I hate how this card says it "flattens" its target but does not specifically say the target is prone. What would you say?

Two boons inflicts the Staggered condition, btw.

I would rule that they are knocked on there aris for sure.....i wouldn't even let the argument happen with my players

Oh Romus! Good that you put out this subject, I wanted to do it long ago, but I was too lazy!

I just find Devastating swing, together with Trolls and giants (18 and 20 wounds is just ridiculous) a big calamity! First I buffed the wound treshold of trolls and giants back to their values in second edition, secondly trolls always carry a hand weapon, a club, a tree branch, something! so no more DR5, typically their hand weapons have DR7 (they are just huge compared to the size of a man). And last but not least in my games Devastating swing has

comet: Strike for normal damage all engaged opponents.

The result is that Troll and Giants are again a nice challange to PC parties.

So in my opinion, all that you can do to buff this creatures will be well done.

I have this house rule for prone that really works well without being too powerful:

Prone / knocked down
When you get knocked down you have to use the lowest possible initiative
token for your next action. you will have two misfortune dice on your
next attack even if you use a maneuver to get up before you attack

There are some other instances in the core rules where common terminology was not used: knocked-out, unconscious, passed-out, etc. In fact, the first index that I wrote was partially to poke fun at all the inconsistencies of such things.

In this case not using the term "prone" as well as not even having a condition for prone gives rise to unnecessary confusion. Of course, this edition is trying to avoid having too many definitions (specifically D&D-like-AoO-charts), however the sheer number of conditions already in existence demonstrate the schism between reality and 'fantasy' in the need for such things

jh