out duds, to spend hours leveling him and gasping in delight as each perk appears better than the next…
…and then to watch him fall down an elevator shaft and die instantly for no reason.
And that’s fine. There are plenty of ways a thrall can turn out to be “not best” without getting perks that are the equivalent of a non-sequitur. This is just one more example of unconstrained randomness, a game design technique that can be called “lazy” if you want to be harsh or “rushed” if you want to be generous.
Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw explains this a lot more eloquently than I can:
If I had to pick only one thing to criticize about Conan Exiles, it’s the lazy use of randomness.
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Well I can’t argue with that, particularly as my heart is not really in defending complete randomness of perks (hence the devil’s advocate part).
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I can understand that inconsistent peeks may be related to realism of thrall progression. First he got nearsighted, then, overcoming difficulties, learned to aim that fuzzy spot in the distance better. Not nice to see in a game, but let’s assume.
What I can’t understand at all is when a fighter thrall gets archery perks… while not being able to use a bow. Sure, he got three archery perks, but he’d never let loose a single arrow in his life and will never learn; give him a bow and he’ll be stupidly standing and trying to stare enemies down. Well… at least he knows the theory, I guess.
If you ever feel weird about some FUNCOM implements just remember they put a +Accuracy trait on one handed axe.
“Funcom, the inventory management is a mess. I can’t find my axe!”
“Hmmm, maybe if I give the axe some accuracy bonus, it will be easier to find? Because, it is now, you know, more accurate?”
“FUNCOM~~~!!!”
That’s probably because some accuracy perks are ( or were) useful in melee combat.
Example. The armor penetration perk.
Fighter thralls can use bows. I just had to point that out because I’m a pedantic cuss 
Now that is out of the way, I am rather salty about the perk RNG, because I started leveling my first thrall recently and the RNG screwed me over royally. My thrall’s first perk was Jack of All Trades, which I quite liked. Now, due to the exponential xp requirements, it took me as long to get her from level 10 to level 15, as it did to take her to level 10 from scratch. Guess what perk she got at level 15? Marksman. 
Sure, she’s still a beast of a fighter and she’ll be even beastlier when I get her to level 20. And she’s not the only thrall I’ll be leveling. But… come on 
Fortunately, this was already reported as a bug and the “suggestion” to fix it will be relayed to the devs:
Someone suggested in the chat during today’s Funcom live-stream that we should add an execution feature to the game, so we can execute our thralls instead of watching them disappear into thin air. I think it might be quite satisfying, if not a bit morbid, to watch the thralls that acquired the traits we don’t like to be executed.
Okay, that’s a funny suggestion 
It also made me consider a new use for my Arena: kite and trap a boss or two in their designated Boss Pens, bring a thrall whose stats I dislike, strip him or her of all the gear, and then release the boss(es).
Damn, I can be a sadistic bastard sometimes… 
I think they said around here that warriors getting archer’s perk wasn’t intended…
The worst part about the Accuracy and Strength increasing Perks and really the Stats themselves is that they only mean anything when comparing a thrall to another thrall of the exact same Faction/Tier/Class (Class may not matter but I hope it does).
Saying that a Nord Fighter has 50 Strength and gets a 87% Melee Bonus whereas a Voltaires Fighter only has 40 Strength and a 62% Melee Bonus doesn’t tell you how hard either is going to hit since you don’t know their Base Damage. I suspect that the Factions have different Base Damage numbers, just as they have different Base Health numbers, and I would hope that Fighters and Archers have different Melee vs Ranged damage but that may be a pipe dream.
Nope. ^^ Not all of them. That’s the whole gist. You can find fighters of both kinds, it’s random - some can use bows just fine, some can’t. I ran into fighers that can’t use bows, no matter what I do. And no, even being same named figher is not a guarantee, they still can get different AIs (I have RHTSs of kinds that can use one-hander, and of kinds that can’t for instance).
This is definitely a problem. And it’s slightly worse than what you described – even within the same Faction-Tier-Class category, there are unexpected differences. For example, compare Dalinsia Snowhunter to Cimmerian Berserker. They’re both from the Forgotten Tribe, they’re both T4, they’re both fighters, they start with the same base attributes, but their starting health is different 
Some fighters if I give to them a weapon they don’t like, they look at me like Shrek’s cat to give them their favourite weapon back. So I can’t imagine a fighter with a bow right now (and I don’t have enough)…