I don't know about super-specialization. Yes, it's certainly possible - and the temptation is there - but it's also really easy to take down a character whose not prepared for either combat or intrigue. If you're Gregor Clegane, it wouldn't take much for even Bronn to outsmart you, and all though Littlefinger can talk circles around Timett son of Timett, all the Burned Men would drag him to a nasty, bloodied end.
Specialized can work, but you really need enough ability in other areas to at least get yourself out of the situation, if not actually win.
That's why you form parties. We've discovered we only need one PC to be good at something, eg in battle our one knight can take on a whole field of bad guys who have above-average combat stats (say, much better than
my character's).
Our GM has an odd way of dealing with this. In the last two sessions, we encountered named NPCs with high-levels in intrigue
and combat skills. But of course, they had to split points between them.
In the first case, no direct combat of either type occurred, as murdering this guy in front of his knights was a bad idea -- our knight was wounded from being shot with
many arrows -- and my social character was dismantling his scheme from away.
In the second, my character (a bluff-meister) had to go off by himself and deal with a bandit chieftain (who had lots of Intimidate and fighting ability). Since I'd cleverly infiltrated his camp, he didn't immediately start the beat down. Instead, he tried to intimidate my PC into giving up tactical information (he knew I'd been hanging out with the army previously) while I was trying to convince him that ghosts were real (yes, it made sense in context). He did pretty well, but still lost, and the GM admitted later that he only did so well due to good dice-rolling. (And then ghosts convinced his own men to kill him. That took several in-game days to set up.)
Unless you're unlucky (or pick your battles poorly), specialization gives more benefits than negatives, and even picking battles poorly doesn't seem to mean much if the whole party is together.
(A note on my character: he's a nobleman, but he's
really good at disguise, and frequently pretends to be a mercenary, bandit, or whatever else is required to avoid attention or get information. He basically gave up his horse and armor because you can't carry those around in a bag! That's why he's so often away from the other PCs. I doubt that's common in most groups.)
