I just want to know if anyone thinks it's possible to split the torso and legs into two slots.

I wouldn't use the vanilla models of course, but I don't have any test models for this and I don't want to make any before asking. So far I have had little luck with using existing meshes... I've been able to get two armors to go on the character at a time, but only one is visible of course. Need to make them both visible somehow for it to work.

I could easily make a scripted version with 3 armors (legs and no torso, torso and no legs, and both), but if there were several different leg/body armors it would be really unreasonable to do it like that, and I plan to have many leg and body armors so this solution is out.

I tried something like with a one piece hood/robe. It didn't work.

Some people already done that, mainly for UNP female body, but also for a variant of CBBE. I suppose there is nothing in male body making it more difficult.

Hmm... can you point me to the mods that do it? If I have an example I can probably figure it out myself.

I'm pretty sure http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/users/3575696 do a lot of this.

Okay, yeah, those do exactly what I want so I'll just look at how they were made.
Thanks for the link.

I'm probably wrong, but this is what I think I remember from reading posts:

Whatever mesh you use for whatever slot must have a node changed to match the slot you want to use.
For example, a standard ring uses slot 36. A mod I use adds rings using slot 60 so you can use two rings.
But the second ring doesn't appear in first or third person.
To make it appear, I would have to use Nifskope to change whatever node that is keyed to slot 36 to slot 60.

No, it sounds correct, but... maybe it means that rings can only be equipped on "one side" unless I make two copies of each one, or suffer one of them not being visible? Will probably have do some scripting to make any ring equippable in either slot, and they still might not both be visible. Well, I can deal with that. It also means that I should make all armor of a specific type take up the same slot. That sounds fine too.

This actually seems a lot easier than I was expecting, so I'm quite relieved.