18 Best Skyrim NPC Mods Appearance, Dialogue & More

I think that all of Skyrim’s NPCs look too much alike.

Something about how they look makes them all look too much alike, and I’ve grown to dislike that feeling over time. Even more so after having played the game for so long.

Well, I say something needs to be done for the sake of the millions of TES players around the world, so I decided to get my hands dirty and dive deep into the Nexus to find some of the most unique NPC mods for Skyrim.

I went through a lot of pages before I found these mods, which will make you wonder why you didn’t get them sooner.

This list is for you if you’re tired of feeling the same way about every NPC in Skyrim. It has everything from small changes to complete makeovers.

18. Immersive Patrols

The land of the Nords, despite being a tough place to live, is still quite populous. However, the vanilla game tends to feel downright barren in certain places.

For a region that’s currently experiencing a civil war, a dragon invasion, and a vampire menace, everything feels unusually deserted in spots.

The Immersive Patrols mod goes a long way towards making the environment feel more “lived in.” Stormcloak and Imperial soldiers will now patrol the major highways and sometimes even fight each other. 

Members of the Dawnguard and Thalmor are more of a presence as well. All of it makes the environment feel more populous and interesting.

17. Protect Your People

For Skyrim players, it’s inevitable that at some point, a useful NPC is going to die. As stated previously, Skyrim doesn’t lack mortal danger.

Whether it’s due to an inconvenient dragon attack or a vampire raid, it’s likely that some poor sap gets caught in the crossfire and doesn’t make it.

It’s a fact of the game that can often be frustrating. However, with Protect Your People, fans can rest a little easier.

This mod helps ensure that useful NPCs survive these random, deadly encounters. No more loading an old save just to bring someone back from the dead!

16. Better Vampire NPCs

It’s no secret that Skyrim is full of mortal danger. Vampires represent one such threat to the Dragonborn’s health.

Traveling at night can be a perilous proposition, although experienced players probably won’t have too much trouble. Revamping Skyrim‘s vampiric enemies through mods is highly recommended for fans looking for a challenge.

The Better Vampires NPCs mod overhauls the game’s bloodsuckers, making them a more serious threat as a result.

Vampires now come in a more diverse variety of combat classes, assaulting the player with a wider array of armor and weaponry. As such, their behavior is unpredictable and harder to counter.

15. Gender & Race Heights

Have you ever wondered why everyone in the game is the same height?

I, for one, feel truly discriminated. I want my character to be as short as I am!

And I think it’s total bull that the height setting is just not there.

While this mod doesn’t help with my woes, it does make the height of females and males different according to their race. Makes sense!

14. The College of Winterhold NPC Improvement

As someone who’s played the College of Winterhold questline over 5 times (I don’t care what anybody says, I love it), it does get old looking at the same NPCs over and over again.

Especially considering most NPC characters look outdated after all these years.

This mod is truly something else when it comes to improving the cosmetic feel of the game.

It changes the appearance of all members of the College of Winterhold, designing them far more like real people, and far less like cartoonish beings.

A mod to get if you’ve replayed the game multiple times, and certainly worth getting if you intend to do it again.

13. Populated Lands, Roads, and Paths

Skyrim feels a bit dead at times. And even though I’ve strived to keep away from any NPC-specific mod, I think it’s more than fair that I add a mod like this one.

What it does is add new merchants, adventurers, travelers, and civilians to the many roads of Skyrim.

This should make you feel less lonely traveling around the world.

This mod is particularly special because of how simple it seems to be on paper.

Once you install it, you’ll realize how truly dead the game seems to be in vanilla. And how amazing it is to actually travel roads that don’t remind you of that dark alley where people got killed near your old place (maybe that’s just me, though).

12. Adventurers and Travelers

This one is pretty much the same as the last mod, but some minor differences.

It adds parties of travelers to the cities of the game, as well as to the various roads across the land of Skyrim.

This one, however, also adds these adventurers to certain towns.

Not only will your travels feel less lonely, but you’ll also have the chance to meet up with these same guys in your favorite cities, too.

A pretty small but cool change, I have to say.

11. Change Follower Outfits

This is a simple mod that allows you to edit your follower’s inventories while they follow you around.

If you dismiss them, well, they’ll keep the stuff that you gave them.

