Hey, I just started learning to script yesterday and have gotten some of it down a lil. I'm trying to figure out how i'd apply a visual effect to the player, such as lightning or some other kind of visual effect that would go over the player for a certain amount of time
Any help is welome.

http://www.creationkit.com/EffectShader is what your looking for, Shaders will allow you to apply a Membrane (A Texture that covers an entire objects Geometry) and/or a Particle System to any Actor or Object.

If your looking to do something more complex then your basically out of luck as there are no publicly available Exporters that can export Particle Systems nor can they Export any of the Animation Controllers used in Skyrim, If you ~ABSOLUTELY MUST~ have something Custom then you can cobble something together in NifSkope but your limited to only what Bethesda provided as a Basis to alter into something else.

Particle Systems are fairly malleable but other Effects are going to be a far greater pain in the A$$ to create.

Thanks for the help