Abstract. We consider families of non-colliding random walks above a hard wall, which are subject to a self-potential of tilted area type. We view such ensembles as effective models for the level lines of a class of 2 + 1-dimensional discrete-height random surfaces in statistical mechanics. We prove that, under rather general assumptions on the step distribution and on the self-potential, such walks converge, under appropriate rescaling, to non-intersecting Ferrari-Spohn diffusions associated with limiting Sturm-Liouville operators. In particular, the limiting invariant measures are given by the squares of the corresponding Slater determinants.