Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Starting area changes?

I found it just browsing hot fix patch notes, its under hot fix 20 and was purposely done.

Gameplay
Recruitable characters in Tutorial are no longer able to carry items and use consumables.

So ya, this was purposely done to stop using npcs as luggage, you could easily max weight Lae'zel before the jump and pick her up later to get all the junk with no restriction.