Help build a Single-Classed Ranger.

[bret]

If you are going Archery, you really want: Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot.

If you are going Melee, you might want to swap your strength and Con. Give you a few more hit points so you can last a little longer against a giant. Dodge and Mobility may be worthwhile feats for melee, improve your chances against the AoO of the giants as you close.

Regardless, you really want to look at your magic item situation and figure out if you can afford fortification. Getting hit with a critical from a giant can cause some major hurt.


Personally, I would probably go for the alert archer/woodsman.

Max spot and listen. Good Wilderness Lore, Animal Empathy. A mixture of other skills to fill in.
An interesting concept would be to take the Cosmopolitan feat and use it to get Bluff as a class skill.

Consider some of the less traditional weapons as your light weapon. Spiked Guantlet or Spiked Buckler.

If you go the archery route, consider buying at least one Glove of Storing. That way you can store the bow in the glove.

My second Favored Enemy would be Dragons, just because they are so nasty. You might want to consider some of the 'pets' that giants typically keep instead.

Don't forgot to learn the language of giants. Might have need to interrogate them sometime.

 

[Gaiden]

If you are going Archery, you really want: Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot.

I tend to disagree with this statement for the character at hand. Granted, a straight archer will obviously want precise shot. But I think that would be a waste of a feat considering your 20 str and your melee prowess. Your ranger, unless going only archer get more milage out of just PBS and some other bow feat like far shot or some non-bow feat.

As for giants grappling, the big problem for them is that since they don't have improved grab, they provoke an AoO and if that hits, the grapple automatically fails. If I were running a melee oriented high strength ranger with a giant bane sword and energy enhanced armor spikes, I'd triple-dog dare any giant I was fighting to try to grapple me. The first grapple attempt would earn the giant some 24 to 26 hit points worth of giant bane greatsword damage. The second attack would only initiate the grapple and wouldn't deal any damage. On my initiative, I'd quickdraw a shortsword and stab the giant to death dual wielding the shortsword and armor spikes. (The full attack action and AoO from the round before would have probably dealt close to 100 points of damage so the giant is quite likely to die on the grappled full attack action).

I completely forgot about grappling normally provoking an AoO. So long as your DM does not use OA with improved grapple everything Basalisk says is correct, and CQC I guess would be pretty useless. Versatility wise it is not a bad feat and probably better for a ranger than any other class especially if you encounter a good number of animals/beasts and dragons (BEWARE OF SNATCH - IT WILL KILL YOU) it is not a bad choice - but for straight giant, it would not be as worthwhile as I initially thought.

So my recommendation then is to nix the CQC and go with Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack and one other feat - maybe power attack, maybe PBS, maybe shot on the run, maybe iron will.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Melee Ranger:
You should definitely consider Shield Expert (Sword & Fist ?) and a Shield of Bashing. This allows you to use a Shield for Defense as offense.
You can use your Virtual Two Weapon Fighting capabilities without loosing anything of your Armor Class.
As a primary weapon, use a Bastard Sword or a Longsword.

Mustrum Ridcully