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A damaged simulacrum must normally be repaired over 24 hours at a cost of 100 gp per hp. If the original creature had the ability for fast healing or regeneration, would it work?

Nobody the Hobgoblin
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Lawrenciu
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1 Answers1

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As written yes, but the intention is that only the alchemical procedure works

Simulacrum says:

A complex process requiring at least 24 hours, 100 gp per hit point, and a fully equipped magical laboratory can repair damage to a simulacrum.

Strictly as written, this does not exclude other ways of restoring hit points to the simulacrum. It does not say you only can repair damage in this way. Just because you can repair damage and restore hit points with a lab and a lot of time and money, does not mean you cannot restore them in other ways, if there is no text that says you cannot. And there is no other text in the spell description that explicitly excludes such other ways.

The only possible line in simulacrum that could be read this way is:

A simulacrum has no ability to become more powerful.

Healing or restoring hit points would make the simulacrum more powerful than it was when it had fewer hit points. You might interpret this to mean that no ability of the simulacrum, wether natural healing or regeneration, can restore hit points to the simulacrum.

There is an in-depth discussion of this for the 5th Edition version of simulacrum, which suffers from similar wording issues.

Essentially, if you could just heal the simulacrum with taking hit dice, or other innate regeneration features, or cure spells, then the sentence about the costly, cumbersome and time-consuming procedure would be meaningless. You you'd just ignore it and use whatever cheap and fast healing you have available. From this we can conclude that the likely intention is that only the procedure should be able to restore hit points.

And even if you disallow healing with the simulacrums inborn features, you could still heal it with another creature's abilities as written, such as a cure wounds spell. Thus, due to how it is worded, the DM needs to decide how they want to handle it for their game: exactly as written, or in a way that makes the laboratory restriction meaningful.

Simulacrum is already broken in what it can do (for example effectively doubling all your actions and spells, if you make one of yourself). Even with the laboratory restriction it still is too good; you might consider banning it outright. If you do not, limiting it in some way, or using the most restrictive interpretation is probably the next best approach.

Nobody the Hobgoblin
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    “the sentence about requiring the […] procedure would be meaningless as a restriction.” There is no sentence “requiring” this procedure; the procedure says only that a simulacrum can be repaired this way, with absolutely no indication that this is in any way a requirement or represents any kind of limitation on the simulacrum. Nothing indicates that it’s supposed to be a restriction in the first place. As written, it’s an extra special method of healing not available to other creatures, in addition to all the usual options. There isn’t even a hint that it was intended to be otherwise – KRyan Mar 11 '24 at 18:05
  • @KRyan Fair enough, I removed the word "requiring" here. I do say that as written, there is no restriction on this, other than that nobody in their right mind then would use the extra lab method. And it may be that the designer team of 3.5 is different from the designer team of 5e, but the text is very similar for both editions, and the designers of 5e have gone on record multiple times that only the procedure should be able to repair the simulacrum. You of course can play it as written, but it makes little sense to me. – Nobody the Hobgoblin Mar 11 '24 at 18:09
  • If we’re talking about what makes sense, the only appropriate advice here is to simply ban simulacrum wholesale. Even if it was limited to only being repaired via the costly process, the spell is still preposterously game-breaking. – KRyan Mar 11 '24 at 18:14
  • @KRyan No argument with that, especially as this version even allows copying any creature, not just beasts and humanoids as in 5e. I'll add a note about it. – Nobody the Hobgoblin Mar 11 '24 at 18:17
  • Would there be any value or interest in referencing the actual (literary) origin of this spell? – nijineko Mar 12 '24 at 03:02
  • @nijineko Yes! I have no idea where it is from, bit it feels like it must have been a plot device originally. I will ask that question and am curious about the answer. – Nobody the Hobgoblin Mar 12 '24 at 05:36
  • @nijineko Unless we can confirm that a particular literary work inspired the D&D creators, I’m not sure what value that would have. – Thomas Markov Mar 12 '24 at 09:37
  • Downvoted, because the title ("but the intention is that only the alchemical procedure works") is unsupported by answer or by the available text. – fectin Mar 18 '24 at 13:13
  • @fectin the linked Q&A has all the supporting citations. But the answer was already so long, I felt reiterating them here is not needed, especially as it is on this site, without risk of link rot – Nobody the Hobgoblin Mar 18 '24 at 16:42