Some of these may be new issues, from when I rewrote some of the ranged-weapon routines to get some of the more serious bugs out. I'm not happy with NPCs and AoE weapons yet and they probably have quite a few bugs like that still. I think in U4Part2 I just ended up giving NPCs only point-attack weapons, in order to avoid the problem.

The engine is a little weird with AoE weapons, it handles them like multiple attacks from the shooter to each affected square. (Again, something I'm not happy with)

Yeah that combat message is messed up but area of effect weapons such as fireball spells or grenades really should cause damage to anyone including NPCs and PCs who are within range unless you are wearing some sort of protection like something fireproof in this case.

In addition to the issue of enemy creatures firing distance weapons beyond their specified range, I have noticed two other things in the current ACK version. I don't know if these are intentional features or not.

1) When firing 'blast radius' weapons, creatures are still capable of damaging other creatures (friendly fire)

2) The player can damage himself with his own blast radius weapon if he is within the area of effect. The combat message when this occurs reads "[garbage characters] HITS YOU FOR [x] DAMAGE".