Originally Posted by
Telok
SR is not, intrinsically & up through 3e (last ed I played or cared for), a hard niche protection game. Characters are generally built point buy or by a priority system, neither of which promote hard niches. A forum/internet meta has evolved around super specialized characters, but its similar to the D&D 5e "has to have espertise & reliable talent & buffs to hit the base skill DCs" thing. So, the internet meta is basically only true if the GM is upping difficulty to match the PCs with the higest numbers.
D&D 5e has rather stronger niche protection than SR, with the caveat that (as always) a strong optimizer using all possible options without any GM input and with a whiteroom setup can bend the rules into a pretzel & break/cross niches. Clerics heal & buff, wizards get the control & area blasts & utility, warrior types hit stuff, rogue types get all the non-intelligence skill stuff, etc., etc.
Edit; players playing into the "not over-specialized" thing is depends on there being noticable, significant, & meaningful drawbacks to specialization, in addition to the opportunity to meaningfully generalize. D&D is bad at that by having generally linear/exponential advancement for specialization and generalizing being normally a trap option (ex: wizard 15 vs wizard 8/fighter 7).