I'm trying to make a rune/lobber spell that doesn't explode and constantly damages health as long as an enemy is close enough to it. The furthest I've gotten is it looks the way I want, but it doesn't damage health or even cause npcs to be hostile.

I'm using a projectile, an effect and a spell. Since it doesn't explode, I'm not sure how to apply constant damage when near enough to it. Any ideas?

Can you add a cloak effect to an invisible actor placed at the rune? The radius of the cloak will control the range

That was my back up plan. I tried to add to it a summonable actor to check if it would work but it didn't do anything. I'd prefer to do it the other way for simplicities sake but if there's no other way, I'll try again.

You'll probably have to spawn something at your rune location regardless, be it an actor/trigger/activator

I'm not sure how to do that. I'll just try the back up plan again. Do I need 2 magic effects for the cloak? One for damage the other for how it'll look? I didn't try that last time, I just tried to get it to show up as a cloak but it never did.

How are you spawning/placing these runes?

Do hostile effects only affect actors that are in combat with the caster?

For example, if I cast a fire cloak on myself, my follower does not take damage from it....

I think activators/traps could still cast this cloak and affect any actor inside its radius. It might be worth digging around some of Bethesda's trap scripts and spells?

I'm placing the it just like any other rune, through a lobber projectile.

It doesn't do anything, so it effects no one. I added damage but it doesn't do anything.

I'll try to make it a functioning cloak spell first and then try to make it a constant effect on an actor.

Edit: Alright, I got the cloak to work but it's working strangely. I'm using an effect so I can see if it's working, when I cast it the first time, all good, works like I'd want it to work for the 'rune' spell. On the second test, nothing happends. Not sure what the problem is. I converted it to a constant effect and placed it on a summonable actor, nothing. I removed the other effects too, still nothing.

If constant effect is problematic just try making the duration really long. Bethesda did this with the Summon Thrall spells and I assume it was with good reason

Have you seen http://www.creationkit.com/Dynamically_Attaching_Scripts? You might be able to adapt similar methods to suit your purposes.

How will the actor fire the spell without it being a constant effect? Especially an empty actor.

In case you missed it.

As for the link, I think that's a little too advanced for me.

How is the actor able to use the constant effect spell? Is it an enchantment on something they have equipped?

I hate cloak spells.

Edit: I'm looking at the flame atronach and I don't see a flame cloak spell. How is it implemented?