In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, you teach in one of three houses in the Military Academy for the Church of Seiros. Each house has a unique set of students. However, players have the option to recruit students from other houses. For example, if you choose the Black Eagles house, you can recruit students from the Blue Lions or Golden Deer. Certain characters will remain loyal to their houses, like the student leaders and their retainers (except Hilda). With that said, you can still potentially recruit every other student in your house.
SPOILERS FOR GAME
However, after passing 3/31 on the calendar, the game goes through a timeskip. The timeskip is five years later and puts you in the middle of a vast war. You are no longer a professor of a group of teens. You are now a tactician leading a group of soldiers into battle. That leads to the question – can you still recruit characters after the timeskip?
Can You Recruit Students After Timeskip
The short answer is not exactly. Once you fast-forward five years into the future, you can no longer try to recruit as many characters as you can. If you didn’t recruit the character before the timeskip, then you most likely won’t be able to recruit the character afterward.
With that said, there are a few exceptions to this. There are four different story routes in Three Houses. All of this depends on which house you pick and the choices you make during the game. Some of the ways will have a few of the student characters siding with the opposing army, and you will come across them later in the battlefield. You have the opportunity to strike them down in battle, and potentially recruit them.
Even if you recruit these characters before the timeskip, they do not rejoin your party afterward. For instance, I recruited both Ashe and Lorenz before the timeskip in my first playthrough in the Black Eagles route. After the timeskip, they both were missing from my party. I encountered Ashe in a later mission, and I beat him to recruit him again.
It appears that in each route, depending on which house you pick, determines which characters you meet in the battlefield as an opponent. As mentioned before, Ashe and Lorenz are enemies if you select the Black Eagles and choose to side with the church of Seiros rather than siding with Edelgard. According to some players on forums, Ashe is an opponent in the Golden Deer route, while Lorenz is an enemy in the Blue Lions route. I also read that Ferdinand and Caspar could be enemies in the Blue Lions route. If you side with Edelgard in the Black Eagles route, you’ll fight Lysithea in the battlefield.
I assumed you needed to beat these characters as the player avatar Byleth, or they die. But some players have written online that you do not need to beat those students as Byleth to recruit them. Several players on forums said they did not have the option to recruit them. They claimed that you need to have a high enough support with the character before the timeskip to recruit them post-timeskip, though other players have claimed otherwise.
So, in short, you can’t recruit additional characters after the timeskip. There are a few exceptions. If you see one of the student characters on the battlefield, try beating them in battle. Having recruited them or increasing their support before the timeskip allows you to recruit them after defeating them in battle; however, nothing is for sure at the moment.
