Either's fine. A Bard will be able to heal your brother, while a Wizard will only be able to if he's Warforged/Bladeforged. A Wizard will have much more damage from range and against groups of monsters, while the Bard will generally have better single-target damage. Defensively it's sort of a wash, with the Swashbuckler having better Dodge and probably better saves, but the Wizard having undead immunities, higher fortification, and the ability to pull out the biggest shield you can find and block with that while you have ongoing spells doing damage and Death Aura constantly healing you.
As far as builds, Pale Masters are pretty simple.
Max Intelligence (and all level-ups into Intelligence), max Constitution, put any remaining points into Strength or Dexterity.
For skills, max Concentration, Spellcraft, Heal, and put some points into Balance. Other useful skills include Spot, Search, Diplomacy, and Use Magic Device.
For Feats, you want Empower, Maximize, Extend, and Heighten. You've got a lot of additional feats, but those are the important ones. Additional feats you could look into include (Improved) Mental Toughness, Toughness, Insightful Reflexes, (Greater) Spell Focus: Necromancy, (Greater) Spell Penetration, and save-boosting feats like Luck of Heroes. You will also want to look into taking Armor Proficiency feats for the additional PRR and MRR from wearing heavier armor, but you need to make sure you can wear that heavier armor without incurring Arcane Spell Failure. You can always put some points into the Eldritch Knight tree for Light Armor Proficiency, should that be all you want. For epic feats, you want to pick feats in a similar vein, like Epic Mental Toughness, Epic Spell Focus: Necromancy, Epic Spell Penetration, Great Intelligence, as well as Ruin and Hellball.
Race doesn't really matter a whole lot. Drow will get you the highest DCs, but other than that there's aren't many big differences.
As far as gear, you need literally nothing. All the stats you might need (Intelligence, Constitution, Spellcraft, Spell Power, Spell Points, etc.) can be found on random items. Better gear is always nice, but for the most part it's not a really big difference from whatever things you find. The only big exception would be the Torc of Prince Raiyum-de II, but that's a luxury for letting you spend your spell points freely or have an easier time in certain long and difficult quests and raids.
Taking a look at the Swashbuckler build you posted, it could be improved a lot. The fact that it doesn't take any Tier 5 enhancements... there are almost no situations where not taking Tier 5 enhancements would be ideal. By not taking Tier 5 Swashbuckler enhancements, he's losing +5 Attack, +5% Attack, +25% Fortification bypass (all from Precision instead of Power Attack, with T5 Swashbuckler), tons more crits, and the best single-target instant kill ability in the game. I wouldn't go as deep into Warchanter (but take Song of Heroism... you don't get Greater Heroism with 12 Bard levels), Vanguard or Drow trees, and instead put those points into Swashbuckler (for Tier 5s) and Stalwart Defender (for +20% HP, +6 Constitution, and +10% movement speed if you put that many points in). Or you could just go Strength-based, since that'll give you move damage, since there are a decent amount of Strength-boosting options available to you. All in all it's not a massive difference (Swashbucklers are pretty OP regardless of how you build them), with the exception of taking T5 abilities... just take them, in one tree or another.