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The 5e D&D Basic Rules v0.1 description of the second-level cleric spell Aid says (p. 83):

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.

I'm a bit confused as to what is supposed to happen to the PC's current HP when the spell ends. Obviously if it's above their normal maximum, it should fall. But do they lose 5 of their current hit points even if it's already lower than their regular hit point maximum? That seems to be what the text is saying, but that seems off to me.

It sort of makes the Aid-granted hit points the opposite of 5e's temporary hit points, in that they're lost last.

In short, I don't trust my reading of the spell. Can anyone help explain it to me?

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They go away. The spell gives you a loan of 5 current HP and 5 max HP, and when the spell ends, you give 5 max HP and 5 current HP back.

(Maybe they intended you to keep the current HP like in other healing spells, but I'd be hard put to reason that the "for the duration" somehow makes the maximum HP temporary, but not the current HP too. We've also little indication this was a mistake, other than it's surprising. So, let's go by what they wrote.)

That can drop you to 0hp, but by the end of the 8 hours, you're probably resting and in a healthy state, and the loss of a portion of your HP won't be devastating.

The fact it can drop you to 0hp might be surprising, but it makes sense from the spell's description:

Your spell bolsters your allies with toughness and resolve.

The spell gives you a little bit of extra oomph to keep you going. (Well, eight hours of oomph.) When the spell goes away, that oomph does too. If you're decently healthy, you'll feel slightly more worn. If you're at 1-4hp, basically on the brink of passing out and dying, then this oomph is the little bit extra that's still keeping you going, and it will be bad if it goes away.

Have healing spells handy if you have someone under Aid, and keep track of time to make sure they're in a healthy state when it ends.

Of course, if you find the above absurd or terrible or something else, you can feel free to say the 5hp granted goes away first, just like temporary HP.

Isn't it Temporary HP?

Probably not. D&D 5e does have rules for Temporary Hit Points, but this spell doesn't appear to grant them. They could have written "temporary HP", but instead they wrote "current HP".

The argument could be made they should be interpreted as Temporary HP because they're temporary, but nothing in either Aid's description nor the writing about Temporary HP really suggests this interpretation should be made. Aid seems to grant real HP, which means it can do things Temporary HP can't do, like bring you back from 0hp.

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I asked Mike Mearls about this on Twitter:

Are the hit points from "Aid" supposed to be temporary hit points?

general rules for HP should cover that - your current hp cannot go above your max. if they are, they drop to your max immediately.

This sounds like it's somewhere in-between the answers we've got here. When Aid expires, your current hit points are adjusted down to your natural max, if they're higher than your max. Otherwise, they're yours to keep, I guess.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Mr. Mearls does not seem to have really understood the concern. It's not about the maximum (max xp going down while still at full life) that we're worried, rather the opposite (does current XP go down as well when the effect ends?) \$\endgroup\$
    – Zachiel
    Aug 2, 2014 at 0:24
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    \$\begingroup\$ Mearls appears to have misread the question: we know that at max HP it goes away, but what about at lower health? Maybe he implicitly thinks he wrote that you can keep your current HP in this spell, or isn't aware of what the spell actually says (possibly on account of not having written it)? \$\endgroup\$
    – doppelgreener
    Aug 11, 2014 at 22:00
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    \$\begingroup\$ Mearls seemingly did offer more guidance on this subject, via this Sage Advice tweet from 2016. Mearls' answers aren't considered official, of course, but at least it's some sort of guidance from WotC. \$\endgroup\$
    – JWeir
    Mar 13, 2020 at 15:55
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    \$\begingroup\$ Also: as of the January 2019 Sage Advice Compendium, even Crawford's tweets aren't official rulings anymore, just "previews" of rulings that may appear in the SAC. However, Mearls' tweets rarely even have any relation to what the rules actually state, even when he manages to understand what the question is asking (which he clearly didn't in the case of the tweet quoted in the question); the tweet by Mearls linked in JWeir's comment is simply incorrect based on the rules (as seen from doppelgreener's answer). \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast ♦
    Aug 29, 2020 at 22:32
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    \$\begingroup\$ Mearls has admitted elsewhere online that his answers are what he would do as DM, not what the rules state/support. He no longer gives answers at all though, which is good. \$\endgroup\$
    – Seth R. Feldman
    May 13, 2021 at 16:04

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