Ok I've been toying with trying to get a spell with a custom shader over on TESNexus. The guys there have been helpful but it never hurts to ask in different places does it?

Here's the thread: http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/319434-spell-scripting-help/

Basically I know that this has been done in other mods but for the life of me I cannot figure out which ones they were or how they did it. And I believe it's done alot more simply than the way I've been trying to go about it.

What I have accomplished:

Werewolf has a castself animation I added that looks like a howl.
I want the werewolf, when he notices the player or an enemy NPC to cast his buff which fortifies speed by 20 and to play a howling sound. This is the easy part, simply make a buff spell and drop it in his spell inventory. In the buff spell have a script that plays a howl sound. I've figured this much out. Whenever the werewolf has extra mana (and I've given him very little to start with) he will cast the spell and NPCs cast a buff spell if they have one on awareness anyways.

What I can't figure out:
I want the spell, named Bloodlust, to have the shader of the Damage Health effect and NOT the Fortify Attribute effect (which is all white and sparkly). It's important for the "feel" of the creature.

What I have tried:
* Adding a Damage Health effect to the script part of the spell and having it be in front of the Fortify Attribute part of the spell. This does not work because the Fortify Attribute part always gets bumped over the script part of the spell and will play its effect. No matter what I've done (even clicking the "Script Effect always applies" checkbox does nothing) it has always done this.

* Adding a no damage Damage Health in front of the Fortify Attribute in the spell's effects. Does not work because the NPC will not cast a damaging spell, even it's 0 damage, on itself no matter what. It's simply not in base AI combat styles.

* A script to stop the Fortify Attribute effect and play the Damage Health effect instead. Does not work because it doesn't stop the Fort Att effect fast enough (because casting effect is done on animation while scripts are activated afterwards).

* A completely scripted spell. For some reason the AI just refuses to cast a completely scripted spell. It will only cast a spell on itself if it is a buff coded in the engine of some kind that I can tell.

* A script to force the werewolf to cast the spell upon certain combat conditions. I have yet to get anything like this to work (usually just causes the wolf to freeze) and it requires the use of persistant references when I want this to apply to all werewolves I put in the game.


Any help?