A lot of this I can't answer, but some I can.

As for the Rogue/Ranger hybrid, when getting Scoundrel skills while you're creating your character, be absolutely sure to pick up both "Walk in Shadows" and the Self-haste.. I forget its name. Reason being is that it's general knowledge now that those skill books in particular (along with some others, Whirlwind being among them) are either EXTREMELY rare, or impossible to find. So if you don't pick them up at the beginning of the game, when you create your character, you may not see them again after a certain point.

A note on weapon abilities. Later on in the game you run in to a weapon type called "Tenebrium"; these are essentially end-game weapons. The thing about them, though, is that in order to use them, and boost their damage, they require points spent in the "Tenebrium" skill, which you get later on. These weapons will totally ignore however many points in, say, One-Handed, that you have, even if you're using a one-handed Tenebrium weapon.

Simply, if you have 1 point spent in Tenebrium, and 5 (or however many from gear) in Bow, and you equip a Tenebrium bow.. it ignores your rank 5 bow ability, and uses the Tenebrium ability for damage. The good thing about this, though, is that once you have 1 point in the Tenebrium skill, you can then use any type of Tenebrium weapon (Bow/One-hand/2hand, etc., except Staves) and receive a damage bonus. This is assuming you have the required attribute, such as 12 DEX or whatever, to equip the weapon.

So what this means, is instead of having to put points in both One-Handed AND Bows on your Rogue, you could not put any points in to either, work on something else until you get Tenebrium (or even save the points), and once you do.. max it, or raise it as high as possible.

The other side to this coin, however, is that I have heard that maxed out Blacksmithing/Crafting can yield the highest-damage weapons.. but I've heard people favoring Tenebrium say that about Tenebrium weapons, also, so I really don't know for sure. I've not made it this far in the game, so I can't say either.