When the Gamepad appears on my android build the player spawns with no weapon. When I change the controller, player spawns with weapon and no controls

Im using the survival rougelike template and ive packaged my game for android and it works great but when the player spawns with a weapon, the gamepad doesnt appear and when i change the gamemode/player controller from none to base character in the world settings the gamepad appears but the player spawns without a weapon… spent the entire day trying to figure this out im going crazy… any help would be beyond appreciated.