Hot take:
Futuristic fantasy stories that DON’T quantify and rationalize magic to some measurable degree (midichlorians, aura, power levels) are actually Badly Written because, and hear me out: people quantify everything. Calories, acidity, solubility, decibels, milliliters, the Scoville scale tells you how hot a pepper is. Ancient fantasies, myths, and post-apocalyptic stories can get away with vague rules because they don’t know how to close an electrical circuit so they can light a room, let alone measure radiation wavelength. If you want me to buy that your civilization has been practicing magic for ten thousand years in a flourishing empire with magic academies, there had better be a thermometer they can stick in your mouth to see how many magic points you are putting out right now.
I see you and raise you “a magical distribution curve”