You mean having an interesting character is better than having a powerful character? 

I know right?  Crazy talk!  Though obviously having both is ideal.  When I started I told my players to think up a character concept and Roth idea of what the character can do before I even explained the game mechanics in full.  Then we figured out what powers and stats fit the idea the best.

The wresteling analogy is flawed.  We aren't talking about two people duking it out.  This is more like the difference between trying to jump over a 5 foot chain link fence, and trying to jump over a 15 foot brick wall.  It's certainly possible to scale a 15 foot wall, bit it requires an entirely different approach.  And I agree with the notion that narrative flavoring should not give mechanical benefit.  Remember by the RAW a block is a block is a block.  There's mechanically no difference between a giant wall of fire as a block, or an invisible shield as a block.

Now you can of course make an arguement for hiding block strength results, though I'm roundly against that for a multitude of reasons.  The first being it's an arbitrary decision to hide roll results of one specific mechanic.  Second it implies it's not okay for the players to know OoC information, but it's perfectly fine for the GM.  This not only facilitates, but encourages adversarial behavior between GM and players, and downright shady behavior with the wrong kind of GM.

Making exceptions, hiding roll results, and making the game generally more convoluted with no real rules to back it up, all for the sake of narration that likely isn't even plot relevant?  It just doesn't sit well with me personally. 

Except of course not telling players things like this their characters are unaware of.

Am I the only one who does this? I'd rather thought it was the norm...

I can't say if it's the norm or not, but I don't.  I try and maintain the same level of transparancy with my players as they have to with me.  With Fate even more so than other systems, given the collaborative nature of the game.  That and I know a few roleplayers who would probably resent a GM for hiding their roll results if it prevented them from making an informed decision haha.

Wizards have to do a Lore check before they can counterspell anything--including blocks. So wizards, who know magic inside and out, do not automatically know the strength of a spell they're up against. Why would an untrained vampire know exactly how strong a wizard's block is relative to his own strength?
That's rather the point--there is no way for them to know. Your players don't find out an enemy's defense roll until they attack and the enemy defends, right?
I see it the opposite. That knowing the total block strength is something the players may know, and the characters don't. So letting all the characters automatically know the power of each spell is metagaming. It's a character benefiting from the knowledge the player has that the character has no way of knowing.
And as I have said, roleplaying is as much part of the game as mechanics. In the Dresden system, roleplaying is part of the mechanics.
Sophisticated? No. I'm just saying that the game, being a roleplaying game, is meant to have the characters stay in character and their actions make sense. Having your vampires not know things that a vampire wouldn't logically know isn't "stupid," it's in character.

Because hey, in real life, and in the books, characters do not always make the most intelligent decisions. So yes, characters not always making the most optimal choice in the heat of battle is more "accurate" than everyone knowing things they shouldn't have any way to tell and acting with the utmost efficiency with every actions.

I mean, look at the books. Enemies are shooting, clawing, and blasting at Harry's shield spells constantly. By your argument, none of them should ever take a shot at him because they know his shield is stronger than their ability to attack. But that doesn't happen. Enemies only get a sense for the other side's abilities when they test them.

If a wizard has to make a lore check to figure out the strength of a spell to counterspell it, I see no reason at all that untrained characters should automatically be able to look at a shield spell and instantly and accurately determine exactly how strong it is.

The problem with this line of thought really has nothing to do with mechanics versus roleplaying, or even with this game itself.  The problem is that it ignores human psychology.  Once you learn something, you can't forcibly unlearn it.  Play a game of chess by yourself and you will subconsciously begin to favor one side over the other. 

This isn't something that can be roleplayed away.  It's hard-wired human thought process. 

It's also already been mentioned that outside of compels, there's NO way to enforce this kind of thinking onto the players without turning into GM Dictator.  A GM can say "well your character doesn't know the guy is behind a magic shield" till they turn blue.  A playing can still say "okay I don't know that.  I'm still not attacking him because I get to choose who my player attacks."

