The solution that worked for me was to deactivate the character movement component of the AI after 0.2 delay. That stopped the character after the Launch Character node had its intended effect but before gravity effects the character. I then turned the character movement back on after a 0.05 delay so it immediately turns back on.
I recognize this might not be a solution that works for other with this problem, but it worked for my goal so I wanted to list it here.