Aid: More Cushion for the Pushin’

Usable By: Artificer, Bard, Cleric, Paladin, Ranger

Spell Level: 2

School: Abjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 30 feet

Duration: 8 hours

Components: V, S, M (a tiny strip of white cloth)

Your spell bolsters your allies with toughness and resolve. Choose up to three creatures within range. Each target’s hit point maximum and current hit points increase by 5 for the duration.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, a target’s hit points increase by an additional 5 for each slot level above 2nd.

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

What is the value of 5 max hit points? Aid asks this of artificers, bards, clerics, paladins, and rangers, and the answer varies class to class, character to character, tier to tier of play. As a baseline, at 3rd level when bards and clerics get it, its 15 hit points for eight hours. That’s probably not worth one of their precious 2nd level spell slots. At 13th level, though, when you’ve got spell slots to burn, thirty free hit points for just one 3rd level slot seems pretty good. Why not add on an extra fifteen-thirty for some 2nd level slots, too, especially before going into a known highly dangerous fight? Then all of a sudden Aid is offering a good chunk of bonus health that can keep allies up for an extra hit, and does it without eating any actions in combat. This seems quite a bit better to me.

Gaining max HP is particularly interesting not because you’ll be healing up to full and getting even more hit points out of hit but because it stacks with itself and temporary hit points. You can cast Aid however many times as you’d like, each granting a bonus 5 or more HP on top of other Aids cast prior. Stack onto this temporary hit points gained through any number of sources and you’re looking at extra beefy characters that will gain action advantage by leveraging hit points that keep them up for one or two more attacks, one or two more rounds of blows. It being non-competitive with other boons sets it aside as something to always keep in the back of your head, always something you can cast to empower some element of your team.

Aid is one of those spells that is at its worst when you get it, and get substantially better as your resource pool expands. It will very often feel “free” to burn two or three lower level slots when you’re playing with 7th+ level slots, especially with features like harness divine power added in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. If you’re a ranger, artificer, or paladin, there probably isn’t a tier of play where you’re willing to spend a 2nd level slot on 15 HP for allies. You’ll almost always have more things you’d rather use that slot for. For the bards and clerics of the world, though, if you’re getting to a point where it's becoming challenging to burn all of your spell slots between long rests, Aid can be an easy way to get a bit more juice out of your resources.

5e Spells

Aid: More Cushion for the Pushin’