The Civil Abilities as a whole just don't work at all if you ask me. As it stands I'm making a mod that removes/replaces them among many other things - Feeling forced to only talk to people with one character, only trade with one character, or loot with one character (Last one was fixed luckily) just seems wrong in single player, and the effect is amplified in multiplayer.
Making every civil ability apply to all the characters in your party alleviates the issue but then just raises the question of why not just make the civil abilities automatic on level up, which then raises the question of why should they should even exist in the first place.
It depends on the skill. I'm fine with not being able to steal or use loremaster on a certain character but things like barter and persuasion definitely take away from the experience. It really ruins the multiplayer for me. Also they apparently haven't fixed that looting issue for multiplayer games. Only characters that you're directly controlling will share lucky charm.
