I need a way to damage NPC's with a script. I found out modav2 health to a negative number crashes Oblivion. Is there another way to damage them? I tried addspellNS with a bunch of ability spells which had drainhealth and drainfatigue set at massive numbers yet they seemed to have no effect on the NPC. I tried damage health and damage fatigue and got it to work on my player, but they kept damaging me after the timer ran out. Do I need to add a timer to remove them?

If someone knows of a way to add script damage I'd prefer that than mess with these spells.

EDIT: I got it working with a timer that takes it off after 10 seconds. I'd still rather damage the actor with my script.

Have you tried getav health to see where the health is at, and then adjusting your modav2 health so that you never force the health to go below 0?

EDIT: Unfortunately I can't test this real quick for you. My computer is out of order right now.