First off I suggest that he drop the idea of a soldier/scholar. A soldier/scholar in Conan is even less viable than a ftr/wiz in regular dnd (which is prety hard to pull off anyway). Unless his plan is to take oreiental magic style and be a martial artist there is absouely no overlap between the classes. No True Strike, Shield, Magic Missle, Enlarge, or Bulls Strength to fall back on. If what he wants is to be a dabbler then suggest he take the Dabbler feat, thats what its there for, and he can afford it with all his bonus feats.
As for his martial feats. The trick to a soldier is to both be a specalist and a generalist at the same time. He is the only class who has enough feats to do this and it is a powerful advantage. Pick a fighting style and focus on finishing it out early, but pick one or two "tricks" that he can have as backup. Carry an arming sword and a shield and a spear and a warhammer and bow and three throwing axes and five daggers (two of them tied to his thighs under fake bandages under his clothes) oh and a sling braided into his hair as "headband" as well, have two sets of armor (light and heavy), have a backpack full of all sorts of usefull equipment (encumbrance isn't a worry): be the man for all seasons. Also seriously consider using his character feats to "round out" the weaknesses in his character: Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Improved Init, maybe a skill feat or two, be creative.
Now about style. It is all about style, he needs to pick one and try to build towards it. For starters decide if he wants to be lightly armored or heavily armored. Although it is possible to build a lightly-armored Soldier who is good at it he will not be playing to his strengths and there are other classes (pirate, barbarian) who are better at being swashbucklers. I recomend he look for at least a medium armor and lean towards heavy armors. Remember: if he owns, lets say, a mail haubrek and a brigadine coat he can travel in medium armor and stack them for a heavy armor when he is expecting trouble. Drop a great helm on the whole mess and call it a day. The Soldier has the best parry progression in the game and parry DV is Str based which is good synergy with his meele and, most importantly, Str bonus is not limited by armor worn as Dex bonus is. If he decides to go sword 'n board he can easily have the highest DV in the game and still enjoy 8-10 points of DR to boot!
On to fighting styles. For starters there is the classic two-handed approach. This is the only way other than sneak attack to reliably shoot for massive damage. If he is hyborean he gets the greatsword for free which is a nice bonus. Or he coud choose something like a pollaxe or bardiche in order to have a high AP. Obvious feats are Power Attack, Cleave, possibly Great Cleave if you throw a lot of mooks at him, and Sunder as a dirty trick. Other secondary styles include Imp Unarmed Strike and then Imp Grapple for fights against single, nasty BBEG's. This style is most usefull when making single attacks (power attack ruins your itterative attacks) so he should take advantage of the Fighting on the Run rule whenever possible instead of going tow to toe. May want Combat reflexes for the same reason. This is also a good style for a weapon master (discussed below). THF may quite possibly be the most powerful style in Conan (as it should be :wink: ).
Next: sword 'n board. Poor neglected sword 'n boarad. It isn't flashy or prety but it gets the job done, that's for sure. The Soldier easily fits into this style with his heavy armor and good bpb, it is somthing that he excells at that nobody else can match. This style has you as the meatshield who will protect the rest of the party from certain death so play to that. Con should be your second stat after Str but make sure you have a 13 Int (for expertise). Basic feats are Expertise, Parry, Reflexive Parry, Toughness, and Combat Reflexes (to prevent the enemy from blitzing past you). Consider Imp Disarm and/or Imp Trip as your dirty trick. At later levels pick up Fleet-footed in order to keep up with the party and Power Attack just because. Web of Deah is an awsome feat that works well for a meatshield. Steely Gaze/Menacing Aura is nice if you want to really play up the bodyguard aspect. You can also pick up Imp Two Weapon Fighting and Two-weapon Defence and make shield bashes. The nice thing about this build is that, because of expertise, you will likely have more skill points than other soldiers; aside from spot or listen (pick one) and 3 ranks of Sense Motive, pick some skill that nobody would expect you to have and is fairly usefull (Survival is nice, Decipher Script would be good too especially if you are a Dabbler, Gather Info, Sleight, Heal, or Diplomacy) just to see the look on their face when you bust it out :twisted: Remember though, specalize until you are proficent at one thing before moving onto the next.
