Sand Dreamers

Ability Score Increase. When determining your character’s ability scores, increase one score by 2 and increase a different score by 1, or increase three different scores by 1. You can't raise any of your scores above 20.

Age: Sand Dreamers reach maturity at the same rate as humans. On average, they live to about 300 years old.

Alignment: Sand Dreamers tend towards lawful neutral. Tapping into the subconscious minds of other creatures gives sand speakers a sense of perspective. They see creatures in their most vulnerable states, witnessing their brightest hopes, deepest desires, and darkest fears.

Size: Sand Dreamers have smooth, elongated features. They range from 6 to 8 feet tall and weigh between 150 and 250 pounds. Your size is Medium.

Speed: Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Magical Nature: Sand Dreamers are not organic, and run off magic. As a result, they do not need to eat, drink, or breathe. They are immune to disease and the poision condition.

Darkvision: You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Languages: You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language of your choice.

Sand Form: As an action, you, along with everything you are wearing and carrying, transform into fine sand for 1 minute. This effect ends if you are reduced to 0 hit points. While in this form, you retain your walking speed and lose all other movement speeds you have. You can move through a space as narrow as 1 inch wide without squeezing. You gain resistance to nonmagical damage. You can’t talk or manipulate objects, and any objects you were carrying or holding can’t be dropped, used, or otherwise interacted with. You can’t attack or cast spells. Once you use this trait, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.

Oneiromancy: You know the message cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the sleep spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the silence spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Dream Walk: As an action, choose a sleeping creature that you can see within 10 feet of you. You enter a trance state for up to 8 hours, acting as a messenger. While in the trance, you are aware of your surroundings, but can’t take actions or move. You appear in the target’s dreams and can converse with it as long as it remains asleep, for the duration of your trance. If the target wakes during your trance for any reason, your trance immediately ends. You can’t shape the target’s dreams or alter your appearance when you dream walk—you are only a visitor. You can emerge from the trance at any time, ending this effect early. The target recalls the dream perfectly upon waking.

Note On Entering Dreams: The Dream Realm does not abide by the laws of the material world, so sand speakers hoping to gain information must think outside the box. For example, in real life, the ability to read—be it a book, a sign, even a clock—is not processed in the subconscious part of the human brain, therefore we are unable to read in our dreams. While a dozing creature might believe it’s reading, a Sand Dreamers inside the dream may come across inscriptions written in gibberish or books filled with blank pages. Similarly, creatures in dreams are products of the dreamer’s subconscious and may look or sound differently than who the dreamer understands them to be—if they have a face at all! Knowing this information can help GMs and players convey dreams as distinct, vivid experiences with unique problems for characters to solve.

Each sand speaker has a single name, determined by a motif found in their first dream walk. Sand speaker names are gender-neutral.

Example Sand Dreamer names

• Caress

• Dance

• Drown

• Fall

• Run

• Song

• Spider

• Teeth

• Whisper

Credits: Sand Dreamers are inspired by Justice Arman's The Dream Kin chapter of the Arcadia. In it, he wrote a homebrew race called the Sand Speakers. Max modified the lore to fit his world, and made very minor additions to the mechanics.