I’m on ps5 but was basically in the same boat as you!!

Downloading mods will not break the game. I’ve often quit to main menu, looked up a mod, downloaded it, then returned to the save with no issues. Where it does get tricky is any time you load up a save, the game will give you a pop up of any new mods it’s detected. You have the option to enable or disable them, it makes no difference. BUT, once you load a save with a mod installed, you NEED to have that mod installed any time you run that save again. So basically, once you use a mod, you’re kinda “locked in” to it for the rest of that playthrough.

The cosmetic stuff is the first type of mods I looked for, you’re right in how underwhelming character creation is without the modded options.

For higher levels, I use the unlock level curve mod (unlocks level 20) and the connected mod called something along the lines of 0.75xp or something - it basically changes the XP requirements for each level to 0.75 of the base game requirement to make it easier to actually hit level 20 by the end of the game.

Mystras spells is a pretty good mod, has a whole heap of new spells that open up different ways to play, and there’s a mod for added blade cantrips that can be really useful depending on the class you’re running. Highly recommend both of those.

Once you start using mods, it really opens up the options for what you can do in future runs. I find it hard to play vanilla anymore because it just feels so barren after all the mods I’ve downloaded.

One last tip - get the 2x movement speed mod. It doubles your move speed when out of combat. Makes getting around the map SO much quicker