I guess I'm stuck at 1.6 and unable to take advantage of any of these newer features. Or is it possible to run the 1.6 version and only turn on the magic magnitude patch, and then run later versions, turning on everything except the magnitude patch? I'm not averse to the extra step, but I get the feeling this isn't going to be a valid workaround.
I would just keep a version of Morrowind.exe patched with MCP 1.6 around for those times when you want to make monster spells., and then just play with the version patched with 1.7 the rest of the time.