I play in a Pathfinder home game (a couple of them actually) and Pathfinder Society organized play. I also play Living Forgotten Realms, but not in a 4E home game.
I've found that in the Pathfinder home game, I tend to make the character that I want to make. Some few are ruggedly self-sufficient, but most are good at the things their classes dictate they should be good at. Having a relatively large home group, I can then rely upon the other players to make characters that are good at the things they are supposed to be good at. For example, Gemma Sandydowns a halfling ranger (urban ranger) / rogue is a skill monkey and skirmisher. She solves problems and is capable of doing fair damage at range or up close. That said, she often gets in over her head and needs Jorn Halfhand, a physically imposing synthesist summoner, to do the heavy lifting in melee; or the fighter (archer) to bring the big guns when fighting at range; and they all need gavain, the human cleric (street preacher) to talk them out of tight spots and provide much needed healing. Were we playing an adventure of the DM's own creation (rather than an adventure path), I would expect Steven to write the kind of encounters we as a group are going to get into.
In Pathfinder Society, I tend to make my characters more ruggedly self-sufficient. They are, after all, members of the Pathfinder Society, professional adventurers who travel to strange lands, deal with interesting people, take their treasures, then come home and write books about those exploits. Couple that with the fact that in an organized play game, you don't always know who the other players are going to be or which characters they are using that week. So, Anneke Bjornsdottir, human barbarian/fighter (two-handed fighter) can definitely kick the crap out of things with her greatsword, but she's not too shabby with her bow either; and she's got a cold iron morning star, just for thinsg that must be bludgeoned or pierced in melee. She does mostly the survivally, physical things you'd expect out of a barbarian fighter, but she also speaks (and reads) six languages (or thereabouts-- I'm not looking at her character sheet). Sure she's got magic weapons and armor and the requisite rings and cloaks, but she also carries a wand of CLW to share with whoever might be able to use it to keep her alive and a potion of fly for when her bow just isn't doing enough damage to the invisible, flying, lightning-bolt flinging enemy wizard. I thank Painlord (on the Paizo boards) for his long post on ways to make your Pathfinder Society character more ruggedly self-sufficient.
In Living Forgotten Realms, I feel like I more often make the best version of whatever class I am making and then hope for the best (but I don't try at all to make them self-sufficient)... and usually it works. Yeah, I loved it when Denerii Breezechaser, elven rogue, daggermaster, and theif of legend sat down with a defender, leader, controller, and another striker; but she has been at at least one table which we the players dubbed "Four Strikers, No Leaders." For the life of me, I can't remember what the two non-strikers at the table were, but we dealt with the adventure just fine... by dishing out damage quickly.
What I do now often do when prepping to play LFR at a convention is get with my friends and say, "hey guys, these are the scenarios that are running, let's play the Bearers of the Blade, or the Fellow(e)s of a Feather, or Desert Wind." These are all adventuring companies that are somewhat balanced, but not, by any means, completely optimized.
Bearers of the Blade = human strength cleric (mc fighter), dragonborn fighter, tiefling rogue.
Fellow(e)s of a Feather = human monk, minotaur runepriest, dwarven invoker (yeah, they get smacked around a lot).
Desert Wind = human two-weapon (trident and net) fighter, genasi warlord, and shifter monk/sorcerer hybrid.
That said, the two friends who form all of these groups with me get to play a lot more 4E than I do, and they and especially one player's wife have really tried hard to subscribe to Painlord's rules of self-sufficiency (even though they are playing LFR, not Pathfinder Society). What this means is that they end up acquiring a lot more consumables for their characters than I usually do in LFR.
Finally, please don't read this as a criticism of Pathfinder, 4E, Patfinder Society, or LFR. I play and love them all. I'm just pointing out differences that I have experienced over the last several years of play as it relates to this thread.
