I have to chime in that I am totally against dice fudging or even stat fudging and I never do it when I DM. It makes me feel like the player's actions never really matter. If they figure out a way to kill a boss way too quick, then they should be rewarded not punished.
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My only problem here would come in the example of something where you wind up in a clearly suboptimal outcome. Typically you don't want to steal success, but you may want to cushion failure.
There are usually better ways to do this in narrative, but if you can't find them it's probably better to pull a punch than kill a whole party.
You make a good point. I usually give each player one "get out of jail free card" that if lady luck just really isn't kind and a serious fluke of luck would kill them. These are usually needed more at lower levels. However, if they burn their once chance, they better get cautious or more careful.
I do like that you said that it is usually better to do it in narrative rather than through fudging. Plot complications rather than TPKs. After all, death is merely an inconvenience in many fantasy games.
If somebody is emotionally invested in a character, I usually find a narrative way to bring them back from death. In a past game, I lost 3 of the 5 party members to shadows (Pathfinder). The castle they were exploring had a bunch of shadows pantomiming a royal court in the throne room. There were probably about 20-30 shadows on the field. They were supposed to sneak by, get the artifact and remove the curse from the castle. Before I even realized what they were doing, the AOE heavy and at the time flying party decided to unleash hell from above and kill the shadows. After all the shadows were only CR 3. Each and every one of them forgot that shadows could fly or didn't think to ask. I think they were assuming since the shadows were pretending to be human they would be limited by the same mobility. So they flew up and were swarmed by shadows, who when their touch attack deals strength damage they can be deadly to even 10th level characters.
After escaping and healing up, the two surviving players gathered up some temporary PCs and had a grand adventure to rescue their friends from the shadow dimension. Totally unplanned, but made for a great story even years afterwards.