This is a bit difficult to predict because it depends on how long the story will be and how many choices there are per chapter. Altogether, that needs, somehow, to turn in a good balance by the end of the game. But the idea is to be forgiving and not to force anyone to have to replay the game several times because he can't get some skills. I think that’s not particularly fun gameplay.
The ideal outcome would be that a player can end the game with a total of 6 hardcore skills from opposing branches (for example, 4 cunning and 2 honorable, or 3 from each, etc). It might be that I end up missing that mark by +/- 1 hardcore skill (I hope it isn’t worse than that).
There will also be opportunities to “move points around” in a way that a player might still be able to end with 12 hardcore skills in total, but get all of them from 3 branches and none from the 1 branch that he isn’t interested in at all.
Of course this is assuming the player takes a measured approach. If he, for example, always picks the honorable choices, he will get all the honorable skills, none of the cunning ones, and ends up swimming on honorable points without anything to do with them…