What Healing Spells Will Not Work on Autognomes?

 After playing with the idea of making Dhampir and Reborn into sort of half-undead/half-humanoids (or half-construct instead of undead for Reborn depending on how you wanted to flavor it,) Spelljammer's Astral Adventurer's Guide has managed to make three of its six new playable races all unconventional creature types.

The Thri-kreen are monstrosities (despite being humanoid in the monster manual - though this is something we've seen in the past, like centaurs getting switched from monstrosity to fey as a playable race). Plasmoids are oozes. However, these two creature types don't really have many rules associated with them. Much like the many existing fey playable races that we've seen published since Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica and onward, this mostly just works out to be a benefit. Spells like Charm or Dominate Person don't work on non-humanoids, and there are really not any spells or effects I can think of that single out oozes or monstrosities to make them more vulnerable.

However, some creature types have a lot of things that call them out. Undead in particular are affected by things like divine smite and turn undead in special ways. But one thing Undead and Constructs tend to share is that healing spells don't work on them.

In the past, the solution to this was to make construct-like playable races, such as the Warforged, simply count as humanoid. However, WotC has grown bolder, and has made the Autognome a construct (also, potentially the "glitchling," which could be a playable race in some future Planescape book - we'll stay tuned to the Wizards Presents thing tomorrow).

In order to deal with the difficulty of being a construct player character, Autognomes have a racial feature that grants them exceptions to the rule. Spells like Cure Wounds and Healing Word don't work on Constructs or Undead, but Autognomes specifically call those spells out to allow them to work.

However, it's not a blanket statement - only a set number of spells are called out. So, let's go down the list and see what spells won't work to heal your Autognome.

Heal

Healing Spirit

Mass Heal

Power Word Heal

Prayer of Healing

Reincarnate (which actually doesn't work on any fey, monstrosities, or oozes either)

Interestingly, a lot of resurrection magic does work on constructs but not on undead.

What I will note is that in the Ravnica campaign I run, the party's Druid often does a lot of her healing through Healing Spirit (as she's a Golgari Spore Druid, the spirit takes the form of a giant glowing green mushroom). Lacking the ability to be affected by Heal, Mass Heal, or Power Word Heal means that the high-level miraculous heals are going to be out of reach. Still, the inclusion of Mass Cure Wounds and Mass Healing Word (which I believe were missing from the UA version) has shored up the Autognome's healing eligibility significantly. Missing Prayer of Healing is a bit sad, though as long as someone in the party has Mending, that can make up for the lack of a good out-of-combat heal, thanks to the ability to spend a hit die each time that is cast on you.

And, luckily, there are more healing spells than I previously thought that can affect constructs inherently. Aura of Vitality, for instance, has no such restriction. Neither do Life Transference nor Regenerate. Likewise, healing potions have no restriction on them.

So, while I do think you're sacrificing a bit at high levels of play, ultimately I think an Autognome should still be a pretty viable choice in most campaigns and with most parties.