All Baldur's Gate 3 romance options: who you can pursue

There are several Baldur's Gate 3 romance options to explore if you're jumping into Larian's D&D-based roleplaying game. Like so many other RPGs, sealing a romantic relationship with one of your companions will involve chatting them up, assisting in their personal side quests, and cueing a spicy scene back at camp if you so choose. And things do get spicy.

Romance in Baldur's Gate 3 isn't as simple as just doing a quest and getting the romance scene, though. Your party members have an approval system and will have opinions on the choices and allies you make. Approval and conversation choices seem to be the only limiting factor in companion romances—no rival-mances here, Dragon Age 2 fans.

We'll walk through each of your romanceable companions, what kind of relationship you can have with them, and how to gain their approval down below. Check out our Baldur's Gate 3 companions guide for more detail on each character's class and where to recruit them.

Every romanceable BG3 character

Baldur's Gate 3 romance options list

In Baldur's Gate 3 you can romance Shadowheart, Astarion, Wyll, Gale, Lae'zel, Karlach, Halsin, and Minthara, which is pretty much the full recruitable party with the exception of Jaheira and Minsc. Origin characters are all willing to give love a chance with Tav, as long as you're making the right choices. Just check in often for new opportunities and their thoughts on your circumstances as the story moves along.

Additionally, there are some non-companion romantic encounters throughout the game available for a one-night stand:

• The Drow twins, Nym and Sorn Orlyth
• The Dryad, Naoise Nallinto
• The devil, Mizora
• Haarlep, the Incubus in the House of Hope
• The Guardian

How to romance Shadowheart

• Likes: Deception and persuasion, worshippers of Shar, most animals
• Dislikes: Cruelty, siding with the Githyanki, devotees of Selûne, wolves

As a Cleric, Shadowheart's first devotion is to her deity Shar. You can make a case for a close second place in her heart though. Shadowheart's romance is a little more slow burn than some of your other companions, beginning with a shared bottle of wine and a kiss on the night of the Tiefling party during Act 1 at your camp.

Shadowheart's relationship develops further as you venture into Act 2, particularly as you begin uncovering questlines related to her deity Shar. Remember not to pry too much into Shadowheart's past before she's ready, as keeping her vow of secrecy and her mission regarding the artifact she carries are both important to her. Those complicated feelings around her faith and childhood even have their own hidden approval score working in the background, so tread carefully around the subject.

Make sure to: Have a drink in private with Shadowheart when she asks during the Tiefling party, or even earlier in Act 1 if your approval is high enough. In Act 2, pick up a Night Orchid and give it to Shadowheart for a little added affinity and the achievement "To Bloom in Darkest Night."

Avoid: Excessive flirting with Lae'zel early on. While some party members are open to Tav having multiple partners, Shadowheart isn't willing to begin a relationship if you've already pursued the Githyanki warrior.

How to romance Astarion

• Likes: Supporting his whims, siding with monsters, generally being a bastard
• Dislikes: Altruism, kindness, generally not being a bastard

Astarion isn't a nice guy, he's a vampire, and mostly concerned with his own interests. He is down for some extracurriculars at camp though and is rather flirtatious whether you engage with his offers or not. He's all vanity and compliment fishing initially, but Astarion does have a (literally) tortured backstory. Astarion really opens up later on if you maintain a close relationship with him, divulging a lot of the internal wounds he carries about intimacy and his looks. Can you fix him? You can definitely try.

Make sure to: Flirt with Astarion when possible; avoid indicating that you distrust him in conversations relating to his vampirism. Agree to sleep with Astarion during the party at the end of Act 1.

Avoid: Making Astarion bite Araj in Act 2. You can repair the relationship, but he really hates it if you force him to bite her and if you don't navigate the lengthy conversation perfectly, he'll break up with Tav.

How to romance Wyll

• Likes: Strength, bravery, kindness, aiding the downtrodden
• Dislikes: Cruelty, siding with devils and goblins

Resident warlock and monster hunter Wyll is known also as the Blade of the Frontiers, a title that inspires more than one salacious pun if you choose to get close to him. Good guy vibes aside, Wyll has a pact with his half-devil patron, which certainly affects who he approves of you lending support to. The cambion Mizora still calls out to him and early on in his romance her presence does come between you during intimate moments.

Unlike some other companions who are ready to celebrate a night together after saving the Emerald Grove, Wyll is more reticent and hides away from the group. You can share a first kiss, but getting closer comes later.

Make sure to: Demonstrate your own heroism by saving both the Tiefling refugees and Halsin. Talk to Wyll during the ensuing party and show interest in dancing with him, or in him more directly.

