After looking at both the manual and the cluebook, I still have a few questions about the scout skill. Does it only apply to the character in the first position when finding hidden items/doors/secrets, or is it an amalgamation of the entire party's scout skill or is character selectable?

AFAIK Wizardry 6 doesn't use the concept of "active character", but uses the highest Scouting skill of any one character in the party, or it checks each character with Scouting skill individually.

But mostly it's a rather useless skill; if there is something potentially interesting to search for the text will clue you in and you can use the search command. Also, the Scouting skill won't work in magical Darkness; for that you need the Detect Secret spell.

Thanks for the quick reply, I was thinking along those lines as Wiz 8 does something similar along those lines. but I wasn't sure