Baldur's Gate 3 Approval: Thresholds and Romance Numbers

Gale's night-time scene about Mystra checks for 36 approval. Minthara's romance opens at 31. Astarion's Act Two partnering scene, the one unlocked after Raphael explains his scars, wants 70. None of those numbers sits on a band boundary, and the game will never show you any of them — the character sheet gives you a coloured bar and a word like "Medium", while the scripts underneath are comparing integers.

That gap is the whole problem with approval. It is a precise system displayed imprecisely, and the wiki says so outright: there are checks in the game for exact approval values that do not align with the displayed categories at all. Here is the number behind the bar, what moves it, and what each companion's romance is actually testing for.

The bar is a category, the script reads an integer

Every companion carries a single approval value toward your player character, changed by dialogue choices, quest outcomes and things you do in the world. The ceiling is 100. Once a companion is pinned at 100, further approval cannot be earned and the game stops showing you gain notifications for them entirely — which is worth knowing before you conclude that a choice "did nothing".

In multiplayer, each companion tracks a separate approval value toward each avatar. Your co-op partner's Astarion problem is not your Astarion problem.

The seven bands and what they mean

This is the table the hover tooltip is reading from.

Look at how wide Neutral is. It runs from -19 all the way to 20, which is 40 points of range wearing one label — and several romance checks live inside it. Wyll's celebration flirt fails under 10. Lae'zel's romance opens at 20. Both of those are "Neutral" on the bar, and the bar will not move for either.

The wiki names two of the off-grid checks explicitly: some events fire only under -40 (inside Very Low) and others only at 10 or more (inside Neutral). Treat the bands as a rough gauge and the number as the truth.

Where the actual number is hiding

Three places, and only two of them give you a figure:

• Character sheet, Summary page — a coloured bar with your portrait on it, at the bottom. No number.
• Character sheet, Detailed View page — the actual numerical value, sitting between the Saving Throw Bonuses block and Tags. This is the one you want.
• Console character sheet (R2), bottom-right corner — only for characters currently in the party, and the numeric value is not shown on console at all.

That last point is a genuine platform difference rather than a UI preference: if you are playing on Xbox or PlayStation, or in controller mode, the exact number is not available to you and you are stuck reading the categories.

What moves it, and by how much

Approval changes come in three sizes. Per the wiki, typical values are ±1 for small events, ±5 for medium, and ±10 for large. A single dialogue choice is rarely worth more than 10.

There are outliers on the high side. Being kind or magnanimous with Thaniel after lifting the Shadow Curse in Act 2 is worth +20 with Halsin from that one conversation — a fifth of the entire positive scale from a single exchange, which is why late-joining companions can climb the ladder much faster than the Act 1 six.

One honest caveat the wiki flags itself: there are numerous documented cases where an approval change should fire and does not. It is a known gap in the game rather than something you are doing wrong, and it is common enough that a mod exists specifically to patch the missing triggers. If you make an obviously Astarion-flavoured choice and nothing pops, that is a plausible explanation.

Companions who are not near you register nothing

This one costs you approval without any bad choice being involved.

Approval typically changes based on the proximity of eligible companions to your player character when the qualifying event happens. If a companion is far enough away when you make the choice, their approval does not change. Splitting the party to loot the other half of the map, then having your solo main character resolve a major dialogue, means the rest of the party learns nothing and rewards you nothing.

Two useful wrinkles on top of that:

• A companion's condition does not matter. Being asleep — or dead — has no bearing on whether their approval changes.
• But death still costs you, indirectly, because it prevents conversations that would otherwise have produced approval changes.

So the reliable pattern is boring and effective: keep the companion whose approval you are farming in the active party, and standing near you, when the story beat lands.

Three spells that cost you ten points

Casting Charm Person, Friends or Hypnotic Pattern on a companion drops their approval by 10 when the effect ends — and the wiki is specific that this applies regardless of difficulty setting.

Ten points is a large-event penalty, which puts it in the same bracket as a major dialogue betrayal. It matters most for Friends, because Friends is a cantrip — it costs no spell slot, so nothing about casting it signals that it has a price at all. Point it at a party member to win a Charisma check and you have paid a full romance threshold step for the advantage.

Two of the three, Friends and Hypnotic Pattern, are concentration spells; Charm Person is not. That matters because the penalty lands when the effect ends, however it ends. Damage to your caster forces a Constitution saving throw against DC 10 or half the damage taken, whichever is higher, and a failed save drops concentration — which drops the spell, which bills you the 10.

Minus fifty is the door

At -50 or lower, a companion leaves the party permanently. You get two warnings on the way down: one at -20 and one at -40.

