Any way to change combat class?

[Sabaithal]

Because I am sick and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tired of waiting for a swordsman to appear at the tavern based on RNG early game.

[Nobukado]

No.

But you can pay Knowledge points to acquire a Knowledge trait (vacancy notice, I think) that allows you to request a specific kind of mercenary at an inn. It takes a few days for the recruit to appear (5?), and you will get a message when this happens.

[Arctuhris]

It can take some time (like 30 minutes if you're unlucky, or even and hour if RNG hates you), but with two saves near a town, you can reload and get different hiring options in any tavern. Once you've got the class and traits you want, you use the second save from after entering the town but before entering the tavern to reload until you get the appearance you want. There are a several good guides on youtube that will walk you through the steps.

I'm not defending the current system, btw. I think it's silly we can't recruit the class we want and change the appearance to whatever we want. But . . . that's almost certainly never going to happen. So, we have to work with what's there.

You can try the hiring contracts. They never work for me, because you don't know when they arrive, so it's a real pain to get saves lined up to reroll the traits and appearance. IMHO, it's much easier & faster to just reroll for a while at each town until you get tired of it (in which case take a break and try again later) or until you get the class & appearance you want with traits and stats you can live with.

Best of luck.

Oh, one thing to consider is looking up all the guaranteed recruits. Some have locked in appearances, some will change if you save before entering the jail in question. Traits will reroll if you understand how to force a seed change, so on adaptive, if you have the money and food, you can go pick up two rangers, two warriors, and two brutes. There's a swordsman in Grinmeer, but you have to finish the entire regional quest to encounter him, so it's not really useful like the others for building you party early if you want to make use of those characters. It can be a lot faster than "re-rolling' at a tavern, since you're just looking for traits & stats, and, if you care, appearance.

Given that you can get 2 Rangers very early game, I never start with one in my starting party. Much better to make sure you've got whatever else you most prefer.

[Nobukado]

Hey Arctuhris,
Vacancy Notice is less boring than saved scumming. Because merc will arrive in around 5 days or so, with a notice that you can't miss. So don't wait around: play the game normally for 5 or 6 days, have fun, then go back to inn once you've gotten the message. Save scumming is more boring.

I'd also support a system that's easier to get Mercs you want, but this will work in the meantime.

[Arctuhris]

"Vacancy Notice is less boring than saved scumming ** In My Opinion**."

There, I fixed it for you =P

I am very particular about having a different face on every one of my mercs, so to play the game in the way that is most enjoyable to me, I am forced to save scum regardless, so it's actually much, much faster, and less boring (IMHO) to not bother with the vacancy notices, especially with how expensive they are relative to the early game economy, which is when I am most interested in recruiting particular mercenaries.

In the aprox. 900 hours I've spent in this game (it's definitely one of my favorites), I've found the vacancy notices to be functionally worse than useless, but I'm glad you enjoy them! I think everyone should play the game however they want and find most enjoyable =D

[Nobukado]

Amen dude. Peace.