I'm trying to create some touch-range spells like from Oblivion, but I've been unsuccessful so far. The only way would seem to be to make a magic effect with the cast type of Fire and Forget > Contact, but this apparently has no animation assigned to it when used on a spell to be cast, so when you try casting it nothing happens. Your character goes through some twitchy little quarks, but overall the character hardly moves as if the cast button were not even pressed.

Contact is used for applying spells via a weapon attack or standing inside of a magic hazard.

I wanted to make some touch-range spells for my mod but I ultimately held off, because as far as I can tell there's four ways to pull it off:
1) Edit the game's base scripts on weapon attack events. The game will not apply on weapon-attack effects to unarmed fists and there's no easy way to make it do so; the guy with the main unarmed damage mod edited the actual source scripts for the game, I am not comfortable with this solution.
2) Create a new weapon that uses unarmed animation and modeling. The spell would summon this new weapon type right into your hand, it'd have an enchantment with the spell you want, and the enchantment would - on striking the target - not only cast its effect but remove the 'weapon' from your hand. Messy, but doable, and probably the best option IMO. I'm reserving this for when I come up with a spell idea I feel is really suited to it.
3) Do something ridiculously complicated and frail via scripting.
4) El Cheapo Way: Cast a spell with a type of 'Target Actor' with a range of like, 3, unequip what's in your hands, have it trigger an unarmed attack animation at the same time, then re-equip what was in your hands..

Whoa, I'm fine with it using a spell cast animation. That's personally what I wanted, actually. I didn't know that I could set the range on Target Actor spells, so using that and setting it really low sounds perfect.
Thanks.

Oh. Derp de derp derp.

Yes, you set the range for Target Actor spells in the Spell itself, not in the Magic Effect. Aimed spells have their range set by the projectile and I've not yet edited those. Target Actor spells can still have a projectile, the projectile just is only there for visual purposes.