Just curious, what was the original intent behind making these things lower your % when used on yourself?

They don't want you perfecting offensive spells/sups/powers on yourself.

Just like fire giant warrior can't flurry himself to perfection.

You can't iceneedle yourself to perfection ;)

No sleep sucks

Also (and probably the original reason): harder to damage yourself to bring yourself below the threshold for attacks like backstab and cleave.

Which isn't that relevant in today's CF, but in 1995 when backstab could one-shot people and it really was the ONLY thing thieves had...

Old school assassinate was much like cleave - just random whether you hit or not, and could be attempted on anyone in pk (or mobs!) that were at perfect health.

And, I still do it today! for those lovely mobs with backstab/assassinate. Did this work differently WAY WAY back? or something? Like pre 2000?

Culturally, yes. Mages circa 1995 geared for damroll, not HP.

keep in mind that you have to either heal yourself to "full" after removing a piece of gear or wait for a tick. If you know you're about to get cleaved/backstabbed/assassinated, you don't always have time to do that.

Meanwhile, "c lig self" was a quick and easy way to get below that percentage.

Until we made it remove a skill % when you did it. :P