Avoid: The one-night stand with Mizora. It probably goes without saying, but he doesn't appreciate you sleeping with the demon that tortured him and will break things off.

How to romance Gale

• Likes: Kindness, magic use, cleverness
• Dislikes: Cruelty, violence, lack of intelligence

As Gale says of himself, he's not coy. You have a chance to do a sort of mage's mind meld with him early on, a "romantic moment" he harkens back to when soliciting your company the night after saving the Emerald Grove. He's a charmer alright, citing romantic literature before your night together and spilling his backstory immediately after. If you can maintain a soft spot for him despite the several complications he divulges, Gale is very ready to brave his future "side by side" right after your first night together.

Check our full Gale romance guide for more details on how to begin your enchanting relationship with a wizard.

Make sure to: Help Gale with his magical condition. Agree when he invites you away from camp. Choose romantic options when he teaches you about the Weave.

How to romance Lae'zel

• Likes: Strength, violence, siding with the Githyanki
• Dislikes: Weakness and avoiding violence, siding with Shadowheart or against the Githyanki

Your githyanki party member presents a whiplash romance, initially. She's not exactly a warm companion up to the point but then propositions you with a rather direct, "I smell your sweat. I mean to taste it." If you accept, she plans to take you for her own. Lae'zel is dominant and full of passion, but don't get attached. At least initially, she says that she may want to bed you again but your bond isn't any deeper than that, even as a fellow githyanki.

Make sure to: Accept when Lae'zel propositions you. Advance through her story quest at the Githyanki creche.

Avoid: Sleeping with Mizora. She'll end the relationship with no way to talk her out of it.

How to romance Karlach

• Likes: Compassion, honesty, heroism, and straightforwardness
• Dislikes: Cruelty, lying, siding with devils or evil

Karlach may be a Tiefling but romancing her is pretty adorable. She's the gold heart of the party, despite the fact that her heart is literally a flaming infernal engine. Naturally you'll need to begin by recruiting her instead of fighting her as Wyll requests when you first meet. After that, you'll snag an approval boost by fighting the Paladins who've been chasing her down.

Karlach will express her feelings for you after you save the Emerald Grove, as most of the others do. But with her flaming skin she can't agree to any physical intimacy, as much as she insists she'd like to. To carry on with Karlach's personal quest and relationship, you'll need to start hunting down infernal iron to repair the overheated engine in her chest.

Check our full Karlach romance guide for details on how to cool her down.

Make sure to: Meet Dammon in Act 1 and work to repair Karlach's infernal engine. Express your romantic interest if you have the opportunity, including confessions you wish the two of you could touch. After her first engine tune-up, tell her you know a way to cool her off at camp and hit her with water or ice from an item, arrow, or spell. In Act 3, you can go on a date with her for the aptly named "Hot Date" achievement.

Avoid: The one-night stands with Mizora or Harleep. While Harleep isn't a particularly popular choice amongst the whole party, Mizora is another level of betrayal. Karlach may or may not break up with you after the encounter, depending on how you explain your romp with the devil.

How to romance Halsin

• Likes: Good, harmony, siding with the tieflings and druids, protecting animals and children, woodworking
• Dislikes: Cruelty, destruction of nature

Playthroughs typically won't guide you toward finding Halsin until you're well into Act 1, and even then you can't officially recruit the druid as a companion for a while. Once you do, he's into you from the start as being flirty is in his nature.

And in case there was any doubt, your new druid party member is the instigator of the already infamous bear love scene. Please turn your attention here, monster romance readers, because a heart-of-gold guy who's jacked but gentle, promising to hold back his beastly qualities no matter how badly he wants to devour you is right outta your playbook. And if you are into being devoured by a bear, you can opt your adventurous heart right into that part.

Halsin is open to most romantic encounters with more than one partner, whether they be long-term or one-night stands, even if other characters aren't quite as receptive.

Make sure to: Work with Halsin to lift the curse in Act 2. That sounds easy enough, but there's a lot that can go wrong in Act 2, so be careful in some of those weightier quests. As a hint, look for a shadowy child eager to play in the second act, and find Art Cullagh at the Last Light Inn.

How to romance Minthara

• Likes: Shows of force, blackmail, bribery, minding her business
• Dislikes: Weakness, acts of kindness, general good-doers

You can in fact recruit and romance Minthara, one of the leaders of the goblin camp in Act 1. Depending on your alignment, she may be willing to join your party, but if you're trying to save The Emerald Grove and recruit Minthara then you'll have to attack her and knock her out without initiating dialogue. If you did it right, she'll show up later in Act 2.

