I'd've said Cosmicfire = Weak, Mage Staff = strong, most others are inbetween.

Mages/Druids > Warriors > Wiccans > Guardians, generally. (If you ignore that wiccans get nymph.)

So wrong.  Moonburst / Nightkiss > warriors NPC damage-wise.  At least, faeling strength warriors.  

Mages/druids do lots of damage as well when hunting, but I believe that the two wiccan trans attack skills are a bit stronger.

First of all I want to say that I am leaning toward knighthood with a specialization in pureblade.

1.)  Does everyone with the same Prime Skill (not specialization) have the same bashing skill?  Does anyone learn a bashing skill in their specialization?  How does that work with knights (since they all have different weapons)

If you are speaking about knighthood skillset then you haev two equal skills for bashing. Jab and swing. Also raze can be useful for blademasters and bonecrashers. Axelords and purebladers have different skill, raze and hit on one, Dont remeber name right now.

2.)  Would it be more profitable to go human for the Exp. bonus or Orclach for the native weapon/resistences bonuses?

I would stay as Orclach until you reach level around 70-80 then go human for exp boost and then your stats as uhman wont be bad.

3.)  Is there anyplace with a pretty complete skill listing?  The only skill lists I've seen so far have been on the MSN group.

Skill lists arent published, but almoust all guilds have GHELP files with their (if not all) skillsets.

4.)  Do any of the cities/communes have restrictions on what you can bash?

I belive that every guild/city/commune haev some restroctions on what not bash. I think that Celest have longest list. 

5.)  Are any of the trade skills profitable earlier on in the skill?  Useful to yourself early in the skill?  Is there a big market for all the different products (I'm looking at poisons in particular).

If you are warrior then go for herbs. More time you spend on harvesting then more herbs you can sale and you can harvest useful herbs from beginign. More herbs you learned mroe types of herbs you can harvest.
To earn good gold on Forging you need to be almoust trans. Poisonist could be not bad choice too as it seems to be lack of them in those days.

6.)  What exactly does the skill hunting/tracking do?

Thanks to hunting skills you can rustle cows, mimic animals, catch snakes, make campfires and few more. And later you specializate in tracking. You will get dog/qolf to assist you, he can track people/items/mobiles, deliver items and hinder opponent in fight. You can also can set up traps, from dart traps with poisons to snake pits.
With tracking you also get few useful skills that you would get from Environment: like diving and climbing on trees.

Thanks for the help.

I was talking about if you did the same damage with a broadsword as your rapier over time without crits, you would hunt just as fast with them...  Not saying that speed isn't better, just saying that criticals aren't a factor...

Does that mean katana is better than the other 2h swords for bashing?

Oooer, didn't think of that.. Makes sense, but really it's hardly a factor, seeing as 8x crits don't come about much, and generally your not gonna kill something that rapidly either..  But it is mildly different..