I recently took Shield Slam with my rather shield focused Viking. If you knock somebody into a wall or other solid surface with Shield Slam they fall prone. In my first session with the feat a few situations came up where I knocked flying foes into walls. Since you can't trip flying foes we sort of assumed that you just can't knock them prone in general. I'm not sure if that's 100% true though, and I wonder what other folks think.
The way I'd rule it is, you'd knock them into a wall, and they'd slide down the lenght of it, ending prone but taking no falling damage.
For what it's worth, we were all at around ground level. I guess the monsters were just hovering a little off the ground.
If one did manage to knock a flying creature prone I wonder if it would suffer an AoO for getting back up or if it could just fly up off the ground without any trouble. I suppose that the same question might apply to creatures which can fly but happened to be on the ground when something tripped them or otherwise knocked them prone.
On a slightly different note, I wonder if somebody you push off the edge of a cliff would fall immediately or move out whatever distance you pushed them and then fall. Depending on the answer Shield Slam might be pretty good at knocking foes into pits. Unfortunately our party doesn't have anybody who will gain the Pit spells, so I'm more curious than concerned.
After searching around a little I found the following rule under the Fly skill:
"Collision While Flying: If you are using wings to fly and you collide with an object equal to your size or larger, you must immediately make a DC 25 Fly check to avoid plummeting to the ground, taking the appropriate falling damage."
The DM and I agree that might be relevant and will probably go ahead and use it. What I'm wondering about now is whether a creature which flies with wings but is currently on the ground can begin flying from prone without taking an AoO. I think that the answer should be "no" though I'm not sure if this is explicitly spelled out one way or another in the rules.
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After searching around a little I found the following rule under the Fly skill:
"Collision While Flying: If you are using wings to fly and you collide with an object equal to your size or larger, you must immediately make a DC 25 Fly check to avoid plummeting to the ground, taking the appropriate falling damage."The DM and I agree that might be relevant and will probably go ahead and use it. What I'm wondering about now is whether a creature which flies with wings but is currently on the ground can begin flying from prone without taking an AoO. I think that the answer should be "no" though I'm not sure if this is explicitly spelled out one way or another in the rules.
It's not spelled out in the rules that I've seen. It still has to get up, though--especially if you just "splatted" it against the floor. I really doubt in that scenario it would be laying on the ground in such a way that it would be able to simply fly away from prone. I would rule it that if a creature could fly away from prone, that they would have to make themselves prone in such a way that they could--and that if anyone else forced them prone they would have to first "stand up" before flying away.
Just because fly makes you immune to trip doesn't make you immune to being prone. A flying creature could choose to drop prone on its own (to say, get an AC bonus to ranged attacks). It would still take a move action to stand up from prone and begin flying again though.
Similar to punishing kick. "Knock prone" is different from "trip" and flying only grants immunity to one of them.
I agree that a flying creature which somehow ends up prone should have to suffer an AoO for getting up from prone whether that's by standing or by flying. I just like having some rules support for my ideas so that I don't feel like I'm making stuff up to help my PC (or even worse make the other players feel that way)