yeah i find it terrible idk why traits were touched

I am really unsure about that too. RTP for base CK2 got changed a lot too. You basically only can choose personality traits making the ruler creator pointless.

I played it a year ago before that was changed.
I haven't seen the stuff evaporate yet.
But, I have seen most of the options be gutted from the ruler creator.

Part of me wants to try to find an older version of the mod and fork it.

However, unless I recieved permission I don't think I would be able to do it. Since it doesn't have any particular license.

I honestly don't know. I haven't used this mod since. Very disappointed.

Here is solution:

Go to Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\mod and look for risetopower.zip
Open it and go Common/traits. delete rtp_traits_vanilla.txt. Go back to Crusader Kings II\mod and find risetopower.mod and delete the line replace_path="common/traits"

Another change I made was to get default societies back. If you want to do this go into the vanilla ck2 files and find "00_societies.txt" "dynamic_societies.info" "quests.info" "quests_script.info" and "societies.info" (sorry I can't remember where they are found exactly) Copy paste these files into risetopower.zip/common/societies . The only issue I have found is if you are playing as a catholic person there are too many societies and you won't be able to see/select all of them. But the one you can't see is the learning society this mod adds anyway, so not much is lost. If you want you can edit rtp_learning_societies.txt and delete the catholic one in there just so it looks nicer in game.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to change ambitions back to normal using the methods above as when I try the game fails to load for a reason I'm not sure why.

As you said its so disappointing and all these unnecessary and unwanted changes basically ruin the mod.