Ok, simply for anyone to avoid frustration as I had it put upon me, if you wish to help Claire in the brothel in Brynnlaw, be careful to make sure your party members are not confused when you talk to he Claire. If so, the control panel will leave and your confused party members will attack your party until everyone else is dead. You're members can't move, can't cast, and must sit and watch as (in my case) my main character slaughtered them all. Then, after I left, I returned to Claire's cell, only to find none of my stuff was there. Great. Fortunately for the good ol' q button this was more of a disgrace than a detriment.

Amon-Ra

Is this to do with the fact that when you start a conversation characters still move ?
If so I had a similar problem in a fight where a mage cast a poison spell (could have been cloud kill) then the convesation started. The spell kept poisoning me whilst I was talking and when the convesation stopped I found I had only half the hit points.