Solusek's page

http://paizo.com/prd/skills/fly.html

Attacked While Flying: You are not considered flat-footed while flying. If you are flying using wings and you take damage while flying, you must make a DC 10 Fly check to avoid losing 10 feet of altitude. This descent does not provoke an attack of opportunity and does not count against a creature's movement.

It seems to me that when two creatures are engaged in aerial melee combat it would often be beneficial to take the 10' altitude loss for failing your flight check after being hit by damage in order to avoid full attacks. Is this something that is legal and works for creatures who are using wings to fly?

This is basically being able to take a immediate free 10 foot step downwards anytime you are hit for damage just by choosing to fail the skill check. There is a multitude of uses you could come up with for this, but the most obvious one is avoiding iterative attacks.

For reference: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/combat#TOC-Combat-Maneuvers

Earlier this year I read a post claiming this rule could be used as a tactic to escape from an ongoing grapple:

If grappled, one could theoretically ready a one-handed attack against the maintaning grappler to interrupt the maintain check. If the attack hits, the damage would be counted as a penalty to the maintain roll. At least, if I understand the rules correctly.

This seems like a pretty powerful tool that some characters could use to escape from the almost unbeatable CMB/CMD that really large monsters have. In my games there have been plenty of times where a PC gets grappled and realized they have zero chance of breaking free by trying a CMB check. But for melee characters that can hit hard, readying an action to smack the creature for a lot of damage when it tries to maintain the hold next round could be a really effective way to get out of grapples.

My question is does this actually work? Does readying an attack give you the damage it deals as a penalty to the grapplers maintain? Or is this a rule that *only* applies to attacks of opportunity that an unskilled grappler may provoke.

Flight (Ex or Su) A creature with this ability can cease or resume flight as a free action. If the ability is supernatural, it becomes ineffective in an antimagic field, and the creature loses its ability to fly for as long as the antimagic effect persists.

When looking at the bestiary how do you know whether a creatures flight is Ex or Su? It doesn't seem to specify in the stat block. Is just looking at the artwork of the monster and making a ruling based on if that picture has wings or not the only way?

What happens when a flying creature gets stunned? What about if its only dazed? Does it matter whether its natural flight with wings or magical flight?