Hi everyone. I recently started a playthrough for the first time after years of hearing about how good the game was, and i am having a blast. Now, yesterday i was going to recruit another member to my party, but as my max number of followers was 3, i thought i needed to part ways with one of them. But to my surprise, i was able to recruit him without any problem. I have the persuasion skill up to the middle of the bar, and i did not yet receive any training, so the +1 bonus to expert is not applied. Is this a bug?

Thanks for reading!

(Big edit because my previous post was too chaotic).

Not all followers count against the max limit, these exceptions are usually bound to a quest and will leave you once the quest is completed : Swyft, Murgo, or even Dante (he'll count against your max follower limit only if you want to recruit him).

The only follower who doesn't count against the max limit is the dog.

It would help if you could give the name of that follower.

Thanks for the reply! Yeah, that makes sense. I thought that could be the case but i wanted to be sure. I currently have in my party Virgil, Sogg, Magnus and Gar. Picked them up in that order. I guess Virgil would be the one that doesn't count, as he is tied to the main quest. This is my first time playing it, so i still have a lot to learn in terms of mechanics.

Truth, it's rather odd. With CH 12 and no expert in Persuasion, you shouldn't be able to have Virgil, Sogg, Magnus and Gar.

I suspect Gar to be bugged.

I'll try reloading an old save and see if i can recruit him again, or maybe leave some other companion, recruit Gar, and then recruit the other companion.
Well, i just tried that. If i tell anyone to leave, they won't join me again, because i'm already "travelling with a lot of people". If i tell Gar to leave however, i cannot recruit him again, he just thanks me for freeing him. I guess if you tell Gar to join right after freeing him, without exiting dialogue, it bugs... or it bypasses the charisma stat and lets him join anyway. I really don't know. Guess i'll keep the party as it is for now

Sounds close enough to the behavior, i.e. : when you do the quest to offer him to join, there might be a bug where the dialog doesn't check the max follower requirement or fail to check it correctly. But as soon as the dialog ends, the max follower limit is checked in your party.

It looks close enough to what happens with Dante. While he can join even if your party is already full, he'll refuse to join back after a Wait command if you're already at max followers.

As you long as you don't need any of your followers to wait for you, you can bypass this limit. However I don't know if you can add Dante and Gar this way?

It is kind of weird. I just met Dante for the first time and he wouldn't join me because of the size limit. I told Sogg to leave the party, and then Dante accepted, no problems! Perhaps Dante does indeed have a dialog check for party size. Maybe he won't join if you are above your max followers?

There are a few other bugs related to followers, such as the one on the Isle of Despair.
Cynthia Boggs is a temporary follower who will leave when you lead her to the Women's Camp or Ashbury. However if you're fast enough to order her to wait when landing on Ashbury, she can become a permanent follower.