I met an adventurer with a combat rating of ~40 and he cost 1200... and I was a bard... I'm on the other side of the scale then. But yes, that is less than the sword costs by itself right?

I would suggest not going too far the other way.  Some of the real fun early in the game comes from finding NPC's that are useful.    Perhaps the higher level ones should be adjusted.   At any rate the NPC portion of the game is very good.  If I was to suggest improvements at this stage it would be to the magic system which is too cumbersome.

Especially as you often can't find anyone to recruit. The secondary effect of the above is that if you're lucky enough to find someone to recruit during the early turns, it's an extra advantage.

Maybe just a small (20%?) discount?

Something else I forgot to mention.  Those little notices in the upper right corner are too easy to miss.  They need to have a tone associated with them, or at the very least, come floating down like the TW series.