Tentative Runic -> SwdMagic patch

What you could do is make a bunch of spells that have the physical property, and have different elements, and each have different animations that are variants of the "Battle" animation with some flair added in, then write a custom spell effect that loads the equipped weapon's battle power instead of the spell's spell power.

With a little menu hacking you could change Runic into a menu with 8 spells, one for each element. LightPhoenix made an extensive patch for menu Swdtech and Blitz that supposedly is pretty extensible for other menu-making purposes.