Rob Mad Bob is a broken quest.

[Brechnor]

I went around pick pocketing people early game.
I get a quest to rob a key from mad bob, so I go to him and it's...
NOPE, item is red, you can't progress the quest and it will never end or remove itself from your quest log.

*quits game*

oh well...

Good quest design would either make the quest not activate and explain why, or just cancel that one section in the quest whole, or even just make the key lootable as a special item on it's own but NO, in a game where you can be a cold logical person, there is no logic to this particular quest design...

I have multiple saves but it's been so long that I overwrote the saves before this quest. I mean, you can only save 99 times so things have to be overwritten eventually.... (crazy)
With multiple playthroughs those 99 saves are NOT enough to cope with broken quests like this because you have to save ALL the time to avoid situations like it, but they still happen any way.

[shade169]

i just did that quest a few minutes ago...worked fine..and i only have pickpocket 1 from the necklace

[Brechnor]

Yes, it would have worked like that if I hadn't already been there and wasn't warned about being locked out of quest content in the future.

Can't even abandon the quest or kill him to get it because he is an immune NPC. It's documented very badly.

[Sai Kyouji]

Did you just pickpocket Mad Bob twice already without taking his key?

[Brechnor]

Originally posted by Sai Kyouji:

Did you just pickpocket Mad Bob twice already without taking his key?

I have stolen twice yes, which either means the skill "you only steal twice" actually allows you to steal a third time and the naming of the skill is mistranslated and should read "you only steal thrice", or the game is bugged and it's automatically unlocked any way without training into it.

I do have another save with over 50 hours but wasn't aware of the issue as I did not pick pocket in that one unless I specifically had a quest to do it, so now that i'm playing as an outlaw thief it seems to potentially mess up a few quest lines.

I also just tested this and went to a random named NPC in goliet, stole something, backed out and waited for the alert meter to update, stole something a second time without the skill and it still allowed me to steal twice.

Something is definitely wrong somewhere.

[OnKeLDead]

Plz contact me via PN if you have a savegame of this situation.