Unfortunately, those characters with Arcane Backgrounds missed the FFF boat. You have to keep track of potentially dozens of power points, as well as the number of rounds many spells take. Some of the more recent Savage Worlds settings, including Solomon Kane, introduce a power-point free system, and Hellfrost goes a step further and does something about tracking duration, but both these setting, I think, move a fair ways away from the standard Savage Worlds system, so I've come up with my own system.
Replacing Power-Points
First of all, to eliminate power points, both Solomon Kane and Hellfrost make casting more risky by replacing the normal backlash rules with a more severe version. The effects vary, but are typically something like taking a level of fatigue and loosing the use of your powers for some time. I think this idea is sound, although it does makes magic quite a bit more
unpredictable. I've pretty much adopted this system with a somewhat scaled back backlash table. If you don't want to create your own backlash table, you could probably just substitute the fatigue level and shaken for the normal shaken result and have something that worked OK.
One problem with eliminating power points this way is how to deal with variable power point spells like the ever popular Bolt. Both systems introduce a Casting Penalty for more powerful versions of a spell, although Solomon Kane allows you to reduce these penalties by spending multiple rounds to cast the spell. While this works, it means that more advanced casters, who in the original system would have more power points to spend, are worse off, since they suffer the same penalty Novice casters do. Sure, they may have some more powerful powers available, but you don't really want your old Novice powers becoming obsolete either. You have few enough powers as it is to waste one of your level-ups on a power that will be near useless in a rank or two.
What I did was made the more powerful version of the powers available for free once you reach a higher rank. For example, the Bolt power might do 1d6 for a Novice wizard, but 2d10 at Veteran. I also allow casters to "push" a power to get the effects of the next level, but at a -2 penalty on their skill roll. This effectively implements the Casting Penalty used in Solomon Kane and Hellfrost, but reduces that penalty as the character increases rank.
Deleting Durations
My second big peeve with Arcane characters is tracking duration. You have to track when the power runs out, then remember to spend power points each round to maintain it. So in a power-point free system, how do you maintain spells? In Solomon Kane, the duration is typically based on your rank (so you still have to track it). Hellfrost actually deals with the tracking issue by having all such powers last indefinitely (as long as you are conscious) but limits the number you can have on at any one time to half your skill die. This certainly eliminates the accounting burden, but seems a bit too powerful. You might as well just cast your buff powers at the start of the day, and then spend the entire combat throwing bolts and blasts.
Instead, I've decided to just have these powers last for the duration of the combat. You would still need to cast them during (or just before) combat, and would have to cast again if you had another combat later that day. This keeps their effectiveness closer to that in the original system. After all, three rounds with maybe a maintenance round or two is usually pretty close to one combat anyway.
If you are casting one of these powers out of combat, it lasts about half an hour.
This system also simplifies the power descriptions, since most powers now have a duration of either "Instant" or "Combat".
