If anyone has any information on how to do this(in 3ds Max mostly), or even how to fake it, it would be appreciated.

Tried doing something like this so I could get displacement on a spherical mesh (and create a rippling forcefield or something similar). Didn't work out, it seems to be hardcoded for water activators only, but oh well...

I created a plain sphere object in 3ds Max, imported it using default Nifskope settings into a new nif. Then I replaced the normal plane mesh with my sphere mesh into the default water1024.nif

Had to recreate the collision shape, but it worked without any more trouble.

Then I created an activator and set it as water. It doesn't work otherwise.

Btw I found out that the CK grumbles if you try to rotate a water nif vertically, says displacement is not supported and it will crash CK/game.