Needing to fudge dice usually means the rules have failed.
A common trope is “I don’t want my PC to die!”. Fine. Reasonable. You can have rules about that. Look at how Fate handles “concede” and getting taken out. Look at how DND does jack shit.
Many games also have a fail forward mechanic. You don’t need to fudge their check if the rules have mechanics for “if you really want to succeed but luck isn’t on your side, here’s what you can pay to succeed”
Rules don’t have to fail to fudge dice. You do it to curate the experience - the dice give us the illlusion of fairness but that’s about it. Just because we expect them to roll somewhere in the averages doesn’t mean a common bandit won’t roll four crits in a single encounter or one of your playera won’t have a session where they cannot roll above 6.
Needing to fudge dice usually means the rules have failed.
A common trope is “I don’t want my PC to die!”. Fine. Reasonable. You can have rules about that. Look at how Fate handles “concede” and getting taken out. Look at how DND does jack shit.
Many games also have a fail forward mechanic. You don’t need to fudge their check if the rules have mechanics for “if you really want to succeed but luck isn’t on your side, here’s what you can pay to succeed”
DND kind of sucks.
Rules don’t have to fail to fudge dice. You do it to curate the experience - the dice give us the illlusion of fairness but that’s about it. Just because we expect them to roll somewhere in the averages doesn’t mean a common bandit won’t roll four crits in a single encounter or one of your playera won’t have a session where they cannot roll above 6.