So, Fudging is a blight on GMkind everywhere, because nobody calls it out for what it is:
No, not "cheating".
It's a failure of a GM to be able to determine if a roll is necessary, as they are unwilling or unable to adjudicate how that roll resolves in all cases. This is a baseline failure of GMing as a whole. It should basically be the first thing you learn as a GM - when to call for a roll and when to not call for a roll.
And this is all very easy to figure out if you implement player facing rolls. Here's how it works:
Players have dice, not pools. Monsters have pools, not dice. So for example a suit of armor will make a NPC have a AC of 14, but for a PC it will give +4 to their defense roll. Monsters therefore don't actually have attack rolls, instead PCs roll defense against 10+the monster's HD to avoid being hit. This culminates with Hit Dice. Monsters have their average HD roll in HP (save special cases like Dragons where this shit is all ironed out). Players keep their HD unrolled until they take a hit. Then they roll to soak the damage. If a player takes 4 damage and rolls 4 HD to soak, rolling 5, 5, 2, 1, depending on the tone you want to set you can have them use top-rolled dice to soak first (meaning the 4 damage bump the 5 and no HD are lost) or bottom-rolled dice to soak first (meaning the 4 damage bump the 2 and 1, and 2 HD are lost).
Done. Fudging cured, probably with a lot of trial and error.
