"An easy way to solve the problem would be to animate the sword and the player together, and then to save them as separate models"

I got one, but its Absolutly horrible to look at I don't even know why i keep it, its the first humanoid model i made. It has a sword and shiled animated to the models aniamtions. so you just need a vec_set(x x) vec_set( pan pan) and sync the animation frames

( he drops the sword in death animation sword goes flopping backwards over his shoulder to stick in the ground )

actualy the mesh isn't bad now that i look at it ( not great either), just the skin is terrible, and the animation frames need fixing because i mess up several vertexs ( somehow got ones didn;t intend to grab and they realy get moved bad)

animated for stand, walk, run, death, attack, jump, swim.started on a duck aniamtion but looks like I gave up there

if you want it i could try redoing the skin and fixing the animations ( hehe unless you wanted to do that )