The Joy of Crafting

[tymora]

That never happens in combat.

Maybe you can think of synths as equi-level "Imps" with their random one-shot kills? They can misfire it, they can miss it or you can interrupt it but it hits like a truck when it does...

Would combat be fun if every monster does the same thing every fight? (Well I suppose most mobs actually do until they improve the AI)
E.g 1st attack swing, 2nd attack kick, 3rd attack tail...repeat until dead.

While the variation of initial risk may be too dramatic, I don't think it should be done away completely with because 100% predictability is boring. If they scale the variation according to level difference, it should be good enough.