Is there some way of parenting an object to a specific bone or is this feature not supported this time around? (Ex: sword(object), seperate from the body, parented to a hand bone)
I think its supported now.
Unfortunatly this nice feature does not work anymore 
. The latest one with it was 2.37a.
In 2.41 you can still parent to bone:
select your armature
enter pose mode
select your object to be parented
shift-select the bone you want as parent.
ctrl-p makes it parent to the bone.But this works only in the editor not the game engine. That is the reason why I can’t upgrade my project to 2.41.
You could just post it on Erwin’s website. He’ll see it better there.