TWF: This is probably a Soldiers best option if he wants to be a swashbuckler. The nice thing is that if built right you can swing a DV and DR nearly as high as a sword 'n boarder and get all those extra attacks too. The down side is that your AP will suck as well as your base damage die and you are going toe to toe trading full round attacks with your opponent which can be very unhealthy. Improved TWF is required of course but not till level 6. If you want to try to beef up the DV (or at least have the option to on a round by round basis) look at Two Weapon Defense. Also if you have the stats to support it combine that with Intricate Swordplay for an awsome parry DV (restircted to medium armor now). Moving fruther down the armor scale, if you are willing to give up all armor take 3 levels of Thief and the Light-Footed feat for a quick 3 dice of sneak attack damage, now tumble into flanking position and really mess the other guy up. If you are willing to give up even more base damage dice use a pair of light weapons (good choices: axe, Ghanata knife, hatchet) and take Wep Focus and Wep Spec (it will apply to both weapons). If you also took those levels of Thief the sneak attack damage will compensate for the low base damage. You will also notice that those are all throwing weapons, grab PBS, quickdraw, and Improved Init and anyone within 30' of you on the first round is toast. The problem here is that this style requires a lot of feats and is multiple stat dependent. You can decide to finesse attack everything to avoid the AP issue in which case dump Str, pump Dex, and forget about Two Weapon Defence and Intricate Swordplay (you won't be parrying much). But now you will a bit fragile with meerly average (not poor, average) DV, lousy/no armor, and you choosing to stand still for full-round attacks. Focus on the Con and take Toughness to compensate.
You could also choose to be a ranged fighter: esp if you are Bossonian, Stygian, Shemite, or Hyrkanian. Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Far Shot, Rapid Shot. You can pick them all up prety quickly and go to town. Take Quick Draw for when the enemy gets too close and Fleet-Footed at least once so you can move into position easily. Wep Focus and Wep Spec are essential to boost damage. So is Improved Crit. Take Improved Init so you can go as early as possible and Expertise to protect yourself when the enemy comes. The nice thing about this style is that you can easily afford to buy up those miscelaneous feats like Blind-Fight, Endurance, Run, etc. The down side is that you are a one-trick pony. You deal consistent damage and a good ammount of it but you can't quickly incipacate an enemy the way a trip or grapple fighter can and you won't likely hit massive damage like a THF will. But this might just be the easiest style for a novice Soldier.
The last style to discuss is the weapon master. This one is simple, pick a single weapon (Greatsword is a good choice, so is War Sword, Sabre, Tulwar, even a Broadsword or a Bardiche) and do some truly disgusting damage with it. The basic feats are simple: Wep Focus, Wep Spec, Greater Wep Focus, Greater Wep Spec, Imp Crit, Greater Crit, Power Attack. You can then pick A couple of sidline feats such as Expertise and Trip or Cleave or Improved Init or what have you. The trick here is to really know how to use power attack combined with Improved Crit to multiply and re-multiply your damage. It takes a lot of brain-power at the gaming table to first "ping" the enemy's DV and then calculate the proper PA given the odds. Kinda like counting cards. If you get it right though, you can deal out some truly sick damage. A good rule of thumb for those who want to try a weapon master without all the math is to always power attack for the value of your Weapon Focus feats (+1 or +2) plus the value of any tacital bonus you might have (+1 if on high ground, +2 if flanking or charging). The downside of this style is that it locks you into a single weapon. In a Conan game, where material items come and go so ealily, this could be a real problem unless you pick something common like a broadsword.
There are also many other twinks that can be done: reach fighters who dominate entire regions of the battlefield, mounted chargers who reach near-smakdown levels of damage, unarmed wrestlers who can incapicate any single enemy at will, Con monsters who can get beat on all day and still smile. But these are the five basic styles and hopefully they will get you thinking. Good luck and happy Soldiering.[/list]