Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
I picked casters as 3.X melee classes don't really gain new abilities as they level up and they don't really get any utility abilities at all.

I could do the example with skills instead if you like:

There is a group with a ranger, a cleric, a wizard, and a bard. They decide to recruit a rogue.

The rogue is a "jack of all trades" build who puts a few points into every skill. He has a few points in survival and handle animal, but the odds of him actually succeeding when the ranger cannot are very small, he has a few points of heal and knowledge religion, but the odds of him succeeding when the cleric cannot is again small, same with his few points in diplomacy and bluff succeeding over the bard of his spell-craft and knowledge arcana succeeding over the wizard. But then when it comes to traditional rogue skills that the rest of the party doesn't have, well this guy only put a few points into them as well, so when the group comes up against a difficulty lock or trap, odds are they are just out of luck.
That is still just an artefact a the rule system which has no increased costs for higher skills and wonky assumptions for DCs.

I could as easily point to the 210k xp 2E 7/8/7 fighter/thief/mage that contributes more to most parties than a fighter 8, thief 10 or mage 9 of the same xp. And there are many systems where it really would be a bad idea to just push your primary skills to the maximum and ignore secondary ones.

In short, redundant skills are less useful than unique skills, and if you try and do everything you risk over-extending your reach and succeeding at nothing.
That depends on a lot of things, not least the actual system used.