This is a collection of thoughts I've had over the course of many a session that have finally ended up coming together in some coherent way. I'd like to start by making it clear that although I'll be critiquing some aspects of Pathfinder's leveling here, I think leveling in Pathfinder is fine. This isn't a call to action for change so much as a reflection on what I think works and what works less well, and why.
Character levels are just about one of the most standard elements one can find in any RPG, and for good reason: it's a simple and immediately understandable way of marking character progression, plus it appeals to our monkey brains by making numbers go up. Like any RPG, Pathfinder uses levels, and it is by leveling up that our characters unlock new abilities, and rise from above-average adventurers to interplanar-grade heroes.
And that, I think, is where some of the limitations start to appear.
For starters, it's worth noting here that unlocking new abilities and becoming more powerful are two different forms of progression: although obtaining more tools that are better in different situations represents an increase in power, that is meaningfully different from, say, dealing more damage using the same ability. In Pathfinder, like in most RPGs, the two are part of the same progression: we gain more abilities, and our abilities become stronger. As you level up, you can't have one without the other.
The reason this is meaningful is because not every player has the same expectation for character progression on both fronts: some players might be fine with the official rate of progression, but some players much prefer to be able to unlock something new at faster intervals, and some I know prefer to run one-shots just so that they can try out entirely different sets of abilities fairly quickly. It's difficult to cater to the latter kind of player with faster leveling, because doing so would obviously raise their stats quicker in a way that would affect the math of encounters.
While one could adjust for this by simply using higher-level monsters to encounters, I think this hits a second issue, which is that doing so ends up changing the tone of the adventure: at level 1, a player character is a cut above average, and wild animals are dangerous threats to them. At level 20, the party can expect to fight primordial titans, deific avatars, and the Grim Reaper itself. Leveling up the party also means leveling up the threats and the stakes, which isn't appropriate for every story.
Because character levels are a marker of both power tier and character complexity, this makes Pathfinder less-suited to tell certain kinds of stories: you can't really tell a story that starts with immensely powerful characters only just getting to grips with their abilities, for example, because even a level 10 character is going to have a lot of complexity to contend with, whether it's feats, spells, or both. On the flipside, it's difficult to tell a story where the party remains just a cut above the average mortal, because disabling leveling to keep the party at that power tier also means turning off their capacity for character development via new abilities. What could in theory be a number of different levers for character complexity and power tier are just one lever, which fits some stories but not others.
And to be clear: this is fine. Although these are limitations of the system, that does not mean the system is broken or needs to change. However, I do think this has led to some problems in Pathfinder's development, specifically mythic play: mythic rules and archetypes are effectively there to bring the adventure up a power tier, but that's something already defined by leveling. Characters already gain a steadily larger influence on the world around them as they level up, because that is the natural consequence of being able to magically warp reality or cause earthquakes by stomping on the ground, which are powers that are already in line with those of heroes of myth. This, in my opinion, is one of the reasons why mythic play doesn't really live up to its name, at least in my experience, and I suspect also why low-level characters aren't given access to mythic destinies, as the stakes are simply too low at that power tier for what the developers had in mind with their archetypes.
Effectively, if power tiers for an adventure were a separate lever from character complexity, it would likely have been much easier to layer on mythic rules as another, even higher tier of power. Conversely, this would also make it easier to insert a power tier for "normal" characters and thus make it easier to tell grittier stories where the party isn't all that powerful, such as horror adventures. It would also give the GM more control over the pacing of character progression, such that giving the party new abilities more frequently wouldn't have to mean bumping them up a power tier. Pathfinder doesn't do this and instead adopts a one-size-fits-all approach to its leveling: again, this is fine, and in fact this works really well for the stories told in most of Pathfinder's APs, but it does mean there are stories that could be told with the characters and abilities we have where the game's leveling kinda gets in the way.
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I do agree that the increase in complexity as the character level goes up is a problem. The shear amount of tracking for Vancian casting, the number of items, longer turns because of increased action efficiency and number of options.
I do agree that the increase in complexity as the character level goes up is a problem. The shear amount of tracking for Vancian casting, the number of items, longer turns because of increased action efficiency and number of options.
I very much agree that late-level complexity and tracking becomes a problem in many cases. This thread's OP was already enough of a wall of text as-is, but I think there's also an extra bit of discussion to be had around scaling complexity, and allowing characters to develop without increasing that complexity.
At my table, I've had different kinds of players, where some were ready to sink their teeth into a meaty ability set from the very beginning, whether because they'd played a class already and knew the basics, or because they were familiar enough with tabletop games that they were actively looking for a good starting package of abilities to wrap their head around. On the flipside, I've also had players who for one reason or another don't do well with lots of mechanics to track, and prefer much more straightforward characters. I imagine you've dealt with both kinds as well, and it's difficult to cater to both types of players for a number of reasons: the rules don't really let you start characters at level 1 with lots of extra abilities, but you also can't progress without gaining extra abilities, so there's no way to cap how many mechanics to keep track of while keeping level progression.
One thing I'd like to experiment with more is dynamic retraining within the adventuring day, the basic principle being that at certain milestones, such as solving a puzzle or finishing an encounter, the whole party gets to immediately retrain an aspect of their character, such as a skill increase or skill feat for an obstacle, or perhaps a class feat or known spell for an encounter. If this works, this in my opinion could allow players to experience character progression more frequently without adding new mechanics on top each time, let alone leveling up their characters' stats. It also could mean that characters could potentially feel very dynamic even if they're capped at a small number of mechanics to track, while players who don't want to change as much could just stick to what they have. There are some potential obstacles to this, as being able to quickly adjust on the fly is an intended strength of certain characters who would then need some kind of adjustment in compensation, but it could otherwise be a useful tool, whether to keep certain players from getting bored with their characters, or to enable character progression in adventures where the party is locked to a certain power level.