Introduction

My name is Linuxfreebird and I am the mod author. I classify this mod as being in beta, because more testing is needed to verify its stability. I recommend checking out Boznaz's mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/9008?tab=description&BH=1 as an alterative to my mod. The difference between our mods as far as I can tell is my mod allows removal of the avatar tag on characters that started as avatars, and Boznaz's mod allows for multiple avatars. Full code solution is available here: https://github.com/linuxfreebird/SwapOriginAndCompanion .


The purpose of this mod is to allow the player to swap the origin starting character with a party companion, such that they can exchange dialogue with one another, perform the swap in a convenient and fast way without using console commands, roleplay romance between the alternating avatars, experience your main origin character's reactionary dialogue during cut-scenes, and who knows what else. The ideal goal is to make this code as stable as possible to not break any important cut scenes or quest lines. I assume approval, romance state, and other important parameters are preserved between swaps, but further testing is needed to verify.

• Currently this mod is not considered stable in multiplayer sessions, so I recommend sticking with single player sessions for now. See minor issues report at the bottom of this description. 
• Currently, this mod only supports swapping the following companions: Gale, Laezel, Wyll, Minsc, Shadowheart, Karlach, and Astarion. I can add the other companions later, I just have not had a chance to do that yet.
• Does not create multiple avatars. That can be done using other mods or converting a multiplayer session to single player session, but this mod may have issues with that.
• I don't think you can use this mod on purely custom Tav/Durge characters, because the mod is swapping tags that are hard coded specifically to the origin characters. I got away with it in my play testing, because I used another mod to combine the Durge identity with Shadowheart.
  
  

• There are no requirements for this mod.
•  It should work in any save file. 
• Just place the pak file in your mod folder or use BG3MM. 
• When deciding mod load order, I recommend following this guide https://ethersys.net/howto-order-mods-bg3/ for ordering all of your mods and place my mod in the script extender order group. 
• After installing this mod, and loading a save file, you should see a spell in your spell list named SwapOriginAndCompanion. The spell only works if the caster is the avatar and the spell target is a companion.
  
  

Successful Test Results

I have done a 24 hours play test with this mod and it appears to be mostly working, and I have encountered a few minor issues. I have only tested it on Gale and Shadowheart. My main character is Shadowheart with the Dark Urge origin (I used another mod for that) and I was able to dynamically swap her with Gale and they both were able to romance each other, while preserving all story related content for them. More testing is needed to see how well this work with other companions and it remains to be tested to see how safe this will be for the epilogue scenes. I finished act 2 with Gale and Shadowheart and can confirm that I was able to experience Shadowheart's enemy of Shar story from her cut-scene reactions and play as the Durge resisting to kill my romance partner Gale, by switching their avatar tags. The mod that I used to combine Durge and Shadowheart was https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/7650?tab=description by surma007.

Failed Test Results

I have currently experienced a few minor issues with this mod:

• After swapping avatar and companion, your newly established companion will start walking away, eventually making their way to their tent in camp. This behavior happens either in camp or out of camp. You will have to go to camp immediately after casting the spell to clear their "walk back to camp tent" tag. The reason why you want to go to camp immediately is to prevent the companion from walking into restricted areas that might get you in trouble outside of camp. If you do not go to camp after the swap, your companion will eventually force you to go back to camp. Once your back in camp, you can go back to where you were previously and continue like normal. I am currently looking into how to fix this. 
• Some cut scenes will pick a companion instead of the avatar, however I think in my play test there were only 2 cut scenes where I noticed this. One of them was speaking to the emperor for the first time in the astral prism. 
• I experienced a blue screen computer crash when playing a companion character in the party and I clicked on another companion to initiate dialogue. Normally the companion would say, "I can't talk to you right now," however there is a bug that crashes your computer when you try to perform this action. This bug did not occur until I got to act 2 with Asterion. Even though this is a really bad bug, it is not game breaking bug because I was able to continue playing normally as long as I avoided speaking between companions that aren't avatars. 
• Just like with BOZNAZ's mod, you will not see the avatar crown symbol update on your character's portraits until you reload a save.
• Romance between partners is not synced, so each partner's romance progression has to be done for each partner independently.
• I am able to confirm that stuff gets broken in a multiplayer session. Once you swap a companion to avatar status in a multiplayer session you can't seem to swap back. This might have been caused by me dismissing the companion Tav and recruiting him back again.
• I do not know what will happen if the companion that you targeted is not in your party, so I recommend only doing this on party members only. 
  

I am currently looking into solving these issues, but it will take some time. If anyone has any suggestions to improve the code for this mod, feel free to let me know.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Moxi, Focus, Boznaz, and Cerberry for pioneering the code leading up to this development. Special thanks to the following community members that provided their patience, guidance and mentorship to help me figure out how to write this code from scratch with zero knowledge in mod development, Lua or BG3SE in a 12 hour development time: Aahz, Zehtuka, primal_fire, simosas, ResplendentArrow, JuuM, Chip Chocolate Legendary Muffin, Hippo0o, Satan - ISF Enjoyer, Kilay -  Random Reader, PeachyKee, TechRoot, Cereals, the croc house, and anyone else I forgot to mention. I grant permission to anyone who wants to copy, modify and re-release the code. Just please cite the original mod author.