Dear Psychotron3000, there are two basic rules to avoid weird annoyances
about offseting arms and legs like those you describe, which everyone follows:
1º. ALWAYS be sure, the arm/leg sprite rotate from the same point:
(This has to be this way always if you don't want the limbs go crazy...)
2º. When doing the arm/leg sprites, be sure you can't change the foot/hand altitude through code:
(you can't change this line, if you want to mod solid and coherent limbs for your actors)
After the sprites of limbs follow this rules, you can proceed to code them, which frankly its a pain in the ass,
for all of us, the most difficult part of coding inis are offsets, walkpaths and weird showing priorities of attachments.
I hope it helped.