Baldur's Gate 3: change party

The player character and their party in Baldur's Gate 3

(Image credit: Larian Studios)

Once you've stumbled across a few companions in Baldur's Gate 3, you'll soon hit your party limit—unfortunately, you won't be able to parade around as a large group. You can travel as a party of four, including the player character, so you'll need to decide which three lucky pals make the cut. It's always good to include someone in your party with a skill like Darkvision—it lets you see in the dark, which is obviously very useful—as well as someone with healing and protection skills, perception or sleight of hand—you know, for picking all those locks to find cool stuff!

You can change up your party often enough, depending on what you think or know you're up against, or if you're simply bored of your companions or want to win one certain person's approval, so here's how to swap out party members.

How to change your party in Baldur's Gate 3

a screen showing a campsite set up in baldur's gate 3 — (Image credit: Larian Studios)

As you encounter companions in the wild, you'll have the option to recruit them to your cause. If you have enough empty spaces, they'll join your party immediately. If your party is full and you run into a new companion, you can ask them to wait at the campsite. You can also choose not to recruit people but honestly, what's the point of not asking folk to join your party? Go and join your weird brethren who didn't recruit Garrus in Mass Effect.

To set up camp, simply click the campfire icon to the right of your character bar. You can then choose to go to camp, or have a long or a short rest. You can go to camp to swap out your party at any time without the need to actually rest. At camp, you'll be able to interact with your companions, start new questlines with them and, most importantly, swap out party members by asking them to stay behind. If a character is glowing blue then they are already in your party, and green means they can join you if there's a free space.

You'll only be able to refill an empty space in your party if you encounter a new companion in the wild or set up camp again. This is a welcome change from previous Baldur's Gate games where companions would bugger off to a specific location that, if you forgot where that was, you could lose them for hours. Knowing that they'll all appear in camp—provided you told them to go there—is a welcome quality-of-life change.

The first three games Lauren played on PC were Star Wars: X-Wing, Zoo Tycoon and Barbie Fashion Designer, which explains her love of all things space, strategy and aesthetically pleasing. Lauren recently took over as PC Gamer's Guides Editor after three years of writing many dozens of Destiny 2 guides at VG247, as well as casually trying to shoehorn in The Witcher 3 articles wherever possible. When she's not trying to force everyone to play as a Warlock in Destiny 2, Lauren is either mastering her SEO abilities to help smash the competition, or patting one of her red sons.