To be clear, I do not care at all about companions offering their skills for dice rolls in conversations. In fact, I'd prefer if the checks always rely completely on my main character's stats (and getting my own speak with animals ring so I don't have to rely on the warlock to do the talking). I just want to hear their input and the extra lore tidbits without having to replay the game with different combinations. I don't want to be able to know what other branches of convo would result in; I want the dialog I'd get from my choices just with the other companions in the group to respond as well.
This is not about mechanics. It's just about getting a few extra lines of dialog from missing oh hey that NPC knows that Companion. What is the point of having to jump to camp, swap someone and manage inventory from that, then teleport back and start a dialog, then back to camp, get the companion you want for everything else....
Some people you just want for that 1 specific interaction, and the rest of the time they can stand back. Like when you find a corpse drained of blood, you're gonna want the vampire to be with you. You can send all the locked chests back to camp to be opened later, but you can't drag a dead hog to camp to have a round table discussion.
I fully accept that we are using 5e rules, so I'm not suggestion Larian switch to the far superior system of having skill checks that you either pass or fail based on your actual stats from games like Outer Worlds. We are playing D&D officially licensed 5e, so we are stuck with the dice rolls that make a lot of sense in person with other people and a DM to react, but are entirely unsatisfying alone. That's the price of paying licensed IP content.
But you can be damn sure I will be save scumming to get the outcomes I want in the actual release. I'm here for the content, and enduring the WotC 5e mechanics to get at it; not the other way around.
If you don't want 6 companions, fine just let us hotswap characters in place. It's tedious to have to load a quick save for things where if you leave people die etc, just to return with the "right" companions to hear the backstory that in no way effects anything other than my own curiosity of the lore.