So I had a situation where the Dwarf Barbarian was attempting to resist a Vampire's Dominate ability.
Dominate (Su)
A vampire can crush a humanoid opponent's will as a standard action. Anyone the vampire targets must succeed on a Will save or fall instantly under the vampire's influence, as though by a dominate person spell (caster level 12th). The ability has a range of 30 feet. At the GM's discretion, some vampires might be able to affect different creature types with this power.
The players seemed to think that the Dwarf's bonus for Hardy should apply against the Dominate ability:
Hardy: Dwarves receive a +2 racial bonus on saving throws against poison, spells, and spell-like abilities.
I ruled that since the ability was a Supernatural (Su) ability rather than a Spell-Like (Sp) ability, the racial bonus to the save would not apply.
As it played out, the first resist attempt was made regardless of the bonus, and the second resist attempt was failed regardless of the bonus. So, in the end it didn't matter.
However, I would like to know if I ruled correctly.
It does not work. An SU is not a spell, SLA, or a poison. There is a way to trade hardy for a feature that works against enchantment based magical effects even if they are supernatural, but the decision has to be made at character creation.
The dwarf ability is amazing enough as it is, it doesn't need to be boosted any more.
Something I find people might not realize is that while resisting spells and spell-like abilities sounds cool... those are mostly performed by PC classes. Most enemies use extraordinary or supernatural abilities.
If is nice against those big baddies though (dragons, spellcasters, outsiders).
as they said, (Su) is not (Sp)
That ones odd. Its not spell like, but it runs exactly like the spell...