Another question - which level of Fists chacaters should have ta fight like this characters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJMHd7-LL1k

Great or Superb Fists seems pretty reasonable. Skill levels are pretty subjective, and don't try to map closely to real world levels of proficiency like World of Darkness does.

So my players went through a portal into the Nevernever from Bell Rock in Sedona.

For those not in the know, Sedona's got this whole energy vortexes thing going on - trees grow weirdly, people talk about weird feelings, etc. Of course we decided in chronicle creation that these energy vortexes had some real power that was being harnessed by culty new age types. But we never really decided much about that power - we just figured "ley lines" or whatever.

Anyone have an ideas on what part of the Nevernever they might end up in going through to the other side? Want to help me make up some stuff? Double points if you can incorporate local Native American (Yavapai and Apache) mythology.

I've never been super firm on the feel of the stuff in the Nevernever outside of the various faerie lands. I know Faerie is where you typically end up if you just randomly open up a portal, but it seems a place with powerful ley lines is more likely than most places to not end up in Faerie.

For the curious, here's a link to some info on the Sedona energy vortes: http://www.lovesedona.com/01.htm
Here's what they have to say about the Bell Mountain vortex specifically:
"Bell Rock Vortex.
Bell Rock is located on Hwy 179, just north of the Village of Oak Creek (5 miles south of the junction of Hwy 89A and 179). Its distinct shape makes it easy to spot, and parking and trails are clearly visible. You will notice that the energy is strong as soon as you get out of your car. You don't have to do any climbing to feel the energy at this vortex. Notice the twisted Juniper trees all over Bell Rock. The energy at this vortex is very powerful and strengthens all three parts: the masculine side, the feminine side, and the balance."

I've found Pure Mortals can often dominate in anything where it comes down to a contest of dice. If they're at all combat oriented, they're going to be the ones taking down the big bads half the time.

Wizards tend to dominate more in the investigation/preparation phase, since they can do things mortals can't even attempt.

A wizard with Superb discipline and Great Conviction can easily toss out like 5-10 stress against someone with, say, a Great defense roll.

I've seen a vanilla human with Superb Fists or Weapons toss out the same or significantly higher during big confrontations with a baddie. Often the baddie has an Aspect or two that can be invoked by midway through a fight, a combat oriented-mortal has a few Aspects they can probably invoke, the environment might have one, etc. And he's got the fate points to do that a couple of times sometimes.

Think of it this way - depending on your build for a wizard, he might have a bonus of like 4-10 on top of his attack roll (his Conviction in Power, plus his Power bonus and control bonus), that lasts for as long as his stress does. The pure mortal has like a 0-3 (weapon bonus), but if he's got, say 10 Fate points (it seems that mortals are reluctant to spend as much on stunts as the book says they should), that's +20 worth of bonuses he can spend as a one time boost - usually not more than +10 at a time, but it isn't hard at all in big fights to come up with 5 Aspects to invoke.

Pure Mortals will never make up for the lack of powers with stunts. Stunts help a bit, but what really evens the playing field is all the refresh they didn't spend on Powers, with that extra +2 bonus on top. Having a fat stack of fate chips means that if you pick your moments right, you'll really shine because you really can't fail at something if you've got Aspects you can relate to it. You aren't going to be consistently awesome all the time, but it does mean you'll be able to pick when you're amazingly awesome.

Question #2: The character's "resting form" (Mentioned in Question #1.) uses the Physical Immunity Power (YS pg 186) at a whopping -8 Refresh, however, this is mitigated by attaching The Catch (YS pg 185). The Catch is Cold Iron as he is a Changeling with Fetch heritage. Since he is protected from everything except something specific he gets a +0. Then, since The Catch is something anyone could reasonably access (cold iron) he gets a +2. And finally, since pretty much anyone with knowledge of the supernatural would know a child of fae is weak to cold iron he gets another +2. This means he is able to take the Physical Immunity of -8 Refresh at the cost of -4 Refresh. His Modular Abilities has just enough to cover this. He sometimes switches to something like Inhuman Strength (YS pg 183) and Supernatural Toughness (YS pg 186) for a total of -6 Refresh. When doing something like this we've been playing it where The Catch only gives him a +3 Refresh discount (Since Catches cannot reduce the total cost of your Toughness Powers below -1 Refresh.). And if he was to take something like Inhuman Speed and Inhuman Strength he'd get no Catch discount at all as he has no Toughness Powers taken at that time. All of this seems to be how it should be played, but I wanted to make doubly sure.

