Viewport freezes when dropping in FPS-Mode

Hey everyone, I’m fairly new to the UE4 and Game Design in general, so this might be an easy one.
I wanted to test some level builds and coding/blueprints I found in tutorials online and added a flashlight and a grabbing mechanic to the first person character, while removing the gun+spawn projectile blueprints. to get rid of the arms, I moved them out of view behind the camera.
The level itself is not complex, it consists of some simple corridors and a high drop into a larger hall without any physics actors, but whenever the first person character drops down, the viewport freezes mid-drop and all movement or mouse input is halted. The first times i got an error message saying that the target of the breakhit-componet of the grabbing and releasing scripts were target=none, but adding physic objects like spheres did not change anything. i also removed lighting, which also did not fix the issue, as well as adding stairs instead of the drop. as soon as the character reaches a certain level below the dropline, the game freezes. now i don’t even get an error message anymore, the game just freezes in viewport. the editor itself is fine after pressing ESC.

Thanks a bunch for your help, I’m really getting frustrated.