Hello. Retribution is so awesome. Were you retribution/temperance? If I could have a dream pally it would be an elf defiance wielder ret/temp. Sadly I don't get to choose

Anyway, about the giant vs fiends thing. I've played storm giants before, warrior storm giant, and fiends could be handled. Never had problems against fiends, always had resist mental and full preps and haste (back in the good old glory days of haste) up vs bards. With a paladin's "fervor", Hope virtue set "steadfast heart", resist mental, wearing the illithid head charm, I think it should be quite easy for you to deal with fiends. The head charm helps a lot. Buy from Keiiah in Hamsah, wear it (I know some bards won't be happy I'm revealing this in public, but it's not a limited or rare area explore anyway). Also, bards are overpowered now, especially Imperial ones, so tell everyone you know about the charm. I've played a paladin (granted, elf), with fervor, Hope virtue and resist mental all the time, and songs were nearly completely ineffective against me. I've played a bard, and by no means is fiend a 100% win against even a fire giant. It was sad to see you die so much to the goddamn cheap human bard with edges and imperial training combo.

Good luck with your next character.