Can you trip a flying creature?

[Dwarmaj]

Instead of going for their legs, could you go for their wings and force a flying creature to fall?

If you can trip them, would their recovery time from the fall be based on their manueverablity?

From the SRD:

Minimum Forward Speed: If a flying creature fails to maintain its minimum forward speed, it must land at the end of its movement. If it is too high above the ground to land, it falls straight down, descending 150 feet in the first round of falling. If this distance brings it to the ground, it takes falling damage. If the fall doesn’t bring the creature to the ground, it must spend its next turn recovering from the stall. It must succeed at a Reflex saving throw (DC 20) to recover. Otherwise it falls another 300 feet. If it hits the ground, it takes falling damage. Otherwise, it has another chance to recover on its next turn.

Would tripping a flying creature just change their direction of travel or could you halt their forward flying speed?

I would think a beholder would be impossible to trip, but how about an air elemental? If you had a Ghost Touch weapon, could you trip an incorporeal creature?

 

[MarauderX]

Instead of going for their legs, could you go for their wings and force a flying creature to fall?

If you can trip them, would their recovery time from the fall be based on their manueverablity?

From the SRD:


Would tripping a flying creature just change their direction of travel or could you halt their forward flying speed?

I would think a beholder would be impossible to trip, but how about an air elemental? If you had a Ghost Touch weapon, could you trip an incorporeal creature?

I don't see why you couldn't, although I might place some different modifiers on the attempt, such as height advantage. Depending on the method they may make a reflex save to pull out of a plummeting fall if their wings are unobstructed, and only fall for 3 seconds, or about 190 feet, and if they fall to the ground in that round they would only take half of the falling damage.

I think trip works for most any time you are trying to bring down a foe, from standing or riding on horseback, so if would imagine it could be applicable in the skies... but it becomes much riskier as they can always trip you back if you fail.

 

[Shallown]

I always ran tripping flying creatures like a normal tripo except it disoriented them versus literally knocking them out of the air. They were treated as prone until the "righted" themselves as if they had been tripped on the ground. mActually pulling or knocking someone out of the sky should be a bullrush or grapple thing not a simple trip.

Just my thoughts.

Later

 

[Stormrunner]

I'd say a lot depends on circumstance. If you want them to actually fall, you'd need to grapple or entangle them. I suppose you might be able to disorient them, or change their direction of flight, but it's iffy.
Something which should work vs winged flyers though, is for a groundwalker to ready an action as the flyer swoops to attack, then when the flyer zooms past hook them with his weapon. Sudden high-speed face-plant! With Improved Trip he can then whack them as they lie there stunned ("Ha! Do the Headless Chicken Dance!"). Of course, the abrupt yank as he brings the high-speed flyer to a sudden stop is likely to pull him off his feet as well.
Levitating flyers like beholders should be less affected - you might be able to yank them down but they just bob back up. Air elementals and other Perfect-maneuverability critters ought to be immune to Trip-like attacks.
You should be able to trip an incorporeal critter with a Ghost Touch weapon if you could trip a non-incorporeal critter of that type with a normal weapon. Problem is, a lot of ghosts, shadows, etc don't seem to have feet per se, but if you think of the Trip as more of a Knockdown, sure, you can smack that ghost upside the head with your ghost touch quarterstaff and knock him to (or through!) the floor.