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Message: <blockquote data-quote="reanjr" data-source="post: 2089821" data-attributes="member: 20740">I've rarely felt the need to flesh out a party by adding another character, though occasionally an NPC will join up very briefly to fill some necessary role.On the other hand, a few campaigns had tag-team DMs, so we each had a character in the party.  His character was pretty active in the party while he DMed (some might say a bit TOO active), but when I DMed my character was used mostly as a story element, minor combat backup (he was a bard) and a source for fixing player mistakes or bad rolls - bardic knowledge and the occasional "I found this while I was scouting" go a long way towards this.I personally think a DM controlled character should be kept almost as an afterthought in the party.  It works best if he is not always there and doesn't do a lot of talking.  Also, using him for combat backup is rarely necessary.  If the characters are fighting creatures of appropriate CR, they can generally mop the floor on an individual encounter.  Losing a single PC doesn't make things too challenging in the short term.  Over the long term, it is very easy to modify things on the fly by removing an incidental encounter here and there and by lowering the number of minor combatants in large battles.</blockquote>