Hello, I recently bought a boat and the tip(about 1-2") of the skeg is broke off. The lower unit and all that has been rebuilt since, I'm not worried about those type of things. I'm just wondering how important it might be to fix this and if it's used for anything more then prop protection. I know they sell skeg guards which would basically fix my problem, but I'm not sure if it's something I need to do.

On small motors, they are more a guard for the prop than anythng.   On larger, high performance boats where the motor is jacked way up, they are critical to boat stabillity.

i had a 50hp evinrude that i bent it pretty bad and it didn't have any adverse effects