Stunts tend to be a situational +2.  Fate Points, when spent, are also +2 if you have an aspect.  So unless you plan on using your Stunt more than once per session, probably don't have any aspect that applies (in which case you might want to rethink your stunt purchase), or will need the Stunt AND an invoked aspect to be effective, then buying Stunts is not a good idea.  Just use the Fate Point instead; a flexible +2 is better than a fixed +2.  Don't go crazy on stunts to just spend that refresh - just because you want a master gunslinger doesn't mean you need all the guns stunts. 

Strategic use of Fate points is the most important part of having a huge net refresh.  Scene Aspects can be much more useful for you than other people - anyone can get a tag on something, but most other characters can't really afford to repeatedly invoke things.  Same thing for maneuvers.  Especially when Compel or Invoke for Effect instead for a bonus/reroll, which generally can't be done via tag.  As part of a group, you can compel your friends' aspects to transfer Fate Points to them, or invoke their aspects when they need a bonus.  Compelling over invoking stuff for them is useful for giving them the ammo to resist other compels.  Remember that Aspects, whether via maneuver, inherent, or consequences, basically just sit there unless someone spends a Fate Point to make them real.  If you have a lot of Fate Points, you get to decide what's actually important.  Emphasizing this part of the game in your character puts your guy in a more support role, but it does focus on the unique advantages to being a pure mortal that most other characters aren't going to have.

Note that huge guns, "sticky" aspects as part of equipment (rather dubious mechanically, IMO), etc don't especially help pure mortal characters - they don't have a monopoly on the use of stuff.  Sure, you can make a Pure mortal Gunslinger with 10 points of stunts.  OTOH, you could also be a Changeling and do the same things - but probably a lot more efficiently, since stunts aren't as good as powers.  There's a part Sylph assassin in our game (as an NPC) with Superb Guns as well, but she has enough Speed to go Matrix where mortals go John Woo.  Plus Wings (Flight + ranged attacks vs so many melee primary monsters = ) and stuff. 

Many powers don't provide advantages to more mental or social challenges - and non combat powers are often dependent on mundane skills to work.  Powered characters can have those skills, yes.  However, in terms of comparative advantage, mortal characters are often better off specializing in those areas.

And hitting monsters with a car is a pretty nice equalizer.

"when you reach 0 refresh you are no longer a playable character", such that if you are playing an 8 refresh game, you can only go up to 7 in powers and stunts; after that you would be at a net 0, and therefore non-playable?

Help! And thanks!

This.

Okay, we've seen some of the same arguments repeated here.

1.  Grapples: How does a grapple work?  Well, it's basically a block with an extra requirement (that you burn a tag or invoke), but with extra goodies you can inflict as a supplemental action.  A grappled person can still attempt any action to go against the block though, and attacks or spells can break the grapple as well.

So how is that bad for wizards?  Well, it's not.  A spellcaster who acts with 10-11 (like the character in my first post) will be able to blow through even an 8 power block - and thus grapple - reliably.  And with the need to tag for effect instead of bonus, a 6 power grapple seems more likely (5 Might+Inhuman Strength).  Of course, that's with a focus item.  Maybe our grappler uses his supplemental action to impose a Disarmed maneuver to make the wizard drop his blasting rod.  But then the odds are actually even!  Our wrestling monster drops by 1 from the minor action to 7, and the wizard's control sans item is also 7.

The idea that a grappled wizard is totally screwed, while common in the fiction, is not really supported by game mechanics.

A grapple+disarm strategy will also be extremely effective against characters with primary Guns or Weapons.  They won't just lose a bonus when disarmed, they might lose the ability to apply their top relevant skill at all!

2.  Mental attacks screw wizards.

I'll admit that, for their conviction and discipline ratings, a character using evocation is rather vulnerable because they're using up that stress track for their own powers too.

However, that's for characters of the same discipline and conviction skills - which will be quite high for the combat evoker, since those skills determine the power of their magic.  Other characters have less of a reason to buy discipline, so it will probably be lower.  Hence, mental attacks are more likely to hit those characters, and then will hit by a larger margin (thus doing more damage) when they do it.

Someone mentioned a Weapon 4 mental attack.  Let's say our mental attacker gets a 4 on its attack (a +0 roll, with accuracy equal to power).  A 5 Conviction, 4 Discipline wizard defends at 4 from Discipline and has 4 mental stress boxes.  The spellcaster has around a 40ish percent chance to avoid the Great mental attack.  He can absorb a glancing hit with his top stress box.  On a defense roll of -1 to -3, he scrapes by with some stress and mild consequence - which his extra Mild Mental slot can take.  Only on a roll of -4 does he need to suffer a Moderate consequence to avoid being taken out. 

A character prioritizing more conventional combat skills (or anything else besides Discipline and Conviction) might end up with something like 2 Discipline and 1 Conviction.  That's a defense of 2, and 3 mental stress boxes.  Weapon 4 versus 3 stress means that all hits, no matter how minor, will inflict a mild consequence.  Against the same accuracy 4, +0 roll, he needs a 6% chance +3 roll to avoid the attack.  At least a moderate consequence will be suffered on a defense up to and including +0.  On a sucky -4, our guy takes 10 damage and thus requires a Mild AND a Severe (or an Extreme) to remain active.

