OK, I've looked through some playtest characters and reports and I've noticed that it seems that (at least from that limited evidence) that starting characters have five stunts pretty much across the board. As far as I can tell, mundane stunts seem to reduce your Fate point refresh rate by one each while for supernatural stunts, almost all of them seem to reduce the refresh rate by one except for a few that reduce the refresh rate by 2. As a result, pretty much all of the mundane playtest characters have a refresh of 5 while the supernatural ones have a refresh of 4, which is a pretty tiny difference.
Now I was really liking the mechanical implementation of supernatural characters having a lot of raw power and then giving more flexibility for the mundane characters (they can ignore compels much more easily) since it seems like an awesome way to balance mundane and supernatural characters power-wise while at the same time reinforcing a lot of the flavor of the novels (mortals have free will while magic creatures act according to their natures) with game mechanics. This also allows some kind of magical critter to be DAMN powerful when the PCs fight it without it being unbalancingly powerful if a PC plays it (since the low refresh rate drawback is much more of an issue in long-term play than over the course of just one fight). But if the difference is just 5 refresh vs. 4 refresh then isn't a lot of this distinction diluted?
I don't know what the Dresden character advancement rules are like, but won't completely non-magical characters end up with pretty damn low refreshes after a while?
A few possible reasons for this I could see:
A. Power balance: most supernatural Stunts aren't any more powerful than the mundane stunts, so having them have different effects on your refresh rate would be unbalancing.
B. In flavor terms a highly trained mundane character is very set in their ways, much in the same way that Harry becomes (same restaurant, same clothes, etc. etc.).
C. Allows for more distinction between the more minor powers the PCs get (which cause relatively minor reductions in the refresh rate) and the wizz-bang powers the most powerful NPCs get (which cause a much bigger hit to the refresh rate and thereby put themselves out of the reach of the PCs).
I am on the right track? Unless I'm missing something, (which I probably am) this still kind of rubs me the wrong way since I'd like to see a bit more mechanical distinction between the mundanes and the supernaturals than a one point difference in the Fate point refresh rate.