I use a screen. I like 'em. I don't like having the players reading my encouner notes upside-down.
For those of you who don't use screens, how well does your group handle metagaming? Because, to be honest, in a perfect world, I'd roll just about everything myself and just tell the players what happens. As a DM, I find myself getting annoyed when the start saying "But there's no way he could have hit me!" or, somewhat passive-aggressively, "Musta been a good roll..." each time I hit. Sometimes I roll well. Sometimes, though, the party doesn't know that their enemy can see through illusions, and is ignoring the Blur or Displacement -- or that their Ring of Protection has been temporarily disabled by magic in the room. That kind of stuff.
On the flip side, anyone should, in fairness, know how hard something is to hit after one or two rounds of combat against it. In real life, you'd be able to figure out if you were missing because it was nimble or because it has scales or because invisible pixies are pulling your sword off to the left before it can hit...
So it's a give-and-take.
For those of you who don't use screens, how well does your group handle metagaming? Because, to be honest, in a perfect world, I'd roll just about everything myself and just tell the players what happens. As a DM, I find myself getting annoyed when the start saying "But there's no way he could have hit me!" or, somewhat passive-aggressively, "Musta been a good roll..." each time I hit. Sometimes I roll well. Sometimes, though, the party doesn't know that their enemy can see through illusions, and is ignoring the Blur or Displacement -- or that their Ring of Protection has been temporarily disabled by magic in the room. That kind of stuff.
On the flip side, anyone should, in fairness, know how hard something is to hit after one or two rounds of combat against it. In real life, you'd be able to figure out if you were missing because it was nimble or because it has scales or because invisible pixies are pulling your sword off to the left before it can hit...
So it's a give-and-take.