It one of the abilities that one of the Ordo Lebes women, Abby, has in 'Our World'.  It probably is slightly overpowered though.

Though it's 2 stunts not 3.  Skill substitution for defense x2.

You mean your group is totally new to pen and paper RPGs?

hmm, then the best bit of advice I can give you is to remember that it's a game you are playing with your friends so that everyone will have fun.  So if some part of the game or the rules is impeding the fun, don't be afraid to change them around.  Remember though that the rules are partly there t ensure that everyone has 'equal' amounts of fun during the game.  So, for example, all the characters should have equal refresh since "the adventures of Harry Dresden (a -14+ refresh character) and Waldo Butters (a -4 or so refresh character)" would give most of the screen time to Harry, and probably not be as fun for the guy playing Butters.

As for how PnP RPGs are played, the Penny Arcade DnD podcasts seem to have been well received by people.  Of course, they are playing DnD 4th Edition, rather than a FATE based game, but I don't know of any podcast for them.

Remember that if you are playing in a low refresh game, the sponsoring power doesn't need to be a great power itself.  So we could imagine Toot-toot's character sheet with Emissary of Power (Harry Dresden) if we wanted to.

Won't a rating 3 workspace give you a 'no time' declaration for Thaumaturgy?  If you are working on something, you can just root around in your workspace for a minute and come up with the right tools for the job, right?

Why does his claim about traitors in the council have anything to do with him killing semi-random people?  His claim would make sense if he was killing other wizards, but why kill those other guys?

So possibility one:
The wizard thinks he has good info about another wizard (we'll call him Bob) betraying the council.  But since he doesn't think the Bob is actually breaking any of the Laws, he can hardly sic the wardens him.  so instead he takes matters into his own hands, and arranges Bob to be killed by mafia hitmen.

Another possibility:
The white council doesn't really concern itself with human laws, so Bob could be a mafia don (or whatever), and as long as he doesn't break the Laws, the wardens won't touch him.  But maybe one of the mafia actions has pissed off our wizard.  But since Bob hasn't broken any Laws, no wardens, again.  So our wizard hooks up with the guys in the mafia who want Don Bob taken out.

Or maybe:
It's Don Bob, having guys whacked for not paying off their debts to the mob (or whatever) and when the PCs investigate, they discover that Don Bob is a wizard.  They load up to fight presumed warlock Don Bob, but discover that he's a member of the council in good standing.  It's not like Don Bob is breaking the Laws, after all.  If you want to be particularly mean, you can have them find this out after they've put a bullet into Don Bob's head...    So Don Bob, who was heroically holding back the red court with his underworld connections is now dead.  The city just got more dangerous.

But it does make marginal success much more important as the combatants become higher powered.  I'll need more system mastery to really see how things fall out. 

I'd be tempted to look at a slightly different rules space where magical power bonuses were harder to come by, though.  For example, if refinement and focus items could only provide control bonuses.  Exactly how magical defenses work would also need to be changed.  But in this rules space, the Merlin would be throwing out something like power 6, control 12 attacks instead.  So even the Merlin would have some trouble beating down something with, say, legendary defenses and mythic toughness.

It would have 3 armor and 10 stress boxes, and the Merlin's normal hits would be doing around 8 stress to it (5 bonus damage from accuracy, -3 for it's armor), so he'd have to hit it several times to get over it to overflow it's stress meter.  Three or four senior council members together could hammer it right into the ground, but one senior council member by himself would really need to apply the things toughness catch to take it out by himself. 

This would also Harry's comments about him being in the top tier of raw magical power would ring more true, since Harry can throw power 5 attacks around.

Stunt
Author of FATAL
Against those who are aware of the darkness you have brought forth, your social attacks inflict mental, rather than social stress.

 

But I just picked the names out of the hat, the references I did put in there are all in aspects or book titles.