I think I'd like to be a 'jack of all trades' rather than focus purely on one area of skills - unless anyone thinks that's not the best thing to do?
It's not a bad thing to do - you won't be the best dueler and you won't have the very best jobs if you try to cover a lot of bases. As somebody with functional but poor dueling skills, you'll pretty much have to fight the same sort of hybrid characters as yourself rather than pure combat characters. Soldiers and Duelers will call you a "ninja worker" and will attack you, and the similar adventurers in other towns will complain about you "attacking workers" and will have their soldiers grief farm you relentlessly. If this sounds like the sort of thing that you want to do, I recommend that you pick the adventurer class so that you can perch in other peoples' hotels for free and pick them off from the safety of the shelter that they thoughtfully provide you with.
I like a mix of trading and trapping - it affords access to lots of good money jobs and lots of good experience jobs while putting points into aim and shooting for some ability at dueling without any cost to job points. You'll still need to put a few more points in aim and ideally some in dodge if you want to duel well, but since so many players are using one-dimensional characters, there's plenty of people you can duel before you build those points up. I favor trapping first and then trading while building the character. You can be stealing horses for money and hunting grizzy bears for experience relatively quickly.
If you want a great single skill working build, I've found none better than hiding. You'll lose every duel that comes your way and you'll not be able to complete your class quests without temporarily putting points elsewhere, but its gets you to some fun jobs quite fast. Its also ideal for fort defense.
One character that I would like to try but haven't yet is a hybrid character based on leadership and dexterity. Not only is leadership the most powerful of the fort combat skills, but it also leads to some great jobs later on. It would be a touch slow to start, as leadership doesn't help too many early jobs.
