Thank you for clarifying your question! However, I guess there may be some misunderstanding regarding the following point:
but anytime a character or object needs a different Path in a different Skin, I need another Path Constraint for the set of bones to refer to.
Path constraints can change the Target
for each skin, so a setup like the one seen in the GIF animation below is possible.
![](/forum/assets/files/phpbb/17767-583d040f6c8a10720a84bd3d92abb7de.gif)
In the example above, SkinA and SkinB contain the same path constraint, but the target paths are circular Path-A and distorted Path-B, respectively.
If you don't want to share the path-constraint's settings (Spacing, Position, Rotate mode, Mix, etc...), you will have to create a new path-constraint for each skin, but if the same settings are fine, there should be no need to create a new one.
If this doesn't seem to solve your problem, please let me know!