Hurry up and Stop

I have been thinking a lot about advancement lately. I think I am crystallizing my views in a particular way.

One thing that always bothered me is that experience points and level model real world expertise in something very poorly. People do not get better in this way. And further they do not progress linearly ad infinitum.

I think I discovered a solution kinda by accident.

I wanted to keep the class descriptions really succinct in Errant. As my Alpha readers know, class descriptions are really short. I am a big fan of tying things to a level, so you get +1 per level to something and that is it. No points to track. And in the cases where a class has styles to learn (bard & fighter), I made the decision to have everything pretty much end at 5th level. By 5th level, you just know all there is to know about being a fighter. Further advancement is just an improvement on the fine techniques.

Then I started writing 3rd level spells. I had been working with a 3rd Ed model of every other level gaining access to a new spell level. Then I started realizing how confusing it is to have spell level vs character level. Noobs probably have trouble with that. Then I started thinking about how at 5th level, you would have all the 3rd level spells. 3rd level spells represent, to me at least, the magic user really coming into their own. Fireballs, Lightning bolts, Hold Person, Fly, Gaseous Form, Haste, Dispel, etc. It is a really important spell level. And beyond that, things seem to just get insane to me. The spells seem to be extensions of lower spell concepts. Fewer new ideas, more extrapolation.....

So then I realized.... what if after 5th level.... you just had to find your own way to advance? Why should the magic user be different from my fighter?

So what if there were only 5 spell levels, one for each character level (not every other level), and then once you got past that point you had to make up your own spells? So my 5th level spells would be on par with 3rd Ed 3rd level spells and you gain a few spells every level instead of in larger chunks?

Thoughts?