Let's see...

For the people who are looking for the short version of the answer, it's
probably going to be "No", so you can now skip this post and move to
the next one.

For those masochists who decided to continue, I'm going to make philosophical
ramblings about the nature of this question, make some off-point remarks
and neo-witty comments and write a long and tiresome essay which might
or might not include the legendary fiction heroes Darol and Kizarwexius.
It's a text which might leave the original question entirely unanswered,
and which might be a result of a developer having too much free time
on his hands, or it might be an exaggerated answer made to spite the people
who let their triggers mess up their newsposts.

Let's proceed to the philosophical ramblings. Let's begin this with the
first approach and answer directly what was asked.

I already know checking the code that this skill only works during
combat. It takes a target, but the combat cannot be initiated with it.
Therefore player must attack the monster, then use the skill. The
monsters do not really care what message it says when a person starts
a skill, so I truly wonder why such a cosmetic change is such an interest
to such many people. Since the original newsposter expressed his
fondness towards simulation and perhaps realistic sense, I'll give
my answer in similar fashion. Since this skill cannot be used outside
of combat, it's clear that if you're whacking a monster with a sword,
any tactical maneuvers that you are preparing are very likely to
be interpreted by the monster as hostile, even if you had completely
different things in mind. Therefore it makes sense that this skill
qualifies as an offensive skill.

Did this answer your question? If so, you can stop reading now and
move on to the next newspost.

But yet you are here. It didn't answer your question? Well of course
it didn't. What I've learned over the years that generally the
players dislike realism in every sense of the word. People don't
like when we wizards make longish explanations (like the chapter
before) and distort everything by making pseudo-logical statements
from the real world to support our cause.

So why wasn't my answer satisfactory? I could search for a Taiwanese
guru or I could walk through a desert in search for a burning bush
that would beckon me closer and give me all the answers, and
sometime in the year 4378 there would be an international holiday when
all the religions of the world would come together including both
the Mahayana and Theravada branches or alternatively there would
be "World's Gonna End!' panic because the 19 Baktun of the
Mayan Long Count calendar is about to begin. But unfortunately I
find myself in between a rock and hard place when I'm pondering
the future ramifications of the decision I'm about to take. Will
I let down the followers of Siddhartha Gautama or shall I try
to answer this question presented here in BatMUD about a guild?
If this would be only a question of my delusions of grandeur
and my god-complex that is growing word by word, the decision
would be very easy and it's likely you would never hear the
answer to the question (although it might sound like that already
despite my choice). But because I'm confident that somewhere
during 2000 years the art is bound to evolve into a very bad
ultra-post-modernism style, it would inevitably mean that
I'd be depicted as some sort of 8-headed clockwork beast
built entirely of antiquated Iphones. Therefore I'll take
the easy way out and finally attempt to make a bold
assumption about this question, with no help from the
forces of supernatural, other than myself.

Perhaps my answer wasn't satisfactory, because I didn't answer
the real question that was hidden somewhere behind these
craftily hidden hints. The question was perhaps written in
the "real life logic form" which would roughly translate
into a technical question, such as "Can we make a change to
skill so it wouldn't aggravate monsters when we start it?"
It turns out that everyone of us uses the real life logic
to one's advantage when the opportunity for it appears.
This is the real question that I read, and that's the
one I'm going to reply. I'm going to say no, despite any
logical aspects, because the skill has been planned with
these specific combat aspects and that's how it is going
to be.

Of course, there's a chance that all the asker ever wanted
was to make some sort of cosmetic change, which means
I'd be very off-track. However it won't change my answer
since I need to take the technical side into consideration.
It would, however, make me look kind of silly that I
had completely understood the question wrong. To survive
from such a thing, I'd need to play some sort of mind tricks
on you and attempt to confuse you so you'd forget the
post ever existed, or divert your minds away from the
fact that I even wrote to ideas-wanted, maybe make you
believe I wrote in tales or something, but it would
be very difficult to delude someone as attentive as
yourself, because as we approached to the forest glade, I
told Kizarwexius that this was certainly the place where
we wanted to be. The darkness had fallen hours ago, and it
was deadly silent. Only the smaller widows were swaying
as the wind blew on them. Kizarwexius told me to get
get some twigs so we could get a fire started, but it
had been raining yesterday, so the likelihood of
actually finding any lumber that wasn't wet wasn't very
good. I wandered around the forests for a while, but
came back empty-handed. As I found Kizarwexius from the
camp site,I noticed that the fire had been lit. I asked
Kizarwexius how on earth was that possible and the
answer was: "I brought my Captain's Log with me!". I was
wondering how a book would keep fire burning quite
long but it turned out that Kizarwexius really carried
a wooden log with him. Well, he really surprises me
sometimes. I always think he's a little bit crazy, but
despite his quirks, he can be really entertaining at times.

I took some marshmallows from my backpack and handed
them over to Kizarwexius, but he said they're too
soft for his taste. To be frank, they're quite too for
my taste as well, so we decided to skip the marshmallows
and move on to the hard stuff. I had chosen couple bottles
of Russian Standard with me while Kizarwexius took some
bottles of Stolichnaya. Kizarwexius told that the name
of Stolichnaya means 'Stockholm' in Russian. I found
that hard to believe, because why would the Russians
make a Russian vodka and then call it Stockholm in
Russian? Kizarwexius didn't understand it either but
he said that when he bought the bottles from Stockholm
and asked what is means, someone said it means the
"Capital City". That actually sounds logical,
because Stockholm is indeed a capital city of Sweden
and Stolichnaya actually sounds like Stockholm
if you'd be speaking in Russian, not that we know
any.

While chatting about the names of vodkas, we had
actually emptied our first bottles. We were beginning
to feel drunk and it looked like to world was
spinning around. Then again, it could have been
that we were spinning, but we just wouldn't realize
it because we were drunk. It also looked like the
speed would accelerate so perhaps the world was
spinning first and we were spinning the same time, thus
the effect a little bit crazier. I suggested to Kizarwexius
that perhaps we should move to that soft stuff now, referring
to the marshmallows, but he insisted that we keep on drinking
the hard stuff. Well, there we were sitting by the
cracking fire, and Kizarwexius started singing that
80's song, "Hard Stuff" by Donna Summer. I told him
that the song was actually called "Hot Stuff", but he
ignored me completely. I smiled and we both were
drinking and singing the "Hard Stuff", even though with
misheard lyrics. It looked like the day was dawning
soon and the place that looked a bit scary during the
night wasn't all that scary during the morning. The fire
was going out, our bottles were empty and I looked at
the pocket watch that Kizarwexius had with him and
it said "8 am", meaning that it was still one more
hour to wait until we could get more hard stuff
to drink. Now Kizarwexius looked at me, with a smirk on
his face, and said: "Now this is the time for the soft
stuff." We lit the fire again for the marshmallows, and
started singing "Soft Stuff", the another less-known
version of the Donna Summer hit, until we got more
hard stuff from the local boutique once the hour
had passed.

Thanks for reading my story! On Tales Group!