Is it useful to have several characters of the same race/class?

Finlorfin

I'm still a bit confused as to how much you can do on one character. For example, I currently have a light armour caster Templar and a heavy armour melee Templar character. The former does smithing, the latter tailoring.

Is it smart to do it like this or is it viable to just have one character on which I craft everything and level all skills etc, and then switch skillpoints/attributes when I want a different playstyle?

pysgod1978b14_ESO

It's cheaper and less headache in the long run. Respecializing points isn't exactly cheap.

Mortuum

320 skill points is a maximum number(for now) you can get and use. If i remember corectly, leveling all crafts, with passives etc will require 197 or 179(really cant remember, below 200 for sure). So you should be able to max all crafts, and have enough skill points for your class lines.

But you have to remember 1 thing: mentioned 320 is a number which include skyshards in Cyrodii, skill points from ranking up in said place(yes, each rank up give you skill point), quests, dungeons(completing dungeon for first time also give 1 skill point, for all faction not yours, and another skill point for same dungeon on Veteran difficulty level)...

So, if you are not a person(just for example of course) who like dungeons or/and PVP, your maximum pool of skill points will be way smaller, then a person who does participate in all kind of activities game has to offer.

Tidelurker

Crafting everything is no easy feat on one character, due to limited inventory space. My solution for this is leveling four characters with the professions divided among them.

The downside is that buying bag space, mounts, and re-specialization for each character is much more difficult. It also takes additional time, both to level multiple characters and manage items between them.

The benefit is that you don't have to hold ore, wood, fibers, leather, runestones, herbs, and provisions... all on one character. You can also research the traits of items much faster this way, which might clear your bank up. Finally, you gather a lot of materials which can be traded between your characters: whether you found a resource node for your alt or extracted trait gems from one craft you will use in another.

So I would say there's some very nice benefits - if you are patient and not too concerned with gold - to playing two or more characters for the purpose of specializing them in crafting roles. As for what you mentioned about class, I think having two Templars can be very fun if that's what you want to do, since you have 8 character slots total, and those two playstyles (plus the way you can uniquely build their non-class skills) will feel very different.