Hello LostScout,
Whenever you are controlling a character or pawn at runtime, you can think of the character or pawn as a puppet and the player controller as the strings. Pawns that are being controlled are possessed by a PlayerController. In this sense, the PlayerController is linked to the pawn. You can easily store any information you like in the PlayerController and base events off the values listed there rather than looking at the Pawn’s values. An example would be destroying the possessed Pawn when the PlayerController’s health value reaches 0. It can be then be reset to max after 5 seconds, respawn the Pawn, and possess the Pawn.
Hope this helps!