Autognome Mending Healing Optimization

[riot]

In the Autognome (UA) traits, it states that: "True Life. If the Mending spell is cast on you, you can expend a Hit Die, roll it, and regain a number of hit points equal to the roll plus your Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 hit point). In addition, your creator designed you to benefit from common spells that preserve life but that normally don’t affect Constructs: Cure Wounds, Healing Word, and Spare the Dying."

This seems like an okay feature at first look. If you have a whole minute to cast mending chances are you aren't too far from a short rest. However, if you combine this feature with a certain Warlock invocation it seems to get a little bit broken in my opinion. In specific, you can use Gift of the Ever-Living Ones, which states that: "Whenever you regain hit points while your familiar is within 100 feet of you, treat any dice rolled to determine the hit points you regain as having rolled their maximum value for you." You must take the pact of the chain, meaning that this requires at least 3rd level.

This means that before/after a short rest, you can take an extra few minutes to cast mending on yourself, taking the highest value for each die. This'll be 8+con instead of the 1d8+con for a warlock, meaning that on average instead of ~6-8 damage per hit die healed (for +2 con), you'll be getting 10. Every time. And you don't even have to short rest. This can be during a five minute downtime between fights.

Is there a way to optimize the hell outta this? Warlocks usually stay in the back unless they're Hexblade, but then you're missing out on the Blade Pact to get the Chain Pact we need for the invocation. This means no thirsting blade, no eldritch smite, no improved pact weapon, and no making magic items your pact weapon. I can think the only way to compensate for thirsting blade is booming blade, but the rest are really tough to lose for a melee warlock so I feel like it's most optimal to instead get 3-5 levels in Warlock and then the rest in Paladin? Paladins do get bigger hit die which makes the healing better and paladin's generally can sustain better anyways. My questions to you guys are:

-How many levels in warlock before breaking to paladin?
-What subclasses for both of the classes? Does hexblade still work despite the lack of blade pact?
-What other optimizations could be made to make this work?
-Is this even as broken as I think? Would you let someone try this out at your table?

[stoutstien]

The fact is going to eat up your HD is the issue. You could optimize this but in noway would I'd be optimized.
Best bet is to lean on the immunities from being a construct.
Then you have built for success which is..pretty amazing.

Soild race for any class which is a rarity.

[Myth27]

Doesn’t seem to powerful to me, in my experience 99% of the times you would get full hp anyway with a short rest.

[Psyren]

If you want even more healing, be a Battlesmith. Since you're a construct, 3x per day your pet/mount can use its Repair action to heal you for 2d8+PB, and you can heal it to full via mending.

[stoutstien]

If you want even more healing, be a Battlesmith. Since you're a construct, 3x per day your pet/mount can use its Repair action to heal you for 2d8+PB, and you can heal it to full via mending.

Arguably it's 3X per LR per SD if you happen to make a new one.

[Psyren]

Arguably it's 3X per LR per SD if you happen to make a new one.

I thought of that, but as written you can only make a new one after a LR. Destroying one during the day and remaking it is described as "reviving", i.e. it's the same one coming back. Your DM might rule it comes back with refills on its Repair however.

[stoutstien]

I thought of that, but as written you can only make a new one after a LR. Destroying one during the day and remaking it is described as "reviving", i.e. it's the same one coming back. Your DM might rule it comes back with refills on its Repair however.

Fair assessment. There is an odd emission when they are "lost".

Even at three times per day it's a nice little boost. Autognomes work well for any class and small size works well for battle Smith if you ever want to mount it.

[MrStabby]

Hmm. Off the top of my head I am thinking Fiend Pact warlock and a dip for a level of barbarian. Rage makes HP last longer, temp HP also benefits from rage and some D12 hit dice would be nice... I would guess ancestral guardian barbarian to really make people want to hit you?

[Damon_Tor]

I'm confused, is there a reason Gift of the Ever-living Ones doesn't work on HD spent normally at the end of a short rest? I don't see that as a combo with any unique efficiency compared to anybody else.

That said, you could add a periapt of wound closure to improve efficiency even further.

[stoutstien]

I'm confused, is there a reason Gift of the Ever-living Ones doesn't work on HD spent normally at the end of a short rest? I don't see that as a combo with any unique efficiency compared to anybody else.

That said, you could add a periapt of wound closure to improve efficiency even further.

Nah. That's the jist of it. Because it's not actually giving you a new source of healing it's probably not the best thing to focus on. The race is good but not because of the healing.

[Cog]

With Bladesinger's extra attack, you can cast Mending in place of your extra attack instead of over a minute.

[Greywander]

I just want to point out that if the cleric fails to Revivify you during the 1 minute window then you're not coming back without True Resurrection. I had to deal with this and similar issues while writing up a race of undead, and I specifically made them hard to actually kill (they auto-stabilize at 0 HP, and can only be killed a few specific ways). And even then, I still made a homebrew spell that acts as a stand-in for Raise Dead.

5e doesn't really have the proper tools to support undead or construct PCs. If you're writing homebrew anyway, you can add those tools yourself, but an official option that just gives access to a construct race with few other accommodations is going to run into issues.

[Psyren]

I just want to point out that if the cleric fails to Revivify you during the 1 minute window then you're not coming back without True Resurrection.

I don't see anything that would stop Raise Dead or Resurrection from working. Autognomes are creatures, and they're not undead.

[Greywander]

You know, there are so many spells that don't work on either undead or constructs, and I've worked almost entirely from the undead side, and I guess I just assumed that a spell that doesn't work on undead also wouldn't work on constructs. But it seems Raise Dead only specifies undead, and says nothing about constructs.

So I guess I dun goofed. Let this be a lesson that it never hurts to double check the rules instead of relying on a fallible memory.

[ATHATH]

Uh, can't you just apply Gift of the Ever-Living Ones to your normal short rest healing? It's not restricted to only affecting healing from spells, it applies to ALL healing.

[Person_Man]

Seems like its a nice but not crazy bump to healing for any build - giving you a quick way to heal while between Short Rests while preserving spell resources. Chain Warlock would definitely benefit, particularly for Celestial Patron, who opens up another big pool of max healing.

Other big winners are probably Wildfire Druid, Life Cleric, and anything Artificer, who go from “hard to kill unless you wear down their resources” to “extremely hard to kill unless you dog pile them in combat.”

[Fedifensor]

Autognome Warlock, Pact of the Chain, Gift of the Ever-Living Ones, and a periapt of wound closure. Mulitclass with at least one level of Sorcerer to pick up mending.

Cast mending and spend 1 warlock HD to heal 16+[2x CON modifier] HP. A 14 CON should be easy enough to get, so that's 20 HP. It's a great way to recover HP when you don't have time for a short rest.

[AttilatheYeon]

Periapt of wound closer doubles the healing from using hit dice. Ao with a con of 14 your warlock will heal (8+2)×2 for 20 points.

Levels of sorc lets you attune a bloodwell vial.