Child Blueprint

Hi, I never used Child class Blueprint before. I think I need it for my project, but do not know the proper pipeline. Here is my scenario. I created an AI character “a soldier”. Now I want several copies of the soldier character, but only the mesh has to be changed, that can be done inside the blueprint. So, I thought of duplicating it and just changing the mesh will work. But there are some functions referenced to the Blueprint name. I do not know whether they will continue to work. Also, if I want to change some functions like “waypoint”, will I be able to change it if I create a child class.

Thanks in advance for the clarification.
Regards,