Character class progression in Fire Emblem Awakening

In Awakening, characters have no level cap, and switching a character's class brings them down to the first level of that class without lowering their stats. This means that your level 20 Trickster Panne has all the stat gains of 30 levels of Taguel and 20 levels of Trickster. Even with the Random Number God screwing you, that's a lot of growth she's had. Your Robin or Avatar or DTS or whatever you've named him/her is essentially level 80!

Yes, you can do this with whomever you want, however you want (give Tharja 20 levels in General! Why not?), as much as you want and have the patience to do. There is one issue: each character and class combination has stat caps, meaning there's a point where a stat won't grow anymore. If Chrom's Strength as a Great Lord is above 30 or so and you turn him back into a Lord, his Strength will go down to his cap (31 or something like that) and not get any higher until you reclass him back into Great Lord.