How can people forget this? When I was reading YS for the first time and found concessions I was like "Oh! Hey! Now they won't be able to kill every NPC with a name!"

Haha you would be surprised.  I've seen at least a couple threads about people asking "how to I make a recurring villain who doesn't get killed the second he is in a scene?" or "my players killed my long-term villain earlier than they were supposed to.  What do I do!?". xD

Our group handles it like this: we pick a timeline and a place. Anything that happened up till then is considered canon unless all involved agree on an alternative outcome. From that point on, the PCs actions may affect the storyline any way possible.

In my experience, those concessions need to offer substantial benefits or blackmail for the players to actually agree. Personally, I (as a player) prefer to kill off anyone who might be a potential recurring enemy later on.

That is exactly why concessions are so important.  Remember that all parties involved have to agree on the outcome of a concession.  If the GM flat out says killing the character is off the table due to future plot development, then that's pretty much it.  The group has to come up with some other outcome.  At that point the GM is basically bribing the players to let the npc live.  A smart group will jump at that, as killing off an npc in such a way typically just means the GM creates a new npc to take it's place.

Apologies, then. More I meant they were making a very narrow argument--saying that the blocks are weak in the situation of only blocking yourself when the enemies are apparently aware of all the in-game math and acting in perfect concert accordingly, which really isn't how either side of the fight would realistically act.
Real quick, what does the "r" in "DFRPG" stand for again?

I'm saying that roleplaying should be as much of a concern as rolling dice. For characters and the GM. You wouldn't let your players capitalize on knowledge they have but that the characters couldn't, right? So why should their opposition get that benefit?
And how, pray tell, can the vampires tell that they won't be able to hurt someone? A vampire during melee isn't going to think, "Okay, that's a 6-shift block, and my Fists skill is only 3, so statistically speaking I have very little chance of getting through it." A vampire during melee is thinking, "If I smack it hard enough, I can get through that wimpy wizard's shield!"

As you yourself have said numerous times, the mechanics are an abstract--Harry throwing up a 4-shift shield probably looks almost exactly the same as Harry putting up an 8-shift shield. So how, exactly, are the non-mage members of the opposition exactly calculating his spell power in such a way as to predict who they have a reasonable chance of attacking? A vampire, untrained in magic, shouldn't have any idea of a shield's strength until he's tried to get through it.

I mainly want to address "You wouldn't let your players capitalize on knowledge they have but that the characters couldn't, right? So why should their opposition get that benefit?"

in short, I do let them.  I know the information, they know the information.  Everyone pretending they don't just leads to a stilted game.  This is one of the unavoidable issues of player to character disconnect.  The only two options are to deliberatly hamstring yourself, or just let everyone play with the information that's on the table.  I personally prefer the latter, as there's still plenty of x-factors by way of declairations and compels on both sides.

The second issue I have with it is it treads on dangerously thin ice.  It's just shy of a GM dictating exactly what sort of actions a player can and cannot do.  If a GM tried to tell me I HAVE to attack the wizard behind an 8 shift shield I know I won't break, he better have a damn good compel in mind.  Having an npc do nothing put up a shield is not justification to force the players to attack them.

Where is this established in Summer Knight? I think I missed something here. I will mention that the whole idea of using water in magic is a concept that even confuses Harry, but supposedly Bob has some big, confusing explanation. My interpretation is that technomancy would use technology in much the same way. Technology would cease working the way it should, and the mage would be able to do anything with it that he understands as being possible with technology, albiet on a much more powerful level.

That said, a technomancer would admittedly go a long way toward ruining the mood and theme most people would be after running a DF game, and I'd probably disallow a PC from those abilities (although not necessarily an NPC)

When Harry finds out Grum is immune to fire magic (or was it all magic?), so proceeds to light him on fire using "plain old vanilla fire".  This shows that on some level that normal fire and magical fire are not exactly the same.  It's fair to assume the same of all elements conjured with magic.