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I don't tie it to any in game event. I usually base it on where we are on the real world clock. I generally don't want to halt a game for everyone to level up, preferring to do it between sessions.
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I use milestone leveling. In my Age of Ashes campaign both times the party hit a milestone was right in the middle of a session, so I had them level up during the session. I'd prefer to do it between sessions, but that would have meant cutting each session short by hours to accommodate this, and since we play every two weeks I'd rather not sacrifice more time than is necessary. It didn't take long each time, not more than an hour, certainly. I also didn't want to wait until after the session because in P2 a level difference is a much greater deal than in P1.
They'll hit level four early in the next session, too, so it looks like this may be a recurring theme for this party.
I use milestone leveling as well. If we are expecting to reach a new level mid-session, I just ask the players to bring another copy of their character at the next level.
Exactly the same. I sort of assumed this was the norm.
I appreciate XP-based leveling and the feeling of getting new abilities in the middle of a story arc, but it would eat into my table time, so I've been running milestone ever since 3.5e.
I use milestone leveling as well. If we are expecting to reach a new level mid-session, I just ask the players to bring another copy of their character at the next level.
This is a good time-saving idea, but I am not sure it'd be the best solution for my table. My players like to tailor their characters to what has been happening to them in the game, and pre-leveling them would take something away from that. Plus, I'd rather they not plan out their characters too far in advance since they will have access to things they do not yet know about (like the Bellflower Tiller archetype, for instance). I have a character in my game that is a freed halfling slave that will very likely take Bellflower Tiller when it is available, so I'd rather they not spend too much time making plans only to change them later. Some of this is inevitable, of course, but I'm trying to minimize it.
If it works for your table though, that's awesome!
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I do have to say that with milestone leveling in APs, I really wish they'd be more explicit and avoid the middle of the dungeon leveling - at least not without making some clear breaking point for it.
I have to agree with this, especially when there is nothing stopping the level 2 PCs from going to the level 3 area. My group did that.
Actually, they went north, fought a couple of the boggard and charua-ka fights (as they tried to rest in B6, I had the ones in B7 come to investigate, to point out you cannot always just rest whenever you want).
They then retreated out and then went south when they came back
Luckily, they had the Hellknight vestments! Though they did get “nailed” by the hellcrowns.
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It's very much not the assumption for published adventures, so you'll have to make some adjustments so that it makes sense to take a couple days off in the middle of an adventure or adjust the difficulty of later encounters so they're viable even if the characters haven't leveled.
This. If you're running a prepublished adventure, Paizo does not include breaks for in-game leveling; in most of them, it's assumed to happen in mid-dungeon, often when the party has no option of going back to town (stranded on a desert island, days from civilization in the wilderness, etc.) or under some sort of time constraint to finish the dungeon ("you have eight hours before the ritual begins").
If you want to enforce training for level-up time, you'll have to tinker with the plots of those adventures. Paizo only assumes PCs need downtime for retraining out of old choices into new, not for normal leveling up.
I think it helps if you consider level up gains as the result of off screen training. Your fighter has been practicing his fundamentals every night and working to perfect new sword techniques, and your wizard has been working on new theoretically spells. They all just happen to coalesce after a particular fight or whatever.
Honestly, I think if I was going to try and make it happen more on screen I'd go the other way with it and have people level up midcombat. How many animes have you seen gain a power up mid combat and hit a new peak? Have party members level up when their back is against the wall. The sorcerer develops a new power, the barbarian taps into a new well of rage, the cleric gains a new spell level to bust out the biggest heal they ever healed. It feels more consistent with how leveling up works mechanically then a gradual training montage.
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++ on off-screen training. I assume the characters are all spending at least a few hours daily practicing their skills and researching/trying out new ones. Leveling up just represents a threshold in that process. i.e. I've been practicing this cool sword move for weeks, it's not been working and it suddenly makes sense - I realize that I need to put right hand over left where before I kept trying left over right and failing.
As far as the mechanics of what they get specifically and when: I consider any x number of times per day abilities to need the morning preparation to be available. So spells, etc. don't become available until the party rests after leveling up. HP, skill improvements, feats, class DC/attack rolls, attribute bumps or other static bonuses generally become available immediately.