Can a Simulacrum regain health from class features?

Question

My proposed question comes from the School of Necromancy wizard's Grim Harvest feature (PHB, p. 118):

Grim Harvest

At 2nd level, you gain the ability to reap life energy from creatures you kill with your spells. Once per turn when you kill one or more creatures with a spell of 1st level or higher, you regain hit points equal to twice the spell’s level, or three times its level if the spell belongs to the School of Necromancy. You don’t gain this benefit for killing constructs or undead.

By RAW, would this be a way to avoid the 100GP cost per hit point restored associated with “repairing” your simulacrum?

Answer 1

Strict RAW: you can heal a simulacrum, but it goes against intent and common sense

There is no explicit statement in the spell description specifically forbidding healing the simulacrum via other means. Thus, by strict RAW it is not forbidden to do so.

However, allowing this goes against the intent of the spell as well as make the spell more powerful than it already is by providing lots more avenues for healing.

Rules as Intended and Common Sense: No, the alchemical process is the only way it can regain hit points

Rules as Intended

Jeremy Crawford makes the intent of the spell clear in a Tweet made before the 2018 errata:

To restore hit points to a simulacrum, you must use the costly alchemical procedure mentioned in the spell.

(emphasis mine)

Rules as Common Sense:

If the simulacrum is damaged, you can repair it in an alchemical laboratory, using rare herbs and minerals worth 100 gp per hit point it regains.

Repair not heal

First note that this does not say heal it says repair. Though treated as a normal construct it is still a special being made of ice and snow. It is that reason that it likely has a special way to repair it.

Allowing other forms of healing means that the alchemical process would be useless

This statement must preclude other forms of regaining hit points otherwise it is meaningless. Even though it does not say so explicitly, the above method is clearly meant to be the only way to regain hit points for a simulacrum.

It does not say that potions or healing magic or rest doesn't work for example, but if they were possible then the expensive complicated process for healing would be meaningless and there would be no point in including it. Sleep especially makes this meaningless because it is free and available to every creature/class and allows for healing completely. Why would anybody ever pay 100gp per hit point if they could sleep or use any of the myriad of other methods for regaining hit points available? This logic also applies to traits or features or magic that let you heal.