Hello DSoS,
As you wish to have a system where life and death are binary, either one or the other, having a health/damage system is entirely unneeded. Here is a quick setup of how to do what you’re looking to do.
First, this is based off the Third Person Character template in 4.10.1
With this setup, we’ll keep it as simple as possible so when the character is “Dead” it’ll be immediately destroyed and disappear. First you’ll need to create a new blueprint of the Actor type. Once you do that, add a “Static Mesh” component and apply whatever mesh you wish. After that, navigate to the “Collision” section of the details panel while still selected on the Mesh and set the “Collision Presets” to “OverlapAll”. This allows us to pass through the mesh and use overlap events.
After that, all you need to do is add these nodes. You can add the event by selecting the Static Mesh in the Components tab and then right-clicking in the graph. It’ll be located under “Add Event for Static Mesh > Collision”.
Compile the blueprint, place the blueprint in your level and you’re good to go. As soon as you touch the mesh, the character should be destroyed. If you wish to do anything else to your character after it is “killed”, just replace the Destroy Actor node with whatever you wish to do.
Hope this helps!