I think anything along the lines of kinetic force, light, audio is fair game. Thus:

1. Maneuvers like "soundless steps" or a whole bubble that eliminates sound. Molly's one woman rave is probably also a spirit spell (and it has been used more in a non combat style). You could also try things like hearing someone talk that is too far away to hear or transmit your voice to a location of your choosing.

2. Any kind of veil to the senses, like blocking out sound, blinding someone, making them not smell the poison in their coffee, that kind of stuff. You could create illusions, but as a single target spell, that is probably not that far from breaking the law. Or, if you are operating in a team, take out the light in the room first and then illuminate your enemies for your friends to take out.

3. Well, anything that can be done to one person can be done to a zone. Light up/darken a zone, take away the zones ability to transmit sound or have any sound that enters the zone increased by a whole lot, so that it practically is a sonic weapon.

4. You can block sight, so nobody will even be able to attack you. Sound, so nobody will hear you sneak around. Instead of a standard "Forcefield" spell, you could create a poltergeist "shield": things around you will just jump up, fall off shelves, topple over, etc. to intercept attacks made at you. Especially strong if you have a scene aspect representing some stuff that's lying around (think of a fight inside a library, endless supply or armor-books). Or you could create some holographic duplicates of yourself that run around and distract the enemy for the same purpose.

5. On a kind of silly note: if you have a practitioner that is more along the line of subtle magic, tie their shoelaces. Or limit the friction of their shoes, they won't be able to walk anywhere without hitting the floor every single step (I experienced that first hand a couple weeks ago. No magic, of course, but the whole street was one large sheet of ice.). A Poltergeist-spell comes to mind again, throwing obstacles in the way of everyone moving in a zone.

Hope that helps a bit

I think they would get a lifespan of mere humans, maybe even wizards constitution, but most wereanythings won't die of old age anyhow. I wouldn't treat werehumans and humanweres any different here. Both are not half-human half-something but kind of both, combining the best of both worlds to something new. Remember that even the rules reflect this: in wereform they still have their human intelligence, and in human form they still have an echo of their beasts abilities. An athletic 45 year old human would still change into an athletic wolf form, not one crippled with old age.

Aftermath:

I created a character that is a martial arts/wizard mix who uses fists to cast spells. The reason behind this is, that he is using the moves he learned from his training to focus his mental energy and create the effects he wants. Of course those effects mostly require him to be able to touch the target. I did this by giving him a stunt that lets him use fists instead of discipline for casting spells, if he can touch his target, simple as that. He is greatly limited in "normal" spellcasting of course.

However, if you want to replace the lore skill, that is going to be tricky, because it is the skill that let's you know how magic works. As I understand it, you want to use it for thaumaturgic rituals, and if you limit it to that, I don't see a reason not to do it. You can argue, that the characters wizard senses are tuned to colors and forms, so he can see the magic as patterns of colors he can create or change. Preparing a thaumaturgic ritual would not only consist on gathering materials, but also creating paint out of that material. So it would be a stunt (or much rather an addition to a supernatural power) that allows you to use crafting instead of lore for thaumaturgic rituals. You should also take an artists stunt to represent your expertise in that area.

he could just be a Minor Talent who has magical gun powers.

I just read this as "magic gun powder" and now I want to create a gunslinging alchemist. That's gonna be fun

The Alchemist character is very easy to make. There is already a rule for on-the-fly potions: if you have free potion slots you can ask your GM for a lore roll to have the right potion at hand. Might involve a FATE point, but I'm not sure. Add in a stunt for that lore roll and you can pull a potion out of your hat for every occasion. Give him Ritual (Crafting) so he can create potions and has his potion slots available.

A giant snow beast is attacking the party, and as they hold off the beast, he creates has one of the party members create a snowman while he focuses and prepares a thaumaturgic ritual connecting his snowman and the snowbeast. Once the ritual is complete, he has someone melt the snowman or kick it's head off, thus destroying the snowbeast.

That is going to be an enormous ritual involving a hell of a lot of shifts. I'm not sure if anyone could just pull off something like that. Look at the book, the spell to kill a human being involves something along the lines of 30+ shifts, so what is it going to be on something like that? It would probably be easier to try something different in this case, taking away a toughness power or something like that, so the rest of your group can hack away.