So what is this resting form of his that has Physical Immunity?

Are you just letting him declare he's shifting into "Form of look like what I normally do except I'm immune to harm", "Form of Looking like I normally do, except strong and fast", etc?

If you treat these Powers as purely mechanics based, you'll run into big problems. Hero and GURPS can handle that, but that's not really what Dresden Files is designed for.

Make him start by picking what form he is going into, and then tell him where his Modular Abilities go. You don't have to be draconian about it, and for True Shapeshifting you can probably let him make up forms that don't exist in nature/supernature ("I want to change into a troll-like creature but also covered in spikes!"), but the powers taken and skill shuffle that happens should be dictate by the form. The powers should probably also relate pretty strongly to the physical form taken (so you shouldn't be picking up powers like Seelie Magic or Domination or whatever just because you're shifting into a shape that has them, because those powers don't really come from the shape).

So he can say "I want to shift into being a troll", and then you can tell him either a) what Powers he gets as a Troll and what skill shuffles he should do, or b) that he doesn't have enough refresh in modular abilities to be a troll.

Anyway, like I said, you don't have to be draconian about it and he can certainly suggest what powers and skills a given form should have. But start with the narrative - what form is he assuming? - and have the mechanics flow from that.

I bet you that solves 9/10ths of your problems right there, if only because shapes that have high level of physical powers tend to be pretty bloody obvious.

What I've never understood is how come the European Council ended up dominant. If wizards are roughly equally distributed as a proportion of population everywhere, there should have been more wizards in China, so why didn't the Chinese wizard organization absorb the European one rather than vice versa?

My theory is that although the White Council is skewed eurocentric, so is our view of Wizards in general. I think it entirely possible that perhaps Chinese wizards view the White Council sort of like the UN - big and important, but ultimately kind of hollow and meaningless unless you're dealing with really world-wide threats (and even then, those will get dealt more by individuals taking action the White Council approves only retroactively). It wouldn't surprise me were there other large organizations of Wizards in some non-Western countries that only occasionally let their internal politics bubble up to the level of the White Council. You might have hundreds of Wizard-level practitioners who never even bother with the White Council tests because they're more concerned with their regional organizations than the White Council.

Much like how I think most Americans would agree the UN has greater worldwide scope than the USA, but Americans are certainly generally more worried about what happens in the White House, House, and Senate than they are with what happens in the UN Security Council and the General Assembly. Or more worried about the FBI than INTERPOL (I know INTERPOL isn't a UN organization ).

The "on fire" one is probably a bad example, but it really doesn't too much work to come up with plenty of examples where having multiple effects with one action follows both fiction logic and most player's intuitive understanding. Shooting down individual examples can keep one occupied for a long time, but one circles back to it eventually.

I could be totally out to lunch on this, but for some reason I'd come to the conclusion that the prohibition against lying only applies to the Sidhe. So the Sidhe can't lie at all (although boy can they evade). But Toot-Toot or other lesser Fae? Lying is within their power.

Unless you make them say something three times. In which case, anything they say three time has to be true. Basically, the Sidhe are just under greater restriction there - lesser Fae can lie twice, the Sidhe can't lie at all.

I'm not sure what caused me to come to this conclusion, except possibly that "why have the three times thing if the Fae can't lie in the first place?"

Do we know from the books how sensitive Changeling powers are to cold iron? Obviously, it cuts through fae protections like a hot knife through butter. But can a Changeling with supernatural strength use their strength to lift an iron bar? Will wearing chainmail stop a changeling from using Incite Emotion on you?

What I'm most concerned about is - can you use Glamours on iron or someone carrying it? Can I use it to disguise my trust six-shooter? Can I use it on myself if I'm carrying said trust six-shooter? What about if I'm just carrying a small amount of steel like the button on my pants?

I know mechanically most of these are just covered by Compels, but I'm hoping you guys can remind me on the limitations of such so far as we know from the books? I've got a Changeling who makes heavy, heavy use of her Lesser Glamours, veiling the group pretty much all the time (and why not? it is a -2 refresh power, that says "use it all the time" to me!). And I'm wondering how heavily she should be limited by the whole cold iron thing.