I've played through a number of times and now find Imoen's kidnapping annoying when I want her in my party. Are there any mods or anything to get around this? I've tried teleporting (console command) out of Irenicus' dungeon, but ran into a bug early (Entering the circus tent after solving the questline would bring me back into the illusion). I'm not sure if I ran into this bug from teleporting from other mods I had installed, but I deleted the saves and reinstalled the vanilla game. I'm guessing other bugs might pop up in Spellhold, so thought I'd ask here if anyone has any solutions.

Imoen post-capture is actually a separate creature file from the Imoen in Irenicus's dungeon, with a different set of scripts and even a different set of dialog files. While you could in theory keep her through some sort of trickery and/or console commands, it would likely cause serious problems later whenever she tries to talk to anyone (due to having the wrong dialog file). While these things could be fixed with a full-blown mod, I don't know of any "Keep Imoen" mods, and honestly they wouldn't really make a whole lot of sense from a story perspective.

If you really want her back early, I'd recommend racing through chapters 2 and 3 as quickly as possible and then coming back to do everything in chapter 6. You can actually get the fee for Gaelan just by doing stuff in the Copper Coronet and around the slums, and chapter 3 only lasts as long as those 3 quests for Aran. Chapter 4 is easy even at a low level and the drow equipment makes chapter 5 incredibly easy as well. Since all of chapter 5 except the drow city is still accessible afterwards, you can come back to places like the illithid city later if you have trouble... but I've done a super-race to get Imoen before with a 4-man party (incl. Yoshimo) and I was able to complete everything.

I would suggest modding Nalia either via level 1 npc mod, or a save editor; to have the same skillset as imoen. She can be just as annoying and she even gets kidnapped too, but at least you can rescue her quicker than poor immy.

I keep meaning to replay the game with Nalia as a full time party member, maybe even try out the PPG's de'Arnise 'romance'. With any luck you can smack her on the bum when she gets too prissy.

Yeah I was always disappointed that you couldn't romance Nalia. I may try that mode my next go through. I always end up romancing Aerie even if I don't want to. She's just too irresistible!

Imoen will be my primary arcane caster. I'll likely use Aerie for my secondary. I'm considering doing this run with monk, Kaldorn, Imoen, Jaheria, Aerie, and Mazzy. I might do Nalia and Amonen instead of Aerie and Mazzy.

For keeping Imoen, I'm going to try spawning her later version, but I want to make sure it doesn't trigger the spellhold dialogue. Even if it doesn't, I imagine I might run into some problems in Spellhold when the dream kicks my party members or when I am supposed to rescue the real Imoen.

Another option, though a bit intensive, is to take one of the NPC's that gets added back in by a mod and use Shadowkeeper to change her into Imoen. Replicate the stats and everything else. When you get the real Imoen, make note of the stats, drop the fake Imoen, then use Shadowkeeper to copy the stats into the real Imoen. Wouldn't have to worry about breaking the game that way.

I suppose if you have any experience with doing mods on characters, you could create just a small character mod that replicates Imoen and drops her somewhere else in the city. The game would treat her as a completely seperate NPC so it wouldn't break anything. I worked through a character mod about a year ago, they aren't that complex to make.

I spawned in Imoen211. She went through her rescued dialogue, but it didn't update my journal or anything. Though I'll have to scale her down via Shadowkeeper, it looks like this might be the best way to keep her as a companion throughout.

Imoen211 worked fine, but she had no party banter. I played through, rescuing the real Imoen. She was sent to the inn and, while there were two Imoens, I didn't notice anything other than Imoen211 not speaking to the rest of the party. This bothered me, so I deleted this set of games and started a new game with the goal of rescuing her as soon as possible. She was almost 300k experience behind my party when I rescued her. She chips in now and then in the story, but I still haven't seen her banter with the rest of the party. Does she at all in SoA?

If I remember correctly, she doesn't - the devs intended her to die/go insane in Spellhold, changed it when fans called 'WTF', and never got around to writing banter for her. (Ironic, since she wasn't even supposed to be in BG1, either - they only added her there because people said the early game was too hard without a thief.) Thankfully, they gave her banters for ToB, and there are mods out that add additional banter for all party members in SoA including Imoen.

I wish developers would stop listening to fans...
I liked Imoen in BG1, but in BG2 she's the most annoying of all the characters. Her voice actor nailed the chirpy and cheerful young Imoen in BG1, but the voice acting of the more sombre and serious Imoen in BG2 is at times cringeworthy, and is a contrast to the otherwise great voice acting in that game, like for example Jan Jansen who usually ends up being my thief.

I'm glad they kept her,. but yeah, I much prefer BG1 Imoen. In fact, when I usually swap out her BG2 portrait with the BG1 portrait.