Baldur’s Gate 3: How to Prepare Spells

Did you know you can change out the spells your characters have prepared any time you’re not in combat? While it might initially seem you can only swap spells when a companion levels up, you can actually do so pretty much any time. In this guide, we’ll go over how to prepare spells in Baldur’s Gate 3 so you don’t feel like you’re missing out on huge portions of your companions’ spell kits.

How to Prepare Spells in Baldur’s Gate 3

Let’s say you come across a bear you want to talk to and have a companion with the spell Speak With Animals, but they don’t have the spell prepared. Or maybe you’re finding a particular spell you’ve swapped (but not removed) with another when leveling up isn’t working out too great and you want to switch back. In either case, it’s possible to go into your Spellbook and change which spells your characters have prepared whenever you’re not in combat.

If using keyboard and mouse, the hotkey for your Spellbook is the “K” key. You can also open your inventory with the “I” key and click the Spellbook icon at the top of the inventory UI.

You can see which spells a character has prepared, as well as which spells are available. You can also swap them out from this screen by doing the following:

1. Mouse over a spell in the prepared spells row, which is the highlighted row in your Spellbook. An X will appear, and you can click to remove it.
2. Click or drag the spell you would like to replace into the empty slot.

This isn’t just useful for changing a character’s spell loadout for battle, but also for making use of utility spells you’d use outside of combat. Speak With Animals and Speak With Dead are the first two that come to mind. Prayer of Healing is another notable one, as it can’t be used during combat anyway.

Something to note is that the effects of spells you remove from your list of prepared spells wear off once you remove them from the list. You can’t swap Speak With Animals onto it, cast it, and remove it immediately to retain its effect. You’ll have to keep it in your prepared spells list until you’re done using it.

That’s all you need to know about how to prepare spells in Baldur’s Gate 3. There’s a lot to learn about this CRPG, though you don’t need to know it all. Check out some of our other BG3 guides like how to multiclass and how to get the Mourning Frost.