[Quiet Man Cometh]

In Daggerfall, my sister and I used to save before asking the mage guy for a quest and keep reloading until we got the "guard mage x in trance" quest because you always got a magic item out of it. We wereb't terribly good fighters to begin with though. We would always be slaughtered the first time around by the assassins, then when we reloaded they game would apparently take pity on us as that assassins suddenly can't hit the broad side of a barn.

Harpies were also the most evil things to kill. They couldn't be wounded by *any* weapon, magic or otherwise. You had to use yoru fists. We killed one I think, mostly by opening the door it was behind, punching or kicking, and slamming the door before it could hit back. Open, punch, slam, repeat. A lot. Fighter's guild rewards were crappy too.

One thing I noticed that was dropped from Daggerfall for later games were certain monster being able to open doors. Harpies were not one of them thankfully.