Do feats that affect spells like Spell Focus apply to Spell Like Abilities?

Question

If you have a spell-Like ability that allows you to cast a spell, are feats and abilities that would modify the spell if it was cast normally apply? For example if you gained Burning Hands as a Spell-Like ability would that gain the benefit of spell focus?

Answer 1

Some Pathfinder developers apply some game elements to spell-like abilities as if they were actual spells

While the rules seem pretty clear about spell-like abilities and spells being different, Pathfinder developers seem to operate under the assumption that there's some overlap. For example, Owen K.C. Stephenson in a 2010 Paizo Messagboard thread, in part, writes:

When you add a metamagic feat to a spell-like ability, you end up having to use a spell-like slot one or more levels higher. Since there is no such thing as a spell-like slot, you can't use your metamagic enhanced spell-like ability. (If you add metamagic feats with a +0 level modifier from some other source, they'd work fine with spell-like abilities).

Augment Summoning, however, along with Spell Focus, Spell Penetration and the greater versions of same, has no need for a spell-like slot to function. Thus they work just fine with spell-like abilities in addition to spells. [Links added.]

I suspect that this is why the feat Augment Summoning works with the summoner class feature summon monster I, a spell-like ability, despite the Augment Summoning feat saying that it affects "[e]ach creature you conjure with any summon spell," never mentioning spell-like abilities. Nonetheless, according to this telegraphic FAQ entry and according to this equally telegraphic post by Pathfinder Director of Game Design Jason Bulmahn, the feat does affect that spell-like ability. This line of thought would likewise explain why the leanan sidhe, for example, can take and benefit from the feat Spell Focus despite her not actually casting spells.

(It's likely due to this assumption that the FAQ also must then take on how spell-like abilities interact with item creation feats, metamagic feats, metamagic rods, and—most tellingly for our purposes—prerequisites.)

To address the question's example more precisely, an ifrit can employ 1/day the spell-like ability burning hands. I suspect a typical Paizo Pathfinder developer would rule that the ifrit's feat Spell Focus (evocation) applies to that spell-like ability, but that the ifrit typically couldn't apply to that spell-like ability the feat Empower Spell.

To be clear: I don't agree with this reading of the rules, and I certainly won't defend it, but readers should be aware that it exists.

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Note: If you clicked this answer's title's link, you were taken to the section Magic in the subsection Special Abilities where there's a definition of Spell-like Abilities. If you were actually looking for information about spell-like abilities—instead of hunting for every mention in the Pathfinder SRD of spell-like ability—, that definition probably wasn't your first, second, or even third destination, but it's the only definition that includes this statement: "Usually, a spell-like ability works just like the spell of that name." I suspect that the Pathfinder developers' understanding of how spell-like abilities work grew from that statement to blur the stark line between spell-like abilities and spells that was drawn by the game's antecedent Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 and its FAQ entry (44) on the same subject that makes pretty much the exact opposite ruling.

Answer 2

Spell-like abilities are not spells

This is explained under spell-like abilities (Bestiary, p. 304).

Spell-like abilities are magical and work just like spells (though they are not spells and so have no verbal, somatic, focus, or material components)

The explanation then goes on to explain in which ways spell-like abilities behave like spells

It is possible to attempt a concentration check to use a spell-like ability defensively and avoid provoking attacks of opportunity, just as when casting a spell. A spell-like ability can be disrupted just as a spell can be. Spell-like abilities cannot be used to counterspell, nor can they be counterspelled.

In that list of things, there is no mention about feats applying to spell-like abilities, just as they would to spells.

The Spell Focus feat states:

Any spells you cast of that school are more difficult to resist.

It only applies to spells. So spell-like abilities would not benefit from it.