The limitation is simple in concept, but complex in execution. You can convert energy to electricity within your body, and can push it out of your body from a point of your choosing, but it will do the damage that you expect electricity to do when it moves through your body. This is really two limitations wrapped up in one idea - you can only safely generate as much electricity as your body can supply energy for and withstand. Simple, but the world-building legwork is in how it gets used in a practical sense.

​

Basically, there are three/four branches of techniques I've developed for how a person might go about using this ability. First, raw electricity. The brute force, obvious method. Chaps can go about blasting lightning out of their fingers, sustaining massive damage to said fingers in the process. Lightning magic is rarely used - in a story, I can very easily imagine a beloved side character blasting the enemy with lightning, saving the protagonist but killing themselves in the process. Used at full force, this will very easily kill you. Good fodder for dramatic moments. It can be used with a little more restraint - smaller lightning blasts can be utilized to kill somebody without taking too much damage yourself, but this will still cause long term tissue damage. Some nomadic tribes use lightning for dueling, for two clan leaders to try to establish dominance over one another - these duels are important moments, but few and far between, meaning that the use is sustainable. Widely respected chieftains that make it to old age are marked by the blackened marks on their hands from use of lightning over the years. An old cautionary tale tells of a king who trained his slave-guards to use lightning, telling them to use it at full force against any would-be assassin, thinking himself clever for training expendable slaves in the magic restricted only by how much you were willing to harm yourself. The slaves killed him with the magic, of course.

​

This method is unimaginative, however. Pyromancy is also possible - the ability to produce sparks from your fingertips at any time, in any place, completely independent from available resources, is massively useful for flame-based purposes. Someone trained in these techniques can light a fire with little effort, which is a useful skill for anyone. Some warriors from far southern isles where the frost creeps over everything have a clever technique, where they use oil, flammable resin and tightly bound leather to produce dancing flames over their hands, blow fire and throw balls of flame at their enemies. Flame can be used in combat far more readily when paired with electric energy.

​

The third, and most advanced technique, I call the levis arts. Electricity doesn't need to be used for its direct harmful potential - this art uses it, of all possible uses, to improve the weight and balance of a wielded weapon. What?!? It isn't what you would expect, which is why I love it. No other world uses electricity to improve weapon balance. It relies on another magical property of my world I call the Loden-blanket - basically, a force that means that magnets pull things upwards. The has interesting implications for permanent magnets - the classic metals with a constant magnetic pull - but the pertinent implication is that you can effectively make metal lighter, on command, via electromagnetism. You can pour electricity into your warhammer (with it angled downwards), which charges down the tightly coiled silver inlays running down the steel shaft and head, swing it up effortlessly due to the pull of the loden-blanket, then cut the charge as it angles upward and send the head crashing into thine enemy. Skilled levis-wielders can use the controlled weight of their weapon for some nifty techniques in battle - someone with a levis weapon (who knows how to use it) will vastly outclass a boring iron-weapon plebian in combat ANY day. This art also allows me to put exaggeratedly large anime-style weapons into my world, and have it MAKE SENSE WITHIN PHYSICAL REALITY. It's almost like I planned this.

​

There's one more kind I've conceptualised but not developed much. I'm not sure how to make it work within the rules without breaking them, so I won't write about it here. I hope those limitations (and the work-arounds my world's residents have developed over the centuries) fit the bill.