Rest will most likely not be limited (the game isn't designed for limited rest), so the farther in the game, the more powerful casters become.
While for most of the game yes, there is vestiges of things that indicate that limited rest is meant to be something. You can not long rest in the hag dungeon for example which I think indicates that there will be a lot more areas where that is a thing. If there were more areas like that could help with the resting issue and balance things down. Also HP bloat to me is iffy, for certain encounters it works and makes sense while other encounters it is tedious and makes me feel like my casters are doing very very little, it honestly should be a base by base casis. I am fine with creatures deviating from their normal stats and abilities, most every DM does that as it makes it interesting, but sometimes it would be better to stay closer to the original stats with enemies that are meant to be their normal versions.
