Understanding skin mods....

[folgore62]

I understand that if I install a skin mod like BIJIN Skin or Fair Skin Complexion, it only impacts the PC and not NPCs. Is there any way to upgrade the skin textures of all the NPCs of Skyrim? Do NPC overhauls change the quality of skin texture over vanilla SSE?

 

[IsharaMeradin]

Default setup for the game is as follows: Change the skin texture and / or body model for the player and all NPCs are affected as well.

 

It takes additional mods for the player to have a different texture and / or body model than all the NPCs.

 

As far as quality, that comes down to user preference. Only you can decide what is of better quality than default.

[Algabar]

In addition to the explanation above: By default, most skin mods replace the player's skin as well as that of NPCs. Mods like e.g. "Fair Skin Complexion" do that "out of the box".

 

Regarding NPC overhauls: Depends. There are different types of NPC replacers. Some are complete overhauls including body and skin, whereas most NPC replacers deliberately only change the face of NPCs so that users can decide for themselves which skin and/or body replacers they want to use. If in doubt, read the mod's description.