Well it's not just like he was -just- a Sneaky Herbalist.
It's just that those 3 skills developed far faster than the combat skills, and when they capped, the character felt entirely crippled.
I can't recall working with poisons much though, just making crazy buffing potions and such. They were pretty amazing, but the potions that made my char strong enough to fight anything confidently, required rather exotic and rare materials.
I suppose you could say that Oblivion is ahead of the rest in the realm of "single character diversification", but again, that goes back to the problem of the solo-centric RPG atmosphere that predominates now.
The problem I had with the whole situation, is that in a game that does not auto-adjust the difficulty based on an abstracted sum of your powers, you can do what I did without penalty. Maybe I misread what they were trying to accomplish, but I thought the point was that encounters don't become totally trivial, not that every damned Boar you run into in the countryside is the fight of your life, just like the first one you ever met. I was playing a role, to be sure. It wasn't intended to be the role of the Sneaky Herbalist, that was meant to be my key to efficient progress. Instead, the game left my character behind.
And Aezeal, I agree, the full truth lies somewhere inbetween. Or at least, the perfect world does. I just don't believe there should be the potential to play 50 hours into a game, and create a total dead end without actually losing the game. I mean I could continue playing, but it was aggravating, and looked like a slow path of attrition (the herbs I needed for the potions that I needed to survive, were not easy to find at the rate I had to drink them).