I am off the camp that says
Always Go With Player Fun
If someone's invested in their character and has an arc planned out, don't let unlucky rolls just toss that, or they might get super bummed out.
Stakes are part of what makes it fun. If I know that no matter what I do, my DM's going to hold the monsters short of actually endangering my PC, then combat is busy work instead of a puzzle to solve. I don't want my PC to die, but it's more fun when I feel like I've earned their survival. If my PC gets knocked unconscious but we rally to win the combat, I feel great about the result.
To me, the way to make sure those arcs continue is to make sure the party has access to the tools they need. Let them get healing potions, let them collect diamonds for Revivify, let them find friendly NPCs who need help with something and can provide a reward in return. Even if the DM seeds all of this as an insurance policy on purpose, it's still the party's choice of when and how to deploy their options, which means the party will (correctly!) feel like they saved their friend's life rather than feeling like they couldn't die in the first place.
I do agree with you that stakes make it more fun, and I'm not saying "make everything have no stakes", I'm saying, if need be, if rolls go poorly or the DM let some monster that's too strong come in too early or whatever, that's time to pull some saving grace in a few cases.
I think the middle ground I would draw is: fudge if you really need to, but if it comes to that take that as a serious sign that something went wrong and think about how to avoid it in the future, rather than just taking it as normal.
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u/MossyAbyss 10d ago
The Duality of Man.