There is also no dwarven companion. There are 2 humans, 1 lizard and 1 elf as possible companions.
Classic is not the hard mode, classic is the normal mode and tactician will be the hard mode. At least the start of classic is really tough since the last patch, because they overdid it, with making the game more challenging. It will surely get changed till official release. Also the game get easier after you reached level 4. And you can just avoid fighting the skeleton dudes headon, there are many ways around them. My friend and I ignored them, not because we thought them to hard, we just did not chose that way for exploring. But if I remember correctly, there were pretty tough, tougher than the other 4 skeletons.
