Ahh, I was GM. And, there may in fact be something wrong with whatever detects your proximity to an object (on my system only, perhaps). Sometimes when I am fighting a mob, it says I am too far away, although I am well within the ring of influence.
If I #summon, the mob moves a fraction of an inche and I can hit it again.
This is why I sorted out the NPCs that do not respond to Hail. I started testing that all over my world, and sure enough Hail started working once I summoned or stood atop the NPC. Also note, once the initial Hail worked, subsequent hails did appear to work ok even at a slight distance. It's all mind boggling, and I cannot debug since my logs are not very descriptive anymore (trying to figure that out, too).
I will un-GM and try the binders again sometime.