A recent post commented on monsters healing themselves out of combat, and how
annoying they are. First of all, I'll try not to comment on the irony about
how unfair this is, when players do the same thing all the live-long day. But
I will comment on the codewise structure of such things:
-- monsters are often in the middle of casting a spell IN combat, when players
flee and make the monster OUT of combat. If the monster was casting an attack
spell, well, no target, no spell. But if the monster is casting a self-heal,
obviously, this will go off normally, you just don't get to see it. This is
not out-of-combat casting, because the monster started while you were still
around. Nor will we change that.
-- Many monsters have a "generic" skill/spell list to make sure they're not
too easy. Of these, none of them ever make a monster chain a healing spell out
of combat. Therefore, if a monster is chainhealing out of combat, it is
because the coder made it do so on purpose. Perhaps the coder wanted the
monster to require a large party, or perhaps he wanted to make it a monster
you had to kill in a single run. It probably depends on the monster itself. I
can tell you that it was deliberate, however, and the coder probably knew how
annoying it was, and did it anyhow.
-- I am 100% convinced that, if you really found this kind of behavior
unacceptable, that there _are_ ways of stopping it. I'm sure some spellcasters
already know what I'm talking about.

Secondly, I'd also like to say that the argument "I think that my uber 2man
party of <bla bla bla> should be able to kill anything" will be met by mocking
laughter, followed by "no, you can't". The reason we have so many different
types of monsters is because we have so many different types of players. I
accept, and encourage, coders to bulld monsters that are easier to some
players/guilds than others. Hopefully they will continue to do so.

Shinarae Lluminus