Pawn (APawn)

A Pawn is a particular brand of AActor that is controllable by an instance of APlayerController. The pawn is basically a controllable actor that responds to the player's input. When you're playing a single player game, the character moving around the world at your behest is your pawn. When you enter a vehicle and start driving the vehicle? That's the new pawn.

A pawn is basically "anything the local player controls with input".

What You Should Know

• Pawns are controlled by Controllers. You'll typically see this by way of Player Controller.
• Pawns are transient. If you're trying to retrieve them synchronously with the assumption they're there: don't.
• From the Pawn, you can access an APlayerState or AController instance.

Pawns Are Spicy AActors

Pawns are simply actors with a little more juice. They're possessed by a controller, they have easy links to the Player state using GetPlayerState() or the owning controller via GetController()

Additional Notes

• You should never think of a pawn as a guarantee. Pawns disappear and reappear all the time.
• When you need a stable anchor to a pawn, you should bind to that pawn's owning controller, from there you can bind to OnPawnPossessedChange