It occurs to me that the OP doesn't really explain spell points and spell levels in the story. After some thought I have reconsidered the following theory.
Spells have three costs: magic, time and effort.
Magical costs are paid in mana, the energy source used to cast spells.
The amount of time it takes to cast the spell is the action cost.
And the amount of effort or physical exertion/energy it takes, or how difficult it is to cast the spell, is the educational *level* at which the spell is learned modified by the mage's specialized training. Otherwise known in real life as spell points.
In real life Arena games, you can only include up to 4 copies of a level 2+ spell and 6 copies of a level 1 spell. In academy games, you can only include up to 2 level 2+ spells and 3 level 1 spells.
In the world of Etheria these are not actually rules. Rather they are strong recommendations that a Mage Warrior would be very foolish not to follow because if they don't then they will almost certainly lose their duels. If a warlock included 10 copies of heal, by the time he casted all ten of them he would be very tired. Specifically, he would have used up half of his physical energy and he would have a lot less physical energy left to cast other spells. If he cast another ten heals he would collapse from exhaustion. But if the warlock used more in-school spells and fewer or no holy spells, he would be able to cast more spells without physically tiring himself so quickly.
If a Mage used more than four copies of a level 2+ spell they would become more tired more quickly and would have less physical energy leftover for other spells.
As for the 120 pt limit for the amount of spells you can include in your spellbook and not just the amount you can use in a duel...
No Mage can clearly remember and keep track of more than 120 pts worth of spells in their head at a time, and higher level spells tend to be more complicated and therefore harder to memorize.
This is NOT because spells have a mysterious otherworldly quality that makes people forget them. The reason that mages don't consciously remember more than 120 pts worth of spells at a time is the same reason someone in real life doesn't consciously remember everything they learned in classes they took more than a semester or two ago. They can refresh their memory by reviewing material they've already learned.
And professional mages do NOT bring their books with them into the Arena. Before a duel a professional Mage will study up to 120 pts worth of spells. (If a particular spell is already remembered with perfect clarity they probably don't need to study it.) The spellbook your Mage is currently using is just whichever spells that they have studied most recently or most extensively and therefore can recall most clearly.
Thoughts?
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