Penguiino

For reference, here's what it looks like normally.  I will now test the robotic parts mod.

Replacing limbs appears to completely disable mobends, and reverts to a slightly modified default playermodel. 

I'm investigating this at the moment, and I'll get back to you with my findings.

Confirmed, Armor does not show up at all. Toggling back to the vanilla playermodel using ctrl+g makes the armor show up. Using Forge 1.12.2 14.23.5.2855 (It shows up as 2854...

I should also mention that I'm using the snapshot version of mobends, MoBends_1.12.2-1.0.0-beta3-06.08.21

You could do something like what fancy pants does, where the player throws their hands into the ground to help absorb impact before scrambling to their feet. A bit like...

I think I found it. I'll try it right now.