Yes you’ve read my mind: walking storage containers!

10. Diverse Guards of Skyrim

Have you ever noticed how the same group of dudes seem to be the only guards in the entire game?

Even in SSE, most of the guards in the game look extremely similar.

This can be very bad for immersion’s sake. So I thought this would be a great mod to add onto this list.

With this installed you’ll notice that the game is populated by many more female guards, guards of different races, and more.

Make Skyrim feel more alive and less like a racially-segregated place.

9. Decent Women

Now this mod changes the way every woman in the game looks, turning them into much more attractive people than what they look like in the base game.

It does remove some of that gritty feeling… but do we always want that? Even on the 10th playthrough?

I have to say that I do not notice any difference on the Khajit, Argonian, and Ogre women. So I’m assuming the dude who created this must have a kink somewhere!

Jokes aside, it’s a fantastic mod if you’re tired of looking at the same faces every time you play the game.

8. Appropriately Attired Jarls

Jarls should dress like actual jarls, and not like some random dude who’s sitting atop a throne.

Well this mod changes the outfit of the Jarls (be it the Jarls reigning at the start of the game, or the ones that take over later) and makes them look much more royal.

And the jarls staff people also gets new clothing, too.

Look how fancy they’re dressed now! So cool.

7. NPC Clothes Changes and Maintainer

I already covered mods that allow you to tweak the outfits of your followers… but this one takes it to the next level.

It allows you to tweak the outfit of every single NPC in the game.

Not only that, but they’ll always keep the stuff that you give them, regardless of their dress codes.

You can make guards wear dresses if you want. Which makes them look more like cheap man-whores than actual guards (is there any difference, though?).

Tweak the outfits of whoever you want and have fun for days while doing so!

6. Consistent Older People

This amazing mod takes aging to the next level by actually making the skin of older people look like the actual skin of… well, older people.

In Skyrim, most of the old people in the game simply have an old face. But their bodies look exactly the same.

Not too realistic, eh? This mod changes that and makes the body of all old characters look like the actual body of an old person.

A bit eerie at first, but a good mod nonetheless – especially after you get used to the new digs.

5. Populated Cities

This is the mod to get if you’ve had enough of all cities in the game feeling equally dead.

There seems to be no one around when you walk around a city in Skyrim. And the problem gets crazier if you’ve been playing the game for a while.

The same people are always in the same spots, doing the same things, and saying the same garbage. What kinda life are they living over there?

Populated Cities adds a bunch of new random (and killable) NPCs. They interact with their surroundings, walk around, and make cities feel more like actual cities instead of giant rocky graveyards.

An awesome mod if you’re into immersion, and one that will make the game feel truly fresh.

4. Inconsequential NPCs

Continuing the trend of immersion, this mod makes it so many new NPC characters get added to the game.

All of which have new interactions that they can take with one another.

These interactions are fully voiced by the creaotrs of the mod, which should keep you on the edge of your seat while playing. I mean it’s not an end-all be-all mod… but imagine adding this in with some others, trying to hear what all of these folks are saying.

These NPCs are inconsequential too. Which means that they’re all fully killable and play no part other than adding a new feeling to the game.

A cool mod nonetheless!

3. Organized Bandits in Skyrim

Organized Bandits makes all bandits in the game feel truly unique.

In fact, the mod adds a staggering 57 new bandit types, and over 2500 new bandits in total.

If you’re tired of having the same dudes coming at you time and time again, this one will help you enjoy being attacked.

2. Interesting NPCs

I’ve always been a sucker for complex mods that seem like they’d be incredibly difficult to create.

So I can’t help but add this one here, and trust me it’s detailed.

Interesting NPCs adds over 250 new NPCs, all of which are fully voiced by great voice actors.

And 25 of them are new followers that you can get, too.

There’s also a good number of these that are marriable characters.

Overall a seriously brilliant mod that’s worth trying at least once.

1. Amazing Follower Tweaks

We all know that followers are the ultimate type of NPC that we love to edit.

Given how they follow us around during the entire game, they’re the folks we see quite often.

And this mod allows you to truly make edits into every follower. And these edits go deep my friends.

This is, by far, the best follower NPC mod that I’ve ever tried out.

Absolutely give it a go.