You can change a character into a total of 5 classes in a single playthrough, which is increased in New Game+. If you change back to a class you already belonged to, it's counted twice. Skills transfer, but spells do not, though skills must be equipped in one of the skill slots to take effect. Spells are transferred by equipping the skills that contain them, but note that you get only the spells listed in the skill's description, equipping Magic 1 will NOT give you those from Magic 2. You start with 2 skill slots and gain additional skill slots by learning "Skill Token" which every class learns at level 13, up to a maximum of 16 skill slots in NG+. Changing classes cuts your current level in half and it costs 100 * (level) * (number of classes) BC. By way of example, that means that if a lvl 20 knight changed to Samurai, they would become a level 10 Samurai and it would cost 2000 BC (20 * 100 * 1). If they changed again to Ranger, they would drop to a level 5 Ranger (20 Knight/10 Samurai/5 Ranger) and it would again cost 2000 BC (10 * 100 * 2). Changing yet again, they would drop to level 2 and it would cost 1500 BC (5 * 100 * 3). Notice that level is rounded down when changing class.

Your age affects the number of bonus stats you can roll, the hospital recovery time, as well as the number of hearts (lives) your character has. Characters die permanently when they have no hearts left. Therefore, most characters should have two hearts (age 40-59), but the MC should have only one, because unlike everyone else, they don't lose hearts. The maximum stat roll for 60-99 is 30, while the maximum for the 40-59 range is 14 (or 17 if Fortuante). The other ranges, in general, should not be used.

Each character can have a talent from the following list. The chosen talent does not depend on the character's class, but given that ID scales off of PIE, it's something of a waste to put Educated on anyone other than a Cleric. The talents are:


For these, it's important to know how the ID (identify) and OL (open locks) abilities scale with your character's stats:


The OL / ID bonus is the bonus stat provided by some gear. As you can see, your ninja/ranger might want intution and your cleric is the only one who should get educated as no one else will scale. Intution and educated provide flat 30% bonuses and only the highest value in the party is used. Therefore, you probably want to make most characters fortunate for the bonus stats. ID isn't all that worthwhile if your cleric has high piety. Invincible is a noob trap. It would be good, but spirit wall protects from crits and high level clerics (holy soul) and knights (secret defense) can and should completely replace it with a skill. Intuition is good to help you deal with traps, though. Wild Eye can be useful when exploring, but it's not useful at all if you have maps or know where things are.

It is important to know which skills are the most useful and plan your class changes accordingly. It is also important to know which classes are good as your final class. Ninja is considered 'broken' tier by many and makes for an excellent final class. Cleric and Wizard both have spells that cannot be passed to other classes, while Knights and Clerics have incredibly important passive immunity skills. Finally, the Ranger skill to see enemy HP is incredibly useful and should be gained early on.

Here are some suggested builds based on recommendations from the wiki and others.


Knight (13) / Ninja (15) / Fighter (28) / Ranger (28) / Cleric (30) / Knight

Knight (13) / Ninja (15) / Dancer (28) / Fighter (28) / Cleric (30) / Samurai

Samurai (13) / Dancer (14) / Ninja (28) / Samurai (28) / Cleric (30) / Ranger

Ranger (13) / Fighter (15) / Ninja (28) / Ranger (28) / Cleric (30) / Dancer

Wizard (14) / Dancer (13) / Cleric (30) / Wizard (30) / Ninja (28) / Wizard

Cleric (13) / Dancer (13) / Wizard (30) / Cleric (30) / Ninja (28) / Cleric


Frontliners
Samurai (13) / Knight (21) / Dancer (13) / Fighter (13) / Cleric (26) / Ninja

Back # 1
Ranger (28) / Samurai (13) / Dancer (28) / Fighter (28) / Cleric (26) / Ninja

Back # 2
Ranger (6) / Cleric (30) / Fighter (13) / Dancer (13) / Ninja (15) / Wizard (30)

Back # 3
Ranger (6) / Wizard (30) / Fighter (13) / Dancer (13) / Ninja (15) / Cleric (30)

The Cleric is your basic healer and every party needs one. They're one of the only two spellcasting classes, the other being Wizard. Almost everyone will want to get at least Cleric 26 for Holy Soul. Spells can only be transferred to other classes by use of the Learn Holy # skills, which transfer only the spells named and no others. Note that there are three different tabs for spells, many new players have trouble finding spells like Hit and Avoid at first, which are under the Spirit tab. They also have anti-Immortal abilities like Holy Weapon and are good at identifying enemies, because that scales off of the PIE (piety) stat.




The cleric is the only class with healing spells.



Clerics only have a few attack spells, but they're strong against Immortal enemies.




The cleric has many useful buff spells, particularly multi-hit and multi-avoid.

The Dancer is a weak utility class with several great skills that should be transferred to better classes. You can gain infinite range on short range weapons to attack from the back row as well as some incredibly useful Morale skills. You also get an ability to spam items, though you can only use a single item type multiple times and you can run yourself out of items. Also, there's one bug that has been known to cause crashes: if you use a wand multiple times and it gets cursed during usage, your game may crash. Consider this fair warning.

The fighter is an all-out attack class that is able to use most weapons. They're not very tanky, but they do have the useful ability to occasionally survive killing blows. They're great for boss killing.

The Knight is your basic tank. It also possesses the Secret Defense skill that protects you from being one-shot by a critical hit, so many builds include knight for just that reason. They also intercept hits aimed at the back row and have skills that where you charge through the enemies, hitting one from each row at a cost of lowering your defense.

The Ninja is a highly accurate attacker that is able to penetrate enemy defenses and score critical hits. They are an extremely strong class with good evade that is recommended as the final class for most physical attackers. They are also extremely useful for grinding the flower enemies at butterfly spawns for XP.

The Ranger is a ranged damage dealer that pairs well with concentraiton-related classes like Fighter. It also has a very useful ability that allows you to see enemy HP.

The Samurai has the best AOE physical attacks, though they come at a cost to damage. They're also one of two users of katanas (the other being Ninja) which are notable because most of them have the Critical property that can result in one-hit kills. Either this or your Ninja may want to get the skill to help open locks as that scales off of agility and luck.

The Wizard specializes in attack magic and debuffs and does not have any healing spells, unless some were transferred from Cleric. They're also notable for having the Magic Weapon skill that allows your team to attack Spirit monsters, which can not be hurt without anti-Spirit weapons. Note that the in-game description of at least a couple of the Learn Magic skills is not correct. Fire Blast is found in Magic 1, not Magic 2. They also have a skill to cast the same spell multiple times.

Attack spells obey an elemental rock-paper-scissors as to which is most effective. Fire is good vs earth, but weak vs water. Ice is good vs fire and weak vs thunder. Thunder is good vs water.