As the DM of a campaign of noobs, I want to give the group a slightly higher level DM controlled character - how do I add that character to the campaign? 

If I click Create Unassigned Character it makes a character from scratch - is that really the only option?

Thanks in advance 

L.

Thanks but if I am the creator of the campaign, the actual DM, why do I have to send myself a link to my own campaign?

You don’t have to send yourself the link, you already have the link. You just need to copy it and paste it into your URL bar so you can “join” the campaign with your NPC. Don’t ask why, that’s just the idiotic way they have it designed.

Okay, I did that.  Since this is my first campaign, I wanted to see how best to use the interface.

I created an encounter and tried to run that encounter with my character, but he doesn't show up.  I made sure my character is in the correct campaign, and the encounter is assigned to that campaign.  The encounter shows no players.

In the Encounter - click Manage Character go down (below where it shows levels) to your Campaign.

Select that.

Then RUN.

Players should now show up.

If the encounter is attached to the campaign before the character, the character doesn’t automatically get added to the encounter. You have to reassign the encounter to the campaign after the character(s) have been added to the campaign so it will pull the updated info. It’s set like that to protect the CR calculations it displayed when the encounter was created. That way you have to manually adjust it so it shows you the corrected calculations. It’s also because the encounter may have been for the party as it was before a new/replacement character was added to the campaign to protect the history for the DM’s later perusal.

Thanks.