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a) Is a little hard for me to explain since when I look at the pictures, they make sense to me :) The grey boxes in the pictures are considered to 'fall within' the shapes they represent. Casting burning hands, for example, is a 15' cone in some crude ASCII art:
<padded lines>
<padded lines>
<padded lines>
<padded lines>
.....
..X..
..XX.
..XXX
.Y...
.....
.XXX.
.XXX.
..X..
..Y..
. = empty square
X = burning hands
Y = You - caster
Hopefully this is helpful and not just atrocious.
b) Point-Blank Shot would apply to ray attacks inside 30', yes. I don't believe there is currently anything like weapon finesses but for Intelligence. It doesn't mean that you couldn't do it, of course. In fact, weapon finesses is probably a great template to follow to make it happen if that's what you want in your game. Though my own two cents is that it's a good idea for a wizard to have a high dex as well since they don't get much in the way of armor protection and it helps them go faster in the initiative order.
c) This is a bit tougher, honestly. Cha is generally a little under represented in the Beginner Box material. Each class has their own strengths and weaknesses. In a Zombie Apocalypse campaign, I can't see Cha being all that useful. Zombie's don't want to talk (Diplomacy)and you can't really try to smooth talk your way past them (Bluff). A secondary use for Diplomacy is to Gather Information, but again it kind of implies a social aspect which may or may not be present in a Zombie survival game. You might be doing your player a service by encouraging them to switch Cha with a more 'useful' attribute for this campaign. Though in your example, Diplomacy would be a way to go to recruit people to help you fight off zombies.
d) Some do and some do not. In your example the only thing which is not valid is any or all of those combos is Cleave. Charge is a full round (standard plus move) which lets you move 2x your speed and make an attack afterward. Power attack and Combat Expertise are essentially free actions which modify what's going on. Cleave is a standard action you use in place of your normal standard action, thus on a Charge you do not have that standard action to spend as you've already spent it for the Charge.
Hope this helps, if not ask more questions and I'll see what I can do :)
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I think you about have the right of it on the lines and cones etc. The ranges should follow the same 5/10/5 cost for diagonals. For a burst you pick an intersection, and then go that many feet in each direction. For example on page 92 the 10 burst is 2 squares in each cardinal direction from the intersection (center).
The zombie, well, that's getting into some serious black magic. Especially since 'zombie' is actually a template that you apply to a base creature. All of this stuff is well beyond the scope of the Beginner Box, but it sounds like you've already been looking at the PRD information on Zombies from the Bestiary. There aren't really hard and fast rules on how many special abilities or defensive abilities you can/should add at which CR. Under the monster creation rules there are CR vs. DC of primary abilities though so a DC 11 plague is in keeping with a CR 1/2 but a DC 14 plague would be more in line with a CR 3 creature (for example). DR 5/magic against lower level characters is going to be quite a challenge, but you initial instinct of CR 1 is a good starting point. If the players are magic poor you probably want to just leave the hit points alone since each hit will be doing 5 less damage...boosting the hit points on top of that is just mean ;)
I'd say if you just add the disease and it is a low DC, it isn't really a CR increase. The DR/magic though, that's definitely a bump in CR because it will make it much harder to kill, which means it is more of a challenge.
The other way to think about it is that the monster CR is a way to set XP and XP is a way to reward players for overcoming an encounter, not specifically for killing monsters. So the 'right' way to do it is to say you want the encounter to be a certain difficulty, which gives you an XP budget. Then you spend the budget on monsters, traps, difficult environments, puzzles, whatever.
So you could just add an extra bit of xp to the encounter's reward for defeating the diseased zombies, rather than fully bumping up the CR. The same goes if you want to add fog that makes it hard to see or if you want to the zombies to keep coming back to life until the players destroy the weird glowing blue statue in the back of the room. Those don't have a way to increase an individual monster's CR, but they do affect the encounter's total challenge, thus the XP reward.
b) Point-Blank Shot would apply to ray attacks inside 30', yes.
Are you sure about that? The description of PBS (from the PRD) says "You get a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at ranges of up to 30 feet." A spell is not a weapon, afaics.
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Are you sure about that? The description of PBS (from the PRD) says "You get a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at ranges of up to 30 feet." A spell is not a weapon, afaics.
I am sure, yes. Also there is an FAQ entry from Sean which confirms it. :) A ray attack is a treated as a weapon.
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Are you sure about that? The description of PBS (from the PRD) says "You get a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at ranges of up to 30 feet." A spell is not a weapon, afaics.I am sure, yes. Also there is an FAQ entry from Sean which confirms it. :) A ray attack is a treated as a weapon.
I am also sure of it.
Out of curiosity, however, I had a look through the Core Rule Book to see if I could see it spellt out anywhere, and I couldn't find it, although there are places where it is implied.
Weapon Focus, in particular, seems to go out of its way to ensure it could be argued either way.
Weapon Focus (Combat)
Choose one type of weapon. You can also choose unarmed strike or grapple (or ray, if you are a spellcaster) as your weapon for the purposes of this feat.
The second sentence is either clarifying that rays are a type of weapon, or just allowing you to treat rays as weapons for the purpose of this feat only.
The description of rays makes it seem like they are NOT ranged weapons, they just behave exactly as if they were!
Ray: Some effects are rays. You aim a ray as if using a ranged weapon, though typically you make a ranged touch attack rather than a normal ranged attack. As with a ranged weapon, you can fire into the dark or at an invisible creature and hope you hit something. You don’t have to see the creature you’re trying to hit, as you do with a targeted spell. Intervening creatures and obstacles, however, can block your line of sight or provide cover for the creature at which you’re aiming.
In 3.5 I seem to remember that Complete Arcane made it clear that you could take "weapon" feats with rays.
However, this is Pathfinder. The general rule of thumb is that anything that makes fighters better can also make wizards better, but not vice versa.
If you let players headshot zombies, they're going to wonder why they can't headshot living creatures. It's best to avoid that sort of "hit location" mechanic in this (abstract) game. Critical hits are the way Pathfinder handles increased damage in just the right spot.
Are you sure about that? The description of PBS (from the PRD) says "You get a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at ranges of up to 30 feet." A spell is not a weapon, afaics.I am sure, yes. Also there is an FAQ entry from Sean which confirms it. :) A ray attack is a treated as a weapon.
Got it! Thanks for the link.