Is getting hit with a mental attack bad for a spellcaster?  Heck yeah.  But it's worse for someone without the mental defense skills.  And buying a Great Discipline exclusively for mental defense is somewhat expensive (unless you're also using it for Feeding Dependency or something as well).  Anyone can get hammered by high power mental attacks.

3.  Ambushes are great.  Yeah, they are. 

In fact, they're so great they work pretty well against everyone.  The vampire with 6 Stealth from Cloak of Shadows has something like a 2 out of 3 chance to get the drop on someone with Great Alertness - which seems like a pretty high skill.  Most characters don't do so well when they only have a Mediocre defense.  It doesn't seem unreasonable to say that the combat evoker is impacted less than other combat characters, since their base defense skill is probably lower.  Shapechanging type characters (eg, Wereforms) may be especially vulnerable with Human Form, or may just need to spend actions to transform so their early rounds are further disadvantaged. 

4.  All combat ability leaves Jack a dull boy...

Well, not really.  We're talking about a skill set defined by the top 3 of Conviction, Discipline, and Lore.  I'll freely admit that Conviction is kind of bad - especially since an evocation using character will be using up those extra boxes.  Having a bigger total stress can help against 3-4 size hits where having the box is the difference between a consequence or not.  But the guy dealing mental stress to himself probably isn't to have more total available boxes compared to other characters.  Discipline is the skill for mental defense, and can also block Intimidate.  Lore covers knowledge of magic, detection of magical stuff (replacing some uses for Alertness), and your basic rituals.  They have some utility in mental and social conflicts, as well as some knowledge uses.  Most of them are more useful outside a fight than a skill like Guns or Fists.

Also, Evocation is a pretty versatile ability.  You can use it to make area or structure attacks like Craftsmanship, create a shield for Athletics, Veil like Stealth, as well as serving as an attack skill.  The Alertness, Fist/Weapon/Gun, Stealth, Might guy who sneaks up on the wizard, attacks, wins initiative and then grapples is more skill intensive.  At Submerged, a 1/3/3/3/3 skill column leaves the evoker with 1 Great skill open, and then all Good to Fair skills for non combat or secondary combat abilities.  The equivalent at a Great skill cap actually leaves you with a few extra points at 25 points.  Even if the powers I've listed in the OP are technically affordable at the lowest starting level, they don't seem especially appropriate, so I'm not going to worry about the skill structure at that level.

A Conv/Lore/Disc skill apex also works well for thaumaturgy or ritual, which often goes with evocation in templates.  That's really expensive in terms of refresh though, even if it does provide a powerful weapon in combat, and versatile toolset out of it.

5.  Cofeekid's gunslinger:

I appreciate the enthusiasm, but:

Of course, you fabricated the ability to create freely taggable aspects on your guns out of nothing (unfortunately, adding an arbitrary damage bonus based on expert crafting isn't without precedent).  Declarations about your equipment might be appropriate, but those don't seem like they'd refresh per scene.  And why 3 aspects, not more?  A house rule that grants massive bonuses to equipment attacks actually seems like a bigger change than one that provides a penalty to evocation attacks.  Especially because of 2 major problems: First of all, not all attacks use a weapon, so those attacks couldn't be boosted with gear bonuses. Second, evocation uses equipment.  Why settle for a vanilla magic wand or staff when you can pimp out your blasting rod with cooling vents, a reflex sight, custom grips, an experimental cartridge system, etc? 

Also, you don't have the resources to support a Workshop that could handle even difficulty 3 projects.  But the whole workshop rule seems really stupid anyway; I'm pretty sure we're ignoring it anyway.

I only see one stunt that can boost an attack, so his attack would default to 6, not 7.

Also, a Weapon Focus (effectively) stunt doesn't seem appropriately situational compared to the example attack booster.  It's pretty easy to apply like 90% of the time.  Even if Target Rich Environment is going to apply in 90% of the fights, it will lose utility as you drop enemies and even the odds.  Unless you lose, I guess. 

--------------------------------------------

So far, we've been using these rules in 2 sessions with our wizard.  He retooled a bit, dropping to 8 Control, 6 Power and picking up more defensive items.  Now, when he gets in a good hit, he's hitting for about 10 or so, instead of like 16.  It's not like he became a combat lightweight.  I think he also appreciated the ability to cast without stress in our recent zombie apocalypse adventure.

It seems Lenny is the only one in the party who isn't a killer 

Oh, he never beat anyone to death with his bat?  And I'm sure it's just a matter of time, considering your use of alchemy. 

White Court Vampire, Denarian, Alchemist...yeah. John quickly tries to turn this to advantage, talking about how the wizards need to build bridges and work with other members of the magical community against the Red Court.

Temper loves it when John runs his mouth and blabs about her.  She would be so mad if she ever found out.

