Soft cap for Civil is capped at 5. Combat at 10. After that you need gear or Lone Wolf will take the combat abilities over 10, not sure what the hard cap is right now though. My Lohse has 21 Hydrosophist.
Lone Wolf makes it so point useage is doubled. putting one point in to STR will actually give you 2. Same for combat skills like Warfare. The only one that Lone Wolf doesn't work for is Polymorph, since the special on that is 1 poly point = 1 additional stat point. So that'd be outright broken lol.