Harm Touch should have been a lifetap

[DeathsSilkyMist]

The thing people should remember when looking at Everuqest class design is Everquest was heavily inspired by Dungeons and Dragons 1.0 and 2.0. A "Shadowknight" in D&D was a character with 10 levels into Warrior, and 5 levels in to Wizard, with a focus on using necromancy spells. This means the "Shadowknight" had the same spell set as a Wizard, but having less levels into Wizard means you can't use the higher level spells. A character who leveled multiple classes in D&D also got an experience penalty.

As you can see, they basically just took the exact same idea, and simplified it a bit so you only had specific class combinations to chose from. They also simplified the range of spells you could choose from. A Shadowknight is a Warrior/Wizard, with more levels into Warrior and a focus on necromancy spells. A Paladin is a Warrior/Cleric, with more levels into Warrior. A Ranger was already defined as a specific class in D&D, but it is still basically a Warrior/Druid, with more levels into Warrior. The reason why rangers got their own class was because rangers in D&D and Everquest have a focus on using Bows, not just melee combat.

Everquest was made when video game design was still a lot less evovled. We take for granted all the stuff we know now, that the Devs didn't know back then.

Edit: Paladins were their own class as well in D&D 2.0, but they were basically a Warrior/Cleric. Shadowknights did not exist in D&D 1.0 or 2.0, so that is why I assume they decided to apply the hybrid penatly to Paladins and Rangers as well. Shadowknights kind of appeared in D&D 3.0 as the Blackguard prestige class, but that came out after Everquest had already launched.