Had an idea this morning for a character that I'm currently brain storming, though I'd run the basic idea through here, see what you guys think.

Essentially, the character is a mana-less mage.

What this means is that he is a mage without access to the 'magical energy' required to actually cast spells, at least, not naturally. The reason for this is still experimental I have two main ideas

1. Some sort of severe allergy to mana, some kind of mana loss, or some kind of accident burning out his natural mana reserves.

2. My preferred idea at the moment, the character comes from an alternate Earth where Mana was the main 'fossil fuel', a few natural mages existed but for the most part raw primal mana existed in abundance in the atmosphere, but was used up about three hundred years after the onset of the industrial revolution. With no mana left save for very small trace elements the planet spiralled into chaos, with an apocalypse style ending where the few remaining humans fight for control and an even smaller group of mages scour the earth looking for precious 'mana potions' (they'd probably be syringes of pure mana) or even sacrificing their own blood or other's blood to create small amounts of 'black mana' (A type of impure mana that causes corruption in the user over time.)

In other universes my character would be unable to access the natural mana in the air due to its comparatively impure qualities compared to the mana of his planet, even black mana being purer by comparison. He would have a highly finite energy source, but when amped up with mana he would be capable of unleashing seriously powerful spells (like street destruction, bordering on city level.)

I'm trying to fill out a decent backstory, but that's the basic idea so far.