Temper wisely decides to avoid using the clamps, instead using her superior unarmed skills to beat up Nicholas Cage. "That's for Face Off! That's for Ghost Rider! And that's for National Treasure!" "Hey, that last one was good!" I'll avoid recounting our table's trashing of Face Off and the debate of whether or not National Treasure was, in fact, good. Today we discovered that we will, in fact, argue about the color yellow. Even against a man possessed by a supernaturally strong ghost, Cage falls pretty quickly, but not before Delphine Lalaurie, the uberghost possessing Cage, throws off some insults towards Temper. Temper is, perhaps, fortunate, that she set down the camera before attempting to batter down the door and the camera only records the sounds of their skirmish.

Actually, we were saying those things as Temper beat up Cage (including a dislocated elbow from her counter attack after the possessed actor punched through the wall); she isn't a big movie watcher and had little to complain about besides his boring information on the house.

Temper, dragging an unconscious Nick Cage, meets up with Arty and Lenny. Temper explains that, basically, a ghost beat up Nicholas Cage. Close enough, right. So they hurry upstairs, glancing at their watches to note that it's near midnight. They've almost broken the record!

"A ghost possessed him and caused him to do things that injured himself..."  If only she had that Deceit stunt, but it didn't prove necessary here.

And she sent Lenny a text to get the alchemist and professor downstairs so they could help carry the KO'd man; she didn't carry him herself.

Now, our readers may be wondering, "Why the hell is Nick Cage in this adventure?"  According to mroehler's exhaustive research, the actor actually did own the real life version of the house for several years.  This detail seemed too funny not to include.

Death Walks Among You could actually apply to pretty much all of our characters, besides any NPCs of surprising dangerousness.  We're a pretty violent bunch.  Lefleur killed someone becoming a vampire (and is now a sort of crime boss); John was a soldier and has probably been involved in putting down some warlocks, Temperance is a killer.  It could have been warning the NPCs about us.

However, at the time, I suspected that Marie was a disguised Nightmare Hag, because the Lalaurie House appeared in her dream.

Conventionally, the skeptic guy will freak out and get himself or someone else killed.  So far, the escort mission is proceeding fairly well.

I dont know if thats needed, I mean, Generally, if a wizard is fighting a baddy, the baddy is going to have 6 physical stress boxes and consequences. Thats a huge advantage over the poor wizard who at most is going to have 4 physical stress boxes.

Not really.  Most enemies, according to the rules, don't take their full assortment of consequences.  And a mild consequence recovers pretty easily.

Moreover, all PCs without toughness powers are in pretty much the same boat defensively.  However, those characters probably can't create Fantastic+ blocks, or have enchanted items to back up their defense.  For example, the WCV template is also pretty expensive and lacks toughness.  Werewolves don't have toughness or recovery.  

Spending an equivalent value of refresh on non-evocation attacks (for example, Strength powers) won't do any more to counter the ghoul's tendency to maim people.  But it will deal less damage (6-7 damage, 5 attack) compared to the wizard's counterattack (6 damage, 10 attack).  It's not like I'm comparing a guy with a bunch of combat focused powers and skills to a character lacking in those areas.

Plus, you're kind of helping my point: if many characters can't go toe to toe with ghouls for very long in the first place, then the mental damage cost of an evocation isn't going to be huge issue.  The fight can be over, one way or the other, before that restriction acts as a limiting factor.

I mean, I never said that taking Evocation made you invincible.  I said that it gives you a better offense than other Supernatural abilities.

It's kind of cheap to call normal ghouls only 6 refresh.  They have a lot of high combat skills.  In a straight up fight, they're going to be more dangerous than the standard RCV (worth almost twice as much).

Prepared...  In our biggest fight so far, the wizard forgot his focus item.  He got ambushed by an RCV noble with Supernatural Toughness.  His two shots of lightning counted a lot more than her attacks.  He wasn't exactly running in there with a stack full of Assessments from advance planning - if you invest a lot in throwing power around, it can work pretty well even if you're not prepared in advance.  Also, it's tons easier to be prepared when your main weapons aren't obvious, illegal, and traceable - like the explosives and assault weaponry some people have.

But Lefleur doesn't believe in things like the Illuminati and the Bildeberger Group running world affairs. Although Temper was spookily accurate about vampire venom being the secret ingredient of Coca Cola. I think Maya must have read Temper's blog. And Lefleur probably thinks he's smarter than he really is, since he just lies about everything. Temper should just run him over with her Schwinn. Or fall in love and then punch him to bypass his Inhuman Recovery.

The amusing thing about playing Temper is that her conspiracy theories aren't crazy enough for the setting.    I mean, all those groups are basically people.  No one predicted economic shadow warfare between immortal vampires and the ancient order of long lived wizards...

She's been working on revising them to account for the supernatural.

And why would she put surveillance on herself with a blog?  The whole blogging and social networking fad is just a way to encourage people to spy on each other, feed information to the Echelon supercomputers, and expedite social conditioning.    But she's not above using them to help build cover IDs.

Why would Temper need to fall in love to hurt Lefleur?  She could just use The Clamps! 

In many ways, the incredible coincidences that back up the Knights seem more like having tons of Fate Points to Invoke for Effect than real powers.