Okay, I managed to get past these issues. In the First Person shooter starter project, the blueprint there actually does
derive from the C++ character class it gives you. So I just came back to my sidescroller project and made a new blueprint character that derives from my C++ character class and set the default pawn to that class via my GameMode.cpp
So yeah false alarm!
Still, I’ve decided not to delete this in case someone else comes across the same thing. The “MyCharacter” blueprint doesn’t exist, but the comment in the code would have you believe otherwise.