Plane of Dreams

Features
Your dreams can indeed hurt you. Of course, most mortals live out their lives without coming to any harm in the great untamed wildness of the Dream World, but some are not so lucky. When an average dreamer enters the Dream World, she retains all her abilities and even gains dream-stuff equivalents of carried or worn items. Likewise, her hit points, ability scores, and all other values are exactly as they were before she fell asleep. For example, if she is a 5th-level wizard with a wand of lightning, she can use both her spells and her wand in the Dream World. When she wakes up, she'll find that she neither cast any prepared spells nor expended charges from her wand.

If a dreamer or dreamwalker dies in a dreