Animations for separate body parts

Hello. Im creating a 3d top down shooter game, and one of key functionalities is changing equipment. The way i decided to do that, is by creating 5 kinds of models for each body part, head, torso, gloves, pants, boots. they are perfectly aligned in the game, but they are NOT one model (so for example, i can swap the vest while the rest remains unchanged). Is there a way to bake all animations while having a merged mesh, and then split the skeleton and still have baked animations for bones? I know this sounds very convoluted…

so, an example: i have this hand moved a bit, but in the game i want the hands and arms to be separate meshes. can I bake the animation on the whole skeleton, split the skeleton into 2 different armatures, the one affecting only hands, and only torso, while still retaining the animations baked in the whole skeleton? I cannot attach any images as i am a new user.

Fisrtly - welcome aboard!
Secondly, yes, you can definately split an armature into multiple armatures, and yes, it can brake some of the drivers that power the armature… If you’re using the miximo rig then it’s really complex and selecting a load of bones and pressing P for sePerate in edit mode could well brake the rig…
The thing is you could have a single armature, and multiple meshes - arms, legs, head, etc, and swap them out for alternatives.