So, I just escapedIrenicus' dungeon and now Imoen was taken away.

And honestly, I don't really care that much and usually the side quests and everything always interest me much more than following the main quest. And right now I was thinking about either using ShadowKeeper to make my whole party look like Drow Elfs or making a Lord-of-the-Rings like looking party with the typical fantasy diversity (one elf, one dwarf, one human...).

But!
Before I do this, question: will I be required to eventually kick someone out of my party when I get Imoen back?
A spoiler would be far less of a buzzkill for me than making up a nice party and then having to kick someone out eventually because I need Imoen in my party again to finish the main quest.

Hah, sadly I can't answer the question as I just do not know, but that was exactly what I was thinking. Well, there was also something along the lines of "Oh, you stole Imoen. Please keep her."

Baldur's Gate II would be massively improved if the storyline was about hunters trying to find the player character to give him Imoen back, with the PC's motivations turned to "I don't want her!"

At least Khalid is dead now.
"Hey there, Jaheira, winkwink!"

If you have Yoshimo, you will lose him immediately before you get Imoen back. Otherwise (and assuming you have a full party), you will need to kick somebody out if you want Imoen.

On the other hand, you don't actually need Imoen to complete the main quest.

(Of note, there is a glitch that allows you to skip the event where Imoen is taken away, but it is apparently tricky to pull off, and the one who rejoins you isn't technically the same character, so you can get 2 of them.)

Thank you!

Straight answer: no. You are never forced to take any character on board in BG2, including Imoen. Though you *are* forced to take Sarevok on when you get to Throne of Bhaal. Thank goodness for the 'Sarevok be gone' mod.

I'm pretty sure you can just dismiss Sarevok from your party; no need to cheat by using a mod. (If using the console is cheating, then so is using a mod, even if said mod intentionally makes the game harder.)

Thanks.
Sarevok sounds like a cool person to have in your party. Guess he'll make the best tank and would fit into the idea of making the party look like drow elfs.

You don't NEED Imoen, and can just continue without her. Oddly she will then just bugger off and you can find her later, while you have to... struggle a bit more. If you don't want her back, it's fine to play that way - you don't need her to finish the game or anything like that. Probably makes sense to use her in a good party, at least I did that the first time through the game, but you don't HAVE to.

Settle in for a great gaming experience. It's one hell of a ride :)

I never said you couldn't dismiss anybody. My point was about being forced to take people on, and Sarevok is the only one that's forced upon you. The 'Sarevok be gone' mod makes it so that the ridiculous situation of him being there in the first place never happens.

This might count as a small spoiler.

If you have Yoshimo as a party member, you won't have to worry about making room for Imoen. That's all I will say.

When you find Imoen again (this happens part-way through chapter 4), she will be a party-joinable NPC. If you want her back in the party, and you have a 6-man party at the time, you will have to kick out someone else so she can rejoin.

However if you don't want her back, you will have the option of sending her to make her own way to the Copper Coronet. How she gets there, nobody knows, but by the time you get back to Athkatla (for chapter 6) the rest of the party will have levelled up a whole lot, and she won't, so she will be no use to you - in the case of losing a mage, it's not just that she will be behind in level, but she will have no high level spells in her spell book.

If you fill up your party with 6 people, there is ONE who, if you take him with you, will leave the party - for good - at pretty much exactly the moment when you get Imoen back. There is a narrative reason for this.

(I believe the previous post before me mentioned Yoshimo. I recommend keeping him with you for exactly this reason.)

Also, in Throne of Bhaal, you are NOT forced to take Sarevok on: at least, if you have 6 members in your party at the point where you meet him again, the game will treat it as a 7th person *attempting* to join, but you can dismiss him at once (and, indeed, MUST dismiss at least one person before you can do anything else in the game.) This does not really count as taking him into your party because there will never be a moment when he is under your control and green-circled unless you dismiss somebody else and then get out of the "Reform Party" screen.

Yes it does. He is in your party roster, your reserve; he is forced upon you. Because he is not traveling in your company does not mean he has not been foisted on you... he has.

Of note, the Imoen who rejoins is acually a *different* Imoen. This means that any spells you taught her will be gone, as will any equipment she was carrying.

There are actually 3 playable Imoens in Baldur's Gate 2, and it is possible, through glitches, to have 2 in the party at once. In particular, there is the following:

1. Tutorial Imoen. This version of Imoen has unusually high thieving skills (the developers did not want her to fail while the player is still learning the controls; same reason Xan has 25 Intelligence in BG2). She also, I believe, has Baldur's Gate 1 style weapon proficiencies. Tutorial Imoen disappears at the end of the tuturial. You can, however, import a tutorial save into Throne of Bhaal, and she will remain. Then you can get Imoen normally and have two Imoens.

2. Irenicus Dungeon (ID) Imoen. This version of Imoen is characterized by Imoen's Belt, which makes her (nearly) unkillable, as well as a script that causes her to leave the party if her HP reaches 1. You can keep her by breaking the cutscene in which she leaves. This cutscene skip is apparently very difficult; you need to dismiss Imoen at just the right moment so that she asks to join when the cutscene starts, breaking the cutscene; if you manage to do this, you can then recruit Imoen normally later and have two Imoens.

Of interest, if you manage to kill ID Imoen (for example, by stacking Contagion), she will still show up alive in the cutscene, and will be gone from the party when you next regain control.

3. The Imoen you rescue in Spellhold. This is, of course, the one that you normally have the rest of the game (if you decide to recruit and keep her). Note that you actually need to play through Chapter 4 normally to get her; if you use polymorph teleporting to skip Spellhold, you skip recruiting Imoen (along with other scenes vital to the plot). This is also the version you get in Throne of Bhaal (the .CRE files *might* be different, but the game won't let you have both at once anyway).

The (much) more convenient way to do this is to simply start a multi-player game and create however many characters of whichever races and classes you want. All Drow Elves? Well, they won't have Drow stats, but making Elf characters who look like them is easy. Lord-of-the-Rings style party? Also easy, and I'm sure there are plenty of portrait-packs out there with Gandalf and Boromir and whatnot in them.

Then, once you've started the multiplayer game, save and quit and find the "mpsave" directory in your game folder. Your new save should be inside. Move or copy it to the normal "save" directory and you can play on as if it is a normal single player game.

(You could also just keep playing the multiplayer game by yourself, but that has some additional features that are just clutter in single player. Most notably there's a moment of lag before the game un-pauses.)