Oblivion had spells that you could put self spells in WITH the target spells. But that convenience is not Skyrim.

I need a fireball that when it hits the ground and explodes will also affect the player if they are too close. But the hard code will not allow any magic explosions to harm the one that cast it.

To do this I had to make the explosion place an invisible activator that then uses a script to place an explosion.

Have I really discovered the ONLY way to do this in skyrim?

Off the top of my head, how about a script projectile spell? When the projectile hits it casts the fireball spell on that spot. Then it can check to see if the caster is in the AOE and apply damage as appropriate.

Not sure that's any less convoluted, mind.

Unfortunately you cannot put scripts on projectiles themselves.

Setting Effect Archetype to "Script" and Delivery to "Aimed" doesn't work?

Oh I see you mean to abandon the projectile system and do it all with scripting.

Sigh, I have so many scripts already in use in my mods I was really trying to do this the "right way" (minimal scripting and mostly using the hardcode systems).

Yes you are right I could script this using cell walking to catch the caster, and script the resistance to the spell, los, damage, knockback and other effects...

Or place the explosion itself via the script, but that would only work if I hit an activator or actor. If the spell hits the ground or other surface (that will not run the scripts) it would not work.

Edit: Ok I think I was making this more difficult than it needed to be. I found I could make a FAKE invisible spell explosion place a real explosion using no scripts at all and no tokens. This is very straightforward and works to attack both the caster and the other targets around the explosion.

I wasn't thinking cell walking as such. If the delivery is aimed, then you must have a target point. If yo ucan find out where that is (and I don't know for sure that you can) then you just set off the fireball effect at that location.

All the script needs to do then is work out the distance to the caster to see if he or she is inside the AOE.

That said, the solution you've settle on sounds better than what I had in mind