Well, with regards to the speed deal, it's because I'm very unfamiliar with the FATE system. I've been playing DnD mostly, and lets just say my old DM really loved his Beholders and generally making the combat impossible unless his DMNPC was fighting with us. (God I hate Shardminds thanks to that...) I guess I'm a bit used to desperately building up optimized builds to contend with that sort of thing :S
That's a very common story. Kind of where I come from myself. Fate is a lot less like that. If a conflict goes bad, you always have the option to concede. It means that you willingly lose the fight, but you get to dictate how that happens. So for example you lose the MacGuffin but get away with your life. The villain gets away, but he doesn't kill your friends. And so on. You need to offer a concession before dice are rolled though. Once they are in the air, the current action needs to be resolved, before you can offer a concession.
Maybe a word to the dice system first: You always roll 4DF or 4 Fate dice. A Fate dice has 2 sides with a "+", 2 sides with a "-" and 2 sides which are blank. That means on a roll, you can get anything from -4 to +4, though it's most likely to get something around 0. You add the result of the dice to the skill you are using, and that's your result. The number is often called "shifts", as in "one shift up the ladder". So if you have a skill of 3 and roll +,+,-,O your end result would be 3+1+1-1=4.
Okay, so I guess I'm picking up Evocation as my number one important skill, and Thaumaturgy as a second. I take it abilities like the Sight, Soul Gaze and Hexing technology into oblivion also require refresh? Also since we're supposed to make-up our own spells, anyone have any of their own to share? I'm a little intimidated at the prospect, caught myself trying to convert Swordmage skills from 4ed into Dresden spells. Though I'd love an explanation into the magic system, and also the stress system too. I sort of think I understood it when I re-read Fool's Moon and Dresden spent the last part of the book with that crippling mental block on his magic, I'm assuming it's an example of a major consequence from overusing magic/too much mental stress? I'm not sure. 
For magic in general, there are 3 important skills: Discipline, Conviction and Lore. For evocation, lore is a bit less important.
When you cast a spell, you decide on a number of shifts the spell is supposed to have in power. Your Conviction is important here. If the spells power is equal or less than your conviction, you take 1 shift of mental stress as casting stress when you cast a spell. Every shift above that adds 1 additional shift.
Example: Say you have conviction of 4 and want to cast a 5 shift spell. That's 2 shifts of mental stress, 1 up to 4 and 1 for the 5.
Your mental stress track with conviction 4 looks like this: OOOO
Since you take 2 shifts of mental stress for this spell, it looks like this afterwards: OXOO
Next comes controlling the spell. That involves rolling your discipline. You need to roll equal or higher than the power you announced to completely control the spell. If you do, the spell is a success, and your target must defend against what you rolled on your discipline roll, since it is simultaneously your attack roll.
If you fall short, you've got 2 options: Backlash and Fallout. In both cases, you deal with the overrunning magic. Backlash means that you take the number of shifts you didn't control as stress, either mental or physical, your choice at the time. Doing so lets the spell go off as planned. Or you release the excess energy into the air, that's called fallout. It's usually done by using the excess shifts as an additional spell that's in some way detrimental to the character.
So say you rolled a 3 on your discipline roll of the spell above, which kind of sucks. It means you are 2 shifts short of the power. You could take it as mental stress, in which case your mental stress would look like this: OXXO
That's because your second stress box is already full, so the stress rolls up. Your physical stress track is still clear at this time, so you know what to do there.
You can take specializations and focus items to increase your control (the discipline roll) or power (conviction for determining casting stress).
If the above was an attack spell, it would be a 3 shift attack (meaning the target has to roll higher than 3 to avoid it) with a weapon:5 spell (the spells power). The weapon rating gets added to the number of stress you inflict, if you hit the target. Say your target rolls a 2. That means you hit for 3-2=1 and add 5 to that for the weapon, the target takes a 6 shift hit. Since a stress track (without powers) is only 4 boxes long at maximum, the target has to take a consequence. Everyone has 3 consequences, a mild (2), moderate (4) and severe (6) one. The numbers are the amount of stress they take off the attack. You name the consequence in an appropriate way. Since we just attacked with a fireball, we could take a mild consequence of "mild burns" and take the remaining 4 shifts as stress. Once a character can't (or won't) take any more stress, they are taken out and can no longer participate in the current conflict. Which would have happened to your target, had he not taken a consequence. Since they heal very slowly, it's important to ration them for when you really need them. Sometimes it's better to cut your losses and get the hell out of a fight.
Enchanted Item 101 please @_@
Certainly. Over all, it's not too complicated. Basically, you can store spells in them, that you don't need to pay casting stress for using.
When taking evocation, you get 2 focus item slots, you can buy additional ones with refresh (via the refinement power). 1 focus item slot can be exchanged for 2 enchanted item slots. Which are what we will work with right now. Other than evocation, enchanted items power is based off Lore. Your enchanted items can only store power equal to or less than your Lore.
So if you've go a lore of 3, any spell in an enchanted item would be power:3. You can add an additional enchanted item slot to an item to increase the power by 1, but it can't exceed double your Lore.
Say we want to create an item that acts as a shield. A coat that protects you from attacks. Since it protects you, it's a block, and since we don't want to do anything else with it, it's a 3 shift block that you can use once per session. You can add additional uses per session by adding enchanted item slots again. 1 additional enchanted item slot gives you 2 more uses per session.
An enchanted item can not hold more item slots than your Lore.
When using the item, you do so just as you would do anything else. I personally allow enchanted items with blocks to be used retroactively (so someone attacks you, you botch your defense roll, now you use your enchanted item), but others might not like it. Again, something to ask your GM.
Enchanted items with attack spells stored are basically weapons that you can use with a predetermined skill. As long as you have a good justification for it, that can be pretty much any skill. You can simply default to discipline, of course. When using an item like that, you roll your skill as an attack roll, but everything concerning the spell, like casting stress and control, is already dealt with by the item.
And lastly, if you have no more uses per session left for an item, you can spend one shift of mental stress to use it again. It can be a neat little trick, because enchanted items are quite save to use, since they can't cause backlash.
No worries though, I'm not planning on making her too black or emo. Rather, more of a Piccolo Jr as of the beginning of DBZ. Fearsome, perhaps intimidating and stand-offish, but never outright bad. Like, someone who acts like they don't care, but ultimately really comes through. Bad girl with a heart of gold, so to speak.
I'm just trying to come up with a few things so when I do go to the session I have some rough idea what I'm doing...as it's only been three hours since I found out there was a Dresden files rpg .-.
Just wanted to mention it, like I said, I've seen what the wrong kind of character can do to a game.
I hope I didn't overwhelm you. The magic system is a bit complicated. If something is unclear, feel free to ask.
