[BigbysBackhand]

I was given a task by the master sergeant in bezantur to find a "particular" apprentices battle staff in murbant the captains pub, i traveled there talked to the NPC owner of the staff, but did not have the money to bribe her for it...it sais in the quest log to gain the staff by any means possible but using your wits may be preferable. As i did not have the money..i decided to use force..i attacked the NPC in subdual mode..but did no damage and my characters voiceset said "this weapon wont work"...i have a +1longsword that does 1d6 sonic damage, the NPC then cast fireball on me which also hit a guard...the Guard started shooting fire arrows at the Quest NPC..which did hurt her briefly..before she regened somehow, the quest NPC then proceeded to cast hold monster on both me and the guard..which worked...then fireballed us repeatedly both to death. so my question is can you only bribe the NPC for the item you need, even though what you pay for it is way more then what you get in return? and why was she not being hurt by my damage..i mean its an NPC civillian for gods sake that just wiped the floor with my lvl 10 fighter/WM.

[Hellstrom]

I think at least part of the answer is that there are random NPCs and then there are not-random NPCs. They may appear the same, but if you get a quest to obtain an item, assassinate a person, etc, the NPC the system creates will be a scaled encounter and can be much MUCH tougher than random civilians. My assassin character has done well over 100 NPC kills, some were easy and some were very, very tough. Like other encounters, the NPCs get random buffs put on them, things like DR and haste. I've seen NPCs with DR up to 15 or so. That made it pretty nasty when my character could do a max of 17 damage in a single blow... i.e. there's a very good reason why "using your wits may be preferable" for those retrieve an item tasks.

[Balanor]

Damage Resistance will negate subdual and physical damage and Damage Reduction may cause certain level weapons not to work. It's likely this individual may have had an item or ability that provided one of those. But as Hellstrom mentioned and I'll just point out - who says these NPCs are civilians? Mercenaries and adventurers are quite common in Thay. Maybe there is a very good reason the person you took the quest from couldn't retrieve the item on their own. :)

However, to answer your question - no, bribing the NPC is not the only way to get the item. There are multiple methods by which you can obtain the item for free. PCs with certain skills and abilities will have an easier time of this than others. While the target individuals are not indestructible, the method you selected in this case is meant to be the most difficult way to get your object item. Other than the IC reason for the target NPC's power, the OOC reason they are one helluva fight is because this object retrieval quest type is not meant to be a glorified assassination mission. The difficulty in fighting them is meant to reinforce that you should really exhaust any and all other opportunities (use certain skill-enhancing spells and items prior to talking to the target, engage your rogue allies if you still need assistance, among other options too) before taking the path of least resistance and attacking them.

[Balanor]

Oh - just to clarify a couple points - NPCs won't have Haste randomly applied to them, but they may sometimes have their base speed increased. Also, assassination quest missions should create, the vast majority of the time, NPC targets that are actually easier to kill than those created for object retrieval quests. But they are all scaled by your PC's level.