Patuti

This looks like an advantage to me, not the opposite. Share the work of explaining about the role/skills of a companion to the narrative elements, a guy with a scarred face with a 2h battle axe can be as informative as a class "Berseker". And that could hide some not-so-obvious skills so we can have a bit of a surprise later, while with the class system we have direct access to all that information, not a lot of immersion here.