Desdichado
Hero
It is the GM's job to deliver the best experience to all the players (including himself) that he can. Usually, that means letting the results of the dice speak for themselves. But occasionally... it doesn't.Are you saying that all the other stories the dice could have told are inferior? I trust my judgement as a story teller over a million monkeys at a million typewriters.
In my opinion, anyone who enforces strict dice interpretation, even when clearly the results are suboptimal for the experience of all the players at the game, for whatever reason is trading good GMing for some kind of moral high ground. And taking moral high ground over a well-run game is a poor consolation prize.
Knowing when you can get away with fudging, and most importantly when it really needs to be done is a key GM skill, just like many other key GM skills, and a GM that lacks that skill can only ever be so good--but never great. But part of that is reading his group, and knowing when it will work, and knowing how they'll react to what's happening, and knowing how up-front vs discrete he needs to be about his fudging. It's something that rarely works out for the best if its done openly or frequently; in my experience and opinion, it should almost never be revealed to the players that you're doing it. And also, to pull that off, you need to develop the knack of figuring out when to resolve things without rolling dice if you aren't willing to let chance decide what happens.
And again; it's much easier (and aesthetically superior, IMO) to fudge stuff other than the dice rolls. If you need a certain combat to be slightly less deadly, throttle back on the To Hit or Damage modifiers, or the Saving Throw modifiers, or the hit points of the opponents, rather than just ignore the dice rolls.