Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. I was not leveraging a player controller stack, I will try and implement that as it seems reasonable. Currently I have a dedicated (single) HUD. I am trying to break the setup before I go too far in the development of the content. Basically trying to write the core as clean as possible first, then expand.
On the inventory system, my logic was that the inventory would be persistent between pawn poses. I was trying to separate things that I believe are “player”/user id centric - what the player has collected, player level/experience, any virtual currencies earned/purchased. I was thinking the character pawn was a temporary state but the player controller represented everything I want to persistent between sign-on sessions.
I think I will move the HUD up to the player controller. Thanks for the well thought out responses.