Can Undead Benefit From Healing Spells?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The only things strictly excluded are entities without bodies (such as intangible spirits), artifacts (like cars, robots, and toasters), and agglomerations of inanimate matter (puddles, shed snake skins, stones, etc.).

Oddly enough, golems (which seem like they should be artifacts) can be affected by healing spells, but only if the healing spell is cast by the golem's creator.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Oddly enough, golems (which seem like they should be artifacts) can be affected by healing spells, but only if the healing spell is cast by the golem's creator.

Golems are a corner case, as they're vessels for spirits: The Golem spell requires Animation, and Animation is necromancy that calls for Summon Spirit. Thus, golems straddle the line between soulless artifacts and things that are animate and corporeal in the same sense as anything else animated by a spirit – human, zombie, whatever. Because of this, they get special treatment: Healing spells work, but only if cast by the person who blurred the line.

Which raises interesting questions in settings with both Healing spells and digital intelligences. Do mechanical people have souls, and if so, will Healing spells work on them if cast by their creator? What if their creator is another digital intelligence? Can a soulless creator intelligence capable of working magic cast Healing spells on its "offspring" even though it cannot itself be healed? Can its living creator cast Healing spells on those beings? Fun stuff for gamers who like a pneumatological dimension to their games.

[Flyndaran]

Golems are almost always created by individual mages. A.I.s are usually created by an entire company's R&D team.
If the setting allows more "natural" reproduction, then I think it's just that, reproduction, rather than "creation" in the same sense.