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Knobbies aren't as bad on the pavement as you might think. They do wear out quicker, you can't lean as hard through the curves or take turns quite as quickly, but it doesn't take long to get used to them. I used to live in the NC mountains and used to use non-DOT off road knobbies on my street plated trail bikes. The DOT knobbies didn't perform as well off road and were much harder to mount, because the sidewalls are a lot stiffer. The local inspectors never paid any attention to the tire ratings, which was fortunate for me.
Regardless of the tires you're running, be sure to reduce the air pressure when trail riding. You can run as low as about 8 psi if your wheels have rim-locks. If you don't have rim-locks I'd guess 12 psi would be a safe limit. (Of course, it also depends on how stiff the sidewalls are, etc.)
The reason you want to reduce the air pressure is that it softens the impact of bumps on the front wheel & and increases traction on the rear. If you street pressure the front wheel will bounce off objects & make steering much more difficult.
Racers use specially designed inner tubes that allow them to run super low pressures, like 2-3 psi. That gives you an idea of how important running low pressure is off road.
If you've never tried knobbies I'd recommend trying them. If you realize that you don't really need them you can easily swap back to dual sport tires later. Dual sport tires work okay as long as the trails are dry, but once there's any mud they clog up and are pretty worthless. If your trails are sandy or rocky that wouldn't be an issue.
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