In Ghantik, one of the worlds of my campaign, Elves and others have achieved a sophisticated form of what might be called bio-magic (rather than biotechnology). So they can implant biological characteristics and codings into things. Including some objects.
So many inanimate objects can do some things, or allow the user to do something(s), that mimic biological capabilities. These objects are specifically disguised to be other things, but have or give magical biological capabilities. Rather than gaining a + form an object, it might give you the same sense of smell as the creature on that world with the most sensitive sense of smell. Meaning you can smell very complex things, understand what they imply, or even potentially smell scents from hundreds of miles away.
Also used braided hair for druid spells - the way and what they used in fixing their hair equaled spells. So, the more braids, the more powerful the druid and IF their braids were cut off, they lost the spell!
In that same world there is a Wizard NPC who uses his hair as both a spell book and psychic amplifier. His hair is long and knotted into special braids. He looks like he has a very strange hairdoo. Really he can just "feel through his hair" like one would feel braille and read the magic he possesses. So it's like the tattoo trick mentioned above. Only no one else recognizes what it is because it's unique to him. It also amplifies, because of the way it is arranged, his psychic capabilities, and gives him a built in Wizard Eye whenever he wishes.
I like your idea of "length amplification" (I'll have to incorporate that idea) and of cutting hair means loss of capability (Samson).
Unusually in situations like this in my world though such arrangements are totally unique. Meaning others don't know about them or practice the same technique.
Some monsters also have things body components like horns or claws or teeth or eyes or specific scales or feathers that do unique things. They don't look different from other body components but they act differently or give different capabilities than expected. When the monsters die though the capabilities are lost.
If you killed a dragon, every part of it was magical. (I.e. I rolled for part of its horde on the potion treasure table). you could grind up its bones, use it's breath weapon gizzard, it's eyes, its scales, etc.
What it really amounted to was using a whole buch of potions, but I never told the players that they were reskinned potions.
Have done this too and often, with many monsters. Since monsters are almost always unique and one of a kind. Never done the traits as reskinned potions, but have done the similar, old school, monster biology = magic.
Every serpent is a text. Certain people (and non-people) know how to read their scales. As they grow, the animals revise and expand themselves until they die.
Really like that idea. shed snakeskin could become the basis of a magic book and you could even write over the skin to make it appear as another text, but the skin itself would be a type of
palimpsest. Even a wizard couldn't read it or recognize the magic unless he knew the snake-language. If he did though then the book might seem to contain any kind of information, or even minor spells, whereas underneath the scales would describe a very powerful or maybe even a unique and previously generally unknown spell.
In Ghantik also some architectural features are not as they appear. In one city walls can be repositioned and buildings "walked" to redesign the interior relationship of buildings and monuments. And buildings are more than just buildings, some are also codes. And certain arrangements can either amplify the magical capabilities of the inhabitants of the city, and/or, suppress the magical capabilities of any besieger. Sort of a Baba Yaga's hut written on the city-scale.
