Hey guys,
I've been rolling this around in my head and decided to ask for other people opinion on a hypothetical situation regarding the spell Airwalk.
This is one of those situations that are not covered explicitly in the rules, no matter how you slice it so it is ultimately up to GM adjudication, so let me know how you would run it. There are no wrong answers here!
The subject can tread on air as if walking on solid ground. Moving upward is similar to walking up a hill. The maximum upward or downward angle possible is 45 degrees, at a rate equal to half the air walker's normal speed.A strong wind (21+ miles per hour) can push the subject along or hold it back. At the end of a creature's turn each round, the wind blows the air walker 5 feet for each 5 miles per hour of wind speed. The creature may be subject to additional penalties in exceptionally strong or turbulent winds, such as loss of control over movement or physical damage from being buffeted about.
Should the spell duration expire while the subject is still aloft, the magic fails slowly. The subject floats downward 60 feet per round for 1d6 rounds. If it reaches the ground in that amount of time, it lands safely. If not, it falls the rest of the distance, taking 1d6 points of damage per 10 feet of fall. Since dispelling a spell effectively ends it, the subject also descends in this way if the air walk spell is dispelled, but not if it is negated by an antimagic field.
So, with that in mind, what happens to someone who gets tripped while airwalking? How would you run it?
I would rule that the subject hits the magical "hill" he's walking up and is prone there until he decides to get up or not. I don't see anything in the spell description that implies that only the soles of his feet feel the "hill."
The person airwalking is only treading air as if walking on solid ground, but is not actually on solid ground. I would treat them the same as a flying creature, and therefore cannot be tripped. The prone condition in midair just doesn't make sense to me. (Though this has happened already in the game I'm playing with the fly spell. I didn't like it then either, even though it benefited me.)