[@Diggerton]: Because we have multiple offensive mages and someone's signing up with a healer.

I'm doing this so there's no characters who are redundant in terms of their role in the party. At least all our fighter characters do fairly different things even if they all use swords. We have a fast attacker with a divine weapon, a slower greatsword user with other skills, and someone with an enormous sword who has a very wild fighting style.

It [i]is[/i] flavor, but it's also to encourage variety. You see the class, see what that character does, and can say "okay, I won't make my character do that".