See the attached image. (Ignore how I was losing the fight.) The Ogre Magicker has Defensiveness active, and my character is within 3 squares (exactly 3 away from the edge of the 2x2 monster), so Defensiveness should render spellcasting difficult. The Ogre cast Unholy Curse on me, but you can see in the log that there was no roll for Defensiveness. Then I stepped closer to the Ogre. Defensiveness DID roll properly on subsequent spells. I'm guessing that the 2x2 figure is making the game count distances funny, like being a half a square off from what a player would expect.