Just how different are spells and spell-like abilities in Pathfinder?
If my half-orc sorcerer takes the favored class option that allows him to add half his level to fire spell damage, does his Elemental Ray benefit? What about his Elemental Blast? They are both spell-like abilities.
What if he took Elemental Focus and Greater Elemental Focus feats? Would his Elemental Blast ability benefit? What if he took the Major Spell Expertise (fireball) feat? Would his 2/day fireball spell-like ability benefit from a higher DC since it is a spell in nearly every sense of the word?
Why or why not?
(I'm not interested in how v3.5 does it, I'm already familiar with that, but I've heard it said that Pathfinder treats spell-like abilities just like spells for this kind of stuff [and even for even metamagic in some areas], so I wanted to check it out and see if it was true.)
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If my half-orc sorcerer takes the favored class option that allows him to add half his level to fire spell damage, does his Elemental Ray benefit? What about his Elemental Blast? They are both spell-like abilities.
That depends on how "fire spell" is defined. If a "fire spell" is a spell that deals fire damage, then yes, it would work. On the other hand, if a "fire spell" is a spell with the [fire] descriptor, then no, this would not work. Spell-Like Abilities that do not mimic actual spells don't have descriptors unless they specifically say so (for example, "this is a mind-affecting charm effect"). EDIT: There might actually be a rule that any spell that deals <insert_element> damage automatically has the <insert_same_element> descriptor, in which case it works.
What if he took Elemental Focus and Greater Elemental Focus feats? Would his Elemental Blast ability benefit?
Same answers as above.
What if he took the Major Spell Expertise (fireball) feat? Would his 2/day fireball spell-like ability benefit from a higher DC since it is a spell in nearly every sense of the word?
Yes. Fireball the Spell-Like Ability benefits from everything that fireball the spell does, except that you can't manipulate it with metamagic (because metamagics require spell slots, and SLAs don't occupy spell slots).
to use metamagics with spell-like abilities you would have to take the appropriate feats from the Beastiary (like empower spell-like ability).