>>96737886
>>96741919
Honestly that seems like a better angle than most magitech concepts out there. Where rather than just sticking an explicitly magic crystal in the hilt of a sword to light the blade on fire, a mage is reliant on the effort and ingenuity used to forge the sword itself, and lighting a sword on fire is going to consume the sword in the process and reduce it to slag.
And it makes it so any given mundane object can serve as fuel for spells, depending on the scale and craftsmanship. Which also helps to provide a reason why technology would have continued to develop even in a world with this sort of magic, because it's inherently reliant on human progress in order to get stronger spells.
Any impacts of magic on society and warfare would lag behind normal technology.
>>96745859
For at least a basic implementation, I think it'd be simple enough to use the material as the requirement for a spell, depending on power. Then it's mostly a case of assigning a point value to various categories of objects, and then aligning that point value to either a mana cost, spell level, or other prerequisites.
So in the case of GURPs (if I remember how the system works correctly), you could have something with 5 points of Forge, which you would spend in place of Fatigue (maybe with a minimum cost of 1), and then could be used to cast any spell that has less than 5 prereqs to learn (so that you need more powerful objects to cast bigger spells).
And you could potentially just pin objects to technological eras. Stone age 1, Bronze Age 2, Iron Age 3, Steel 4, Age of Sail 5, Industrial Revolution 6, World Wars 7, Modern 8. Then add or remove points if something is particularly simple or complex, and that probably gives you a good baseline.
The spell list itself would probably need to be curated and sorted into the categories so that the effects match the sorts of materials involved.
