Yes, this is an intentional change. I submitted a bug report to Larian and they got back to me right away that this is an intentional change because Lae’zel and Shadowheart are not full party members yet during the tutorial. They become full party members after the beach.
That's honestly to bad... as I use them as a MULE to hold heavy gear, and retrieve it off there corpse later (after the ship crashes).
