I have a sort of an ethical question about character swapping. I have always wanted to give the "mystic theurge" archetype a whirl, both based on the interesting role-playing opportunities and the fun casting abilities. I know the conventional wisdom is that the class is sub-par, but I'm curious.
What I'd like to do after the current adventure is potentially retire Larissa and try a mystic theurge. But if the MT class does not work well for me, I'd like to go back to Larissa. Technically, this would mean retiring the MT and introducing Larissa as a "new" character, which does not seem to violate the letter of the rules. On the other hand, I don't want to abuse the hard-working judges by constantly swapping characters around.
What are peoples' thoughts on this? I'd commit to running the test character for a certain amount of time (6 months? a year?), if that helped. And obviously I would not withdraw the character in the middle of an adventure or otherwise disrupt an adventure in progress. Just looking for some guidance.