A grade should credit understanding.
Define the concepts and partial-credit rules before grading. Credit what the work demonstrates. Course staff can decide separately whether to curve the resulting distribution.
What the curve costs.
A forced curve can separate students over small score differences even when both demonstrated the required understanding. Criterion-based grading records what each student earned first.
Grading cannot recover information that the assessment never elicited. The assignment still has to test the understanding the course cares about.