I have a player who is considering changing characters mid-game. Not really a problem, but I thought that I might suggest he instead re-spec his current character. I'm not holding my breath that this can even be done, but is there a way to go into the charactermancer and essentially reset the character to the point where the player can select his class, and then build out from there?
Even as I'm typing, I figure it's probably easier to just start all the way over, isn't it?
I'd say yes. Start over. If you keep both sheets open, you can do a lot of copy and paste for background stuff.
The sheet doesn't have a memory of what the character looked like at previous levels. You can back-calculate the original base stats (if the player can't remember them) but there's really not much advantage trying to re-use the same sheet unless you're still close to level 1, or it's a very minor respec (like just changing a sub-class in tier 1 and leaving everything else the same).
So yeah, as you figured - for a full reroll of ability scores, feats, sub-class, inventory etc. it's easier to start a new one and use the old one as reference if needed.