It's nice to dream, eh?
Unfortunately there will only be one NPC who can join your party in ToB, but he's a good one. If you want to know, click
here. WARNING: this thread will contain spoilers about new NPCs in ToB.
As for non-joinable NPCs, there are a heap of them, some very famous faces in the Realms (or so I've heard from the ToB designers).
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