You could have the sword as a static mesh, added to a blueprint Actor. This way you can use the simple collision of the sword’s static mesh to trigger overlap events on the sword Actor, where overlap logic can be defined for combat as well. This way you don’t mix up logic for the character and the sword, especially for overlap and collision logic.
Could be, or perhaps he does not know you can attach an actor / mesh to another actor. You can make use of sockets which are spots on a character’s bone to which you can attach things. these sockets can have their own transformation offsets relative to the bone, so you could just add a “sword socket” to a hand bone and attach a sword actor to it. Big chance all of the existing animation only requires bones of the the character itself instead of the sword.
Matthew Wattstein also has tutorials for collision on youtube in the “htf do I?” series.