Is it an intended obstacle to solving quests that if you give an item to the wrong mob, there's no way of getting it back? It really puts me off of doing quests when I'm going along, and then irrevocably fail the quest because because there's no getting it back if you give it to the wrong mob. It seems unrealistic and pointlessly frustrating.

So what I'm suggesting is an "offer" command, which is basically like give, except you only hand over the item if the mob has some reason to accept it. There still might be cases where an NPC would take your quest item and not give it back, but at least (made up example that human paladin won't refuse to return the medicine you're trying to give to that other human paladin who was asking for it.