Persistent Profile vs Non Persistent?

[Suspense]

Seriously embarrassing noob question.

After over a thousand hours, for some reason I never messed with or changed Persistent Profiles. From the description in menu, I thought that no persistent profiles means you can have multiple profiles/characters on the same server. So I turned it OFF and made another profile, but all it did was alter my appearance. Do I have it backwards?

My one character is double the game stage as my buddies, so I wanted to create a noob boy to keep at their level. I honestly have no idea.

[Macdallan]

I believe non-persistent profiles simply allows you to change how your character looks and persistent does not. I read a few posts about this, some a bit older, that all stated that it does not change your stats, level, game stage, etc. like you might expect but only the character's appearance.