Like many party-based adventure RPGs, Baldur’s Gate 3 limits the number of companions you can bring with you from camp at any given time, and knowing which ones to take along for the ride is a little more complicated than it might seem. Unless you’re using a mod through the official Toolkit, you can only bring three friends with you from camp, and with how much dialogue there is in the game, you’re always going to be missing out on something. Mutiplayer parties will know this very well; a BG3 run with no companions always feels like something is missing.

Of course, everyone is going to have a favorite companion, and it’s a particularly good idea to keep your intended romance with you at all times to have the most chances to increase their estimation of you. There’s little to no consequence for swapping your party members around, and it can be done whenever you’re able to go to camp. Any party swapping will have to wait until after combat is over, but other than that, your ability to change your companions is unhindered.

Benefits Of Sticking With One Party In BG3

Get To Know Your Companions Very Well

While it seems to be a more uncommon way to play Baldur’s Gate 3, you can play almost the whole game without swapping your party. This allows you a few boons, the main one being able to experience a fuller scope of the dialogue that each character provides. Whether this is through inter-party banter, specific interactions with NPCs, or your own conversations with them on your journey, each character is fully written out in a way that really makes them feel like an integral party of your BG3 journey.

Bringing the same three companions also opens you up to a whole new experience when you start a new campaign. You can pick three new companions and get completely unique reactions and interactions for a whole playthrough.

When sticking with just three companions, you’ll get to experience their interactions with one another and the world the most fully. I didn’t run around with Gale very much in my campaigns — to be honest, I don’t like managing spell slots — so I don’t have a great understanding of his character beyond what you get from his personal quest. Playing the character’s personal quests is a great way to get to know them, but you miss out on the small things that make them real when you keep them at camp for everything else.

Benefits Of Swapping Out Your Party In BG3

Experience The Diversity Of Everything BG3 Has To Offer

It should go without saying that you can’t fully experience a character’s personal quest without having them in your party at least some of the time. In some cases, some characters will even leave your camp if you ignore them long enough, or if you confront their own personal baddie without them. Gale will leave if you refuse to give him the magic items he needs, and Astarion will scold you for killing Cazador without him. While not all of your party will leave completely if you finish their personal quest without them, it certainly doesn’t have the same impact if you do.

Of course, if you don’t kill Cazador, you and Astarion are going to have other problems.

Alongside bringing companions along for their respective quests, you also get to see the different interactions between characters outside of camp. While camp is nice, very rarely do you get conversations between characters there, as most of your dialogue is between yourself and just one of the NPCs. Bringing them with you on your journeys allows you to see their reactions to things first-hand, and swapping them out from time to time provides diversity in not just conversation, but in gameplay as well.

Having different skills in your party is also a huge boon. It’s always nice to have a rogue around for stealth-related missions, but there’s also a benefit to having someone who can just smash anything in your way. As the player character, you can only have so many proficiencies, so being able to pick and choose what skills you’ll need is really useful.

You Should Swap Out Your Baldur’s Gate 3 Party

Keep Your Pookie With You, But Give The Others A Break

Custom Image by Lee D’Amato

I’m a huge proponent of swapping up your party from time to time. This is partially due to getting bored hearing Shadowheart complaining about her hand all the time, but it’s also because party-swapping offers a switch-up in combat style that forces you to approach fighting in a new way.

With characters like Astarion in the party, I always had someone to initiate fights with, but if I swapped him for Karlach, I knew I wouldn’t have the advantage of surprise on my side. These are small enough changes in the long run, but finding ways to make each playthrough unique is the best way to keep having fun in BG3, even a year after release.

If you want to increase replayability, don’t complete all the optional and hidden side quests. This way, you have new things to look forward to in a new playthrough.

There’s something to be said as well for swapping your party strategically depending on the encounter. My biggest struggle was the fight against Viconia in Shadowheart’s personal quest, and I had to re-tailor my party a few times to succeed my first time through. Of course, you’re not going to know any of this your first time through, but the things you learn the first time can allow you to pre-select your party before going into any particularly tricky fights. Consider if you need good AoE damage over high burst, or if creating difficult terrain might be to your advantage.

In multiplayer, you have even fewer choices about who to bring with you, making multiplayer BG3 much more limiting than single-player.

Whether you swap your companions out or run with the same three each time (or more, if you’re a mod user), each new run of Baldur’s Gate 3 is going to be unique. There are so many lines of unique dialogue and interactions that exist within the game’s files that even this long after release, there’s still stuff I haven’t seen or heard. Every time you run with a new party combination, new dialogue will appear as if by magic, and even your party’s passive checks can help you uncover new secrets in one of the best games of its time.