"Just a novelty with applications best for solo work"? Really? No way! What have I been doing for the last three years then? 90% of my output of 104 songs to date are written specifically with fingerpicking on a 12-string in mind. That's how I perform them and it's becoming my trademark ("you're not supposed to fingerpick it", I was told several times - well, what do you know, nobody had told me when I started and it's too late now to change).

Neither do I tune it down - concert pitch it is, and it sounds great. Sure, I can thread needles through the callouses on both my hands (no fingerpicks for this guy, bare flesh does it best for me). But it's worth it for the fullness of sound and the variety of emotions it can evoke. You can imitate a mandolin or bouzouki on the higher strings, and base lines from a 12-string leave all others standing.

I started playing a Yamaha that I bought in the Netherlands 10 years ago, and only 3 weeks ago I took possession of a Custom Jumbo Cort electroacoustic - not just a beauty to look at, but it fills a room wall to wall just in acoustic mode.

And 12-strings are not just for bashing rhythms out of. They can produce really mellow, sensitive sounds for the slower numbers also.
Just go to http://www.folk4all.net, click on "albums", then on any of the album images to go to the tracklists, and finally on the headphone icons to hear how versatile a 12-string can be.