Help for a Bard/Ranger?

[LockePhilote]

I am a level 4 human character with 3 levels in bard and one in ranger and am of the chaotic good alignment. My dungeon master is running a campaign with a lot of undead in it, but not exclusively undead (we just fought werewoles as level 2's), and I would like some help deciding on a prestige class. I was thinking going something up close, taking the two weapon fighting concentration. Any ideas?
Dervish is already off the table, as our resident half elven swashbuckler is going Dervish.

[Darrin]

I am a level 4 human character with 3 levels in bard and one in ranger and am of the chaotic good alignment. My dungeon master is running a campaign with a lot of undead in it, but not exclusively undead (we just fought werewoles as level 2's), and I would like some help deciding on a prestige class. I was thinking going something up close, taking the two weapon fighting concentration. Any ideas?
Dervish is already off the table, as our resident half elven swashbuckler is going Dervish.

What books are available?

One of the more popular routes for bard is Sublime Chord. You could take up to three non-bard levels and still get 9th level spells. This essentially turns you into a Sorcerer (that sings) at the higher levels:

Bard 4/Ranger 2/Abjurant Champion 3/Virtuoso 1/Sublime Chord 1/Virtuoso +9

The other route to rock'n'rollin' with Bard is maximizing Inspire Courage and then converting it to +Xd6 energy damage with Dragonfire Inspiration. You can rack up a sizeable Inspire Courage bonus with inspiration, Song of the Heart, and Words of Creation to get up to 12d6 fire damage on the entire party's attacks. This usually involves a bit of planning from the get-go, though... picking up Dragontouched at 1st level or the Dragonblood subtype from a racial variant. This can be done just by sticking with Bard levels, or there's a variant called BardBlade that uses Song of the White Raven to count Warblade (or Crusader) levels towards Inspire Courage. The original BardBlade focused on TWF, so Ranger wouldn't be unheard of. Might look something like:

Bard 4/Ranger 2/Warblade 14

As far as undead go... I'd consider working towards Sacred Exorcist to pick up Turn Undead. This dovetails well with Sublime Chord: for your first level of SC, you get a 5th level sorcerer spell. If you pick dismissal, you qualify for Sacred Exorcist:

Bard 4/Ranger 2/Abjurant Champion 4/Sublime Chord 1/Sacred Exorcist 9.

With that, you could stack up Inspire Courage, Arcane Strike, and Divine Might into some decent whoopass.

[Gwendol]

I would recommend ditching the TWF in favor of archery for the bard. By cranking up inspire courage you will do a lot of extra damage/arrow, and be sure to hit as well! I hope you have picked undead as your favoured enemy?

[LockePhilote]

Unfortunately, I cannot go anywhere near Dragonfire Adept. The big baddie so far is a dragon that turned everyone in a city of about 25,000 or so into an undead. I'm pretty sure that in this setting, all dragons and dragonkin are evil aligned. I was considering Sublime Chord and then virtuoso, but my party role is as one of the mainline fighters for some reason. Party composition is a half orc druid named Lucifer Gustavus Lenin (wish I was making that up), a warlock that literaly cannot aim for his life, a water shugenga, a psionic (yep, in an undead campaign), a swashbuckler whom the D20 hate and continually curse with missing, a cleric who is focusing more on the spellcasting aspects of his class, a paladin, and a monk. Between the warlock, the shugengga (whom wields a crossbow), the druid, and the psionic, we have enough ranged to go around.
I have every book available, as between the DM and another PC every book except the Faerun based ones are available, and if I pull out a harper class my DM might honestly kill me.
I was also considering going Mourner from Dragon Magazine, though that only goes for 5 levels.
And yep I took favored enemy undead. I also took the Snowflake Wardance feat from Frostburn, so I could take advantage of my 18 Charisma in battle.
My party is too squishy for me to go anything but a frontline fighter.

[nedz]

Your Druid ought to be able to summon up some animals grunts, which your music can buff ? You shouldn't need to be forced into the front line.

[Gwendol]

A level of whirling frenzy barbarian perhaps?

[eggs]

Cyran Avenger (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20050707b&page=2) would maintain the Ranger concept, advance Bard casting and get some decent Charisma-based frontliner abilities.

Bouncing Ranger 2/Bard 4/Cyran Avenger 4/Sublime Chord 2/CA 1/AbjChamp 5/Sacred Exorcist 4 would get 17 BA, 9th level spells and charisma-heavy abilities.

Or, if playing up the Bard abilities, Bard 3/Ranger 1 isn't a bad place to jump into a Song of the White Raven Warblade build. (But another level of both Bard and Ranger would be useful to cover 4 encounters/day's music, and to get TWF up and running early.)