Handling ability animations when body and hands are separate nodes

Help
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Godot Version

Godot 4.7.dev2

Question

Hi, I’m working on a 2D top-down pixel game in Godot.

Each character has:

  • a body (AnimatedSprite2D + AnimationPlayer)

  • hands as separate nodes with their own animations

So body and hands are animated separately.

This works fine for idle/walk, but I’m unsure how scalable this is when adding abilities (dash, attacks, skills, etc.). For ability animations I would likely need:

  • a body animation

  • a separate hands animation

  • manual positioning for hands during the ability

My concern is that this might become inefficient or hard to maintain as the number of abilities grows.

How do people usually structure this in similar games?

Is it better to:

  1. Keep body and hands fully separate and animate both

  2. Merge hands into the main character animation

  3. Use AnimationTree / another system to layer animations

I’m mainly concerned about workflow efficiency when adding many ability animations.

Any advice from people who built similar systems in Godot?