Yeah, I'm going to do some additional testing with Zakra and the Wild Heckrans. I was able to see the Wild Heckrans glitch when I fought them on a file with lower-leveled characters, where the fight took much longer. I think Mauron's right and it's a matter of indexes. I've already found and corrected similar issues with other boss fights.
Relations between the Frog Kingdom and the humans will get better over the course of the game. The first improvement comes with beating Magus, the second with beating Ozzie, and the third after the Sun Stone quest (although you don't get to see the benefit of this final one until after the Black Omen).
Basically, the Frog King was the Big Bad before Magus, but now he's just licking his wounds on his home turf. You can talk to him, and you can fight him if you move really, really fast. But... try stealing from him.
The changes to Tech learning were intentional. Everybody starts with at least one Tech mastered. Frog should learn his second Tech during the Cathedral, while Chrono, Marle and Lucca should while in 2300 AD. But if the requirements are so high that you aren't learning them until you meet Spekkio, then I overestimated and need to bring them down.