1) Seems right to me. I also don't see any restrictions about putting the wall across creatures or other obstacles.
2) I think the movement rules in the core rules are that you have to use a new action for different movement types. I vaguely remember someone mentioning that there is an optional ruling to use instead for cases where that is annoying. I don't remember the citation off-hand though. I'm sure someone else will bring it up.
As for when to switch movement types, I think it is best to use the movement type for the square that you are entering. Which is why you can't Step into a square of difficult terrain, but you can Step out of one. Similarly, you would use your land speed for squares up to the one adjacent to the wall of water, then you would use swim speed to move into the square of the wall. Then use land speed to leave the square.
I'm not sure whether you would roll the swim check before entering the wall or before leaving it. I'm not sure that it really matters - probably only if you fail, and probably only if people are trying to attack you while you do it.
d) Yes, I would still have the player rolling with the rules for movement no matter how they want to describe the actions.
e) Not sure about larger creature sizes. I would probably base my ruling on the rules for larger creature sizes and difficult terrain. If any part of their footprint goes through the wall, then they are affected by the wall. They still have to make a swim check, but I would only require one check no matter how many squares their footprint has.
3) Indeed. We did not come to a conclusion. And since the relevant rules haven't been updated since then, I don't think we could come to a conclusion now either.
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I love seeing one of my old threads being brought up again!
To breithauptclan's point for 2)
From the GMG section on Splitting and Combining Movement:
"The different types of actions representing movement are split up for convenience of understanding how the rules work with a creature’s actions. However, you can end up in odd situations, such as when a creature wants to jump vertically to get something and needs to move just a bit to get in range, then Leap, then continue moving. This can end up feeling like they’re losing a lot of their movement to make this happen. At your discretion, you can allow the PCs to essentially combine these into one fluid movement as a 2-action activity: moving into range for a Leap, then Leaping, then using the rest of their Speed.
This typically works only for chaining types of movement together. Doing something like Interacting to open a door or making a Strike usually arrests movement long enough that doing so in the middle of movement isn’t practical."
Ah yes. there it is. Thanks.
And if the wall of water is meant to be a barrier it should probably do that in one of two ways.
1) requiring separate actions to change movement types.
2) using the spellcaster's Spell DC for the swim check.
Or both.
But if it has a DC 10 check and doesn't require additional actions to pass through, it really isn't much of a barrier.
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fwiw, even with combining actions you're still effectively burning an action to swim 5ft even with a low DC.
And even a relatively low DC can be pretty hard for a dex or caster combatant who doesn't have training in athletics.
Aquatic Combat lists a DC of 15 to swim underwater or 13 if it's calm water. I'd probably go with one of those.