How can i change xorg settings, such as default fonts, cursors, etc. on the fly as well as statically without having to use any special daemons, such as gnome-settings-daemon, etc.?

That's up to each application. Gnome based programs just share a centralized way to configure it, as kde ones do. But each program is a different animal. A default pointer style can be set in ~/.Xdefaults, some applications can use this file to configure fonts (most terminal emulators do), others will have a configuration dialog to do that.

Some of them might let you apply the changes on the fly, others won't.

Most gtk programs will obey the settings in ~/.gtkrc-2.0, there are frontends that let you change the gtk fonts, like gtk-chtheme or lxappearance. I am not sure about apps that are part of gnome though.