What they take with them is the part worth planning around. A departing companion keeps anything they had equipped. The contents of their inventory, including story items, are returned to you in a backpack — but equipped gear walks out of the game with them. If a run is heading toward a permanent split, strip the character first.

Our companion recruitment guide covers the other, more common way to lose people — the quest deadlines and points of no return that delete companions regardless of how much they like you. Approval is the slow version of the same outcome.

The romance numbers, companion by companion

Eight companions can be romanced: the six origin companions plus Halsin and Minthara. Jaheira and Minsc cannot be romanced at all. A handful of non-companions — Mizora, Haarlep, the Emperor and the Sharess' Caress courtesans — offer one-off encounters instead, with no romance progression, though the wiki notes they can still affect an ongoing companion romance.

The numbers below are the approval values the wiki names for specific scenes. They are not one single "romance unlocked" figure per character — the game gates individual scenes at individual values, which is exactly why the bar is such a poor guide.

A drow player character gets something extra out of the Minthara row: at 40+ she uses the word alurlssrin, and a Drow of either subrace understands it natively while everyone else does not. Our races guide has the rest of what the subrace buys you.

Two romances is the ceiling, and it collapses to one

You can start the early stages of a romance with up to two origin companions. Only one survives: at a later stage, one of the two forces you to choose between them. Companions do not propose polyamory on their own.

The Tiefling Refugee Celebration is the documented exception, because it runs on its own script triggers and bypasses the standard relationship checks. Two consequences the wiki records: a romance you previously declined with Astarion can be offered again there, and if you queue two romances on the same day before the long rest that starts the celebration, you can begin a third at the party itself.

That is a script quirk, not a supported feature, and it comes with a warning attached — pushing past three queued romances can cause the chosen companion's scene to be skipped entirely and never acknowledged.

The Halsin permission window closes in one rest

Halsin will ask you to talk to your existing partner before anything happens. Shadowheart, Astarion and Karlach can consent to adding him. Lae'zel, Wyll and Gale always decline, so romancing one of them means either leaving them or turning Halsin down.

The trap is the timer. Despite Halsin saying "take your time, I'll be waiting", if you fail to obtain permission before the next long rest, he never raises it again and the romance path with him is permanently closed.

If you are running Dark Urge, there is one more romance consequence to plan for, and it lands in Act Two. In the Shadow-Cursed Lands, Sceleritas Fel demands the Dark Urge kill Isobel Thorm. Refuse — or arrive to find Marcus has already carried her off — and he comes back demanding the closest companion instead, which is usually the love interest. If that companion is not woken up, they are dead in the morning.

Approval is not Attitude

Two meters, two systems, and the wiki keeps a "not to be confused with" banner on both pages. Attitude governs non-hostile NPCs and, mainly, the prices merchants give you.

Three things about Attitude that do not apply to approval:

• Gifting is the only route up, per the wiki's Attitude page — gold or items of value, with no dialogue path.
• Gifting coins appears to beat gifting items, in the wiki's own hedged wording, because a gifted item counts for its current sell price. Reaching 100 Attitude with coins and then selling the items separately nets more gold than gifting the items to get there.
• A crime committed by your Mage Hand or your familiar lands the Attitude loss on the Mage Hand or familiar, not on you. And Attitude changes taken while under Disguise Self attach to that specific disguise rather than the character.

Attitude does not reflect what an NPC thinks of you in the approval sense, with one exception: sufficiently negative Attitude makes an NPC refuse to talk to that character until a gift of enough value brings it back up.

Quick Action Checklist

• Read the number, not the bar. Character sheet, Detailed View page, between Saving Throw Bonuses and Tags. Console players cannot see it and must use the categories.
• Neutral spans -19 to 20 — a 40-point band containing several real romance checks. The bar not moving means nothing.
• The scale is ±1 / ±5 / ±10 for small, medium and large events. The Thaniel conversation is worth +20 with Halsin.
• Keep the companion near you when the beat lands. Distance at the moment of a qualifying event cancels the approval change; being asleep or dead does not.
• Charm Person, Friends and Hypnotic Pattern cost 10 approval when the effect ends, on any difficulty.
• -20 and -40 are warnings. -50 is permanent — and they leave wearing whatever you gave them.
• Romance checks are per-scene integers: Wyll 10/20, Lae'zel 20, Shadowheart 20/40, Karlach 20/30, Minthara 31/40/50, Gale 36, Astarion 40/70. Halsin has no published number and is gated on the Shadow Curse instead.
• Two romances maximum, one survivor. The tiefling celebration is the documented script exception.
• Attitude is the merchant meter, raised only by gifts, and your Mage Hand can take the blame for you.