The dual-sword wielding teleporter would, as devonapple suggested, best be emulated by supernatural speed or higher. Maybe cut away some of it's benefits and make it a bit cheaper, but actual teleporting just isn't possible in the dresdenverse (as far as I understand it, of course). Which doesn't mean your character shouldn't believe he is teleporting, maybe he is just jumping between his positions in an enormous speed, more an act of will than it is an act of actual movement, so from his point of view it still would be teleporting.
If you take Supernatural Speed, I would modify it like this:
Remove "Faster than the Eye" and change Supreme Initiative so you might spend a FATE point to go first once a scene. The rest pretty much sums up the remaining benefits, I think. I would then price it at 3 Refresh, maybe 2 if you restrict it further (like "only when wielding the two swords in combat).

That's a good point.  An active Block against Spell Strength should probably require thaumaturgy.  Which is actually cool, because it gives another good option for "Thaumaturgy at the speed of Evocation".

That was not what I had in mind, but sure it would work as well. My idea was to get something from your enemy to use it as a link and then use standard thaumaturgy to shut him down.

For the Game stuff you can show them a short sample fight, that helps clarify a lot. There is one great example in the resource section.

As for the setting, I think it is best to introduce them slowly as your game progresses. Start out with pure mortal or minor talent characters and work your way up from there. If one of the characters is a focused practitioner, have a warden visit him and warn him about the laws of magic. To introduce them to faeries, have a smaller faery trick them into making a deal, nothing with real bad impact, but enough to make it an adventure in itself. When they try to get out of it, get them help from someone who knows about faeries and can explain them what happened.
Once you introduce new aspects of the world your players might want to change their characters, talk about that before you start playing and you should be fine. If for example a pure mortal player decides he wants to change his character into a red court infested, just let him get bitten and you're good to go (as long as there is enough refresh, of course).

As your characters get deeper involved with the world they learn more about how it works. It is certainly a much simpler approach than trying to get 12 novels into their heads in a  few sentences.

Or get them to read the books.

You can't dodge bullets with athletics?, I thought Atheletics was the only thing you could use to defend against bullets.  I suppose I am going to have to start parrying bullets with my unbreakable sword.

What I meant was: the athletics roll does not mean "Oh shit, there is a bullet coming my way, I better dodge before I get hit". It is meant to represent how much you move in a fight, how good you are at making yourself hard to hit, that sort of thing. Yes, in the end you dodge using athletics, but the actual matrix-style dodge is not what that roll represents.

The thread lives!!!

ahm anyways...

Not really, but he grows on you.

nice one 

I like the Mycomancer idea, would fit perfectly as the evil twin version to the chloromancer, I think. I tend to create evil versions of the characters for them to fight during a game, if I happen to be the GM. It tends to give each player a time to shine, when "their" villain is up. Plus less need to pull up lots of nameless NPCs to keep 'em busy.

I've been thinking about a stunt for the chloromancer, maybe you can help me out there.
She is going to have an aspect like "at natures pace", which basically describes her use of the art: slow but powerful and in line with the seasons.
To reflect that even better I thought about giving her a stunt that would give her a bonus of +1 to the power of spells to let plants grow in spring and summer and +1 to the power of spells to let any vegetation wither in fall and winter and have a -1 on the adverse type of spells.
Then I thought, that this could also be done by the aspect described above, collecting compels anytime you try casting a spell that does not fit the season and in return using those to boost the spells that do fit.

First, you need to allocate power for the base effect (usually around 3).  Then, you want time.  As your base time will be '1 day', going up 13 steps on the time chart (assuming I've counted right) to 'several mortal lifetimes' adds another 13 complexity.  Then at least 2 complexity to effect a single zone.  So you are only looking at complexity 18, +2 for every zone after the first.

Well that would be a spell to have a zone grow in a day, I wanted it to grow in a matter of minutes. You could prepare stuff like special seeds etc. to get the complexity and once you need it to go it would only take you like 15 minutes to pull it of.

Channeling/Ritual would keep the refresh down.  Typically, catches are reserved for sponsored magic (like Fae), so rely on compels to make situations interesting.

The idea was for this character to be a focused practitioner, so it definitely is channeling and ritual. I don't think updating at any time would fit the characters theme, so she would probably just get refinement for more focus and enchanted item slots.
I think I like focused practitioners better for that particular reason. They are only good at a single type of spells, but those they do with a lot more style than your average White Council Wizard, I think. Also got a sartoryomncer in the stables, sort of an assassin with a knack for spells involving clothes (sort of a Binder type, walking the line of the lawbreaker, never crossing it). You can't do much if your clothes block your movement. Of course you can easily get around this if you know what you're up against, but... how do you explain that one to the cops? 

should stop babbling on now. need sleep...