Before Patch 5, you could knock Minthara out but she wouldn't join you later on, so the BG3 community resorted to mods or some rather glitchy, vanilla workarounds that often caused problems. Since that update, you can recruit Minthara and Halsin, plus save The Grove without breaking the game.

Make sure to: Talk to her and destroy The Grove or knock her out without any conversation and save The Grove in Act 1. She reappears in Act 2, so make sure to let her probe your mind when prompted.

Avoid: Initiating the one-night stand with Mizora or she'll end the relationship.

One-night stands

Some of these romances are a little more spoilery, so I've put them in their own section. These are side characters that you can have a one-time romance with or characters you can pay at Sharess' Caress brothel.

The Drow twins

When you arrive at Sharess' Caress brothel on the Wyvern Crossing in Act 3, you'll likely meet the Drow twins; Nym Orlith and her brother, Sorn. You can hire each of them individually for 500 gold, or if you have a partner you're romancing, you can hire them both. Since these scenes take place in the Underdark room, they are described, so there aren't actually any visual sex scenes for these characters.

Naoise Nallinto

To romance this Dryad at Sharess' Caress, you first have to get rid of her other client, rather forcefully. If you break into the Nymph's Grotto room on the upper floor, the woman Naoise is with, Fist Jara, will transform into a Mind Flayer. Kill the creature and Naoise will offer a slightly unconventional experience for which you'll receive a special blessing until your next long rest.

Mizora

You know that devil that's keeping Wyll's soul captive? Yeah, you can romance her. During act three, you'll have to make a significant choice relating to Wyll's contract, but after it, Mizora will stick around in your camp, and will proposition you before too long. If there was such a thing as an evil romance option, this would be it, as you indulge in hellish pleasures at the expense of tortured souls. As you'd imagine, Wyll is also extremely unhappy with this turn of events and finds you the next morning.

The Guardian

You can even romance the Guardian character who keeps appearing in your dreams and lives inside the artefact protecting you from the Absolute. This won't be possible until act three onwards, and this romance is better if you do it yourself. However, I will say that one of the key things you need to do is go to the basement of the Elfsong Tavern in the Lower City of Baldur's Gate.

Haarlep

If you've got the hots for the deal-making devil, Raphael, then you can have a steamy encounter with his companion lookalike, Haarlep, if he spots you in Raphael's bedroom when you visit the House of Hope in Act 3. Raphael only has sex with demons that look like himself, which says an awful lot about his character, but you should still be a tad wary about sleeping with Haarlep considering he's an incubus. Use protection, maybe.

How Baldur's Gate 3 romances work

How does romance work in Baldur's Gate 3?

The most straightforward criteria for initiating romance in BG3 is your companion approval rating. As you'll no doubt notice while playing, the choices you make in dialogue and gameplay will either earn approval or disapproval from your party companions based on their morals, histories, and world views. Unsurprisingly, if you want to romance a character, you'll want to have a healthy approval rating with them, which you can track with the approval meter in their character sheet. For the most part, it isn't complex to puzzle out what characters will and won't approve of—Karlach and Wyll, for example, will frown on cozying up to devils.

From there, initiating and progressing romance with companion characters mostly comes down to navigating conversations in which they express their romantic intentions. While the specifics vary, you'll eventually have a conversation in camp sometime around the resolution of the Tieflings and goblins situation, in which your potential paramour will express their romantic interest; if you choose dialogue responses indicating you feel the same way, you're probably on the right path. Generally, if you've declared that initial romantic interest, you'll be progressing the romance as long as you're indicating that you care about the companion in dialogue and advancing their individual questlines when the opportunities arise.

Baldur's Gate 3 romances are not gender-locked either. For potential Dark Urge players, your violent intrusive thought generator doesn't have a huge impact on romance scenes, but it's worth considering when you go through character creation.

What about co-op romance? You can still romance your party members while playing co-op Baldur's Gate 3 (and hide your intimate encounters if you want). The catch is that players can't romance each other, so if you and your pals all roll an origin character on a save file that's going to limit your pool of lovers.

Can you romance more than one Baldur's Gate 3 companion?

It depends! Some of your companions prefer monogamy, and some don't have a preference. Thankfully, your companions are pretty mature and communicative on that front: If a companion isn't interested in a relationship with someone who has other irons in the romantic fire, they'll initiate a conversation to let you know they'll want to keep things platonic if you're pursuing other partners. At that point, you'll be able to clarify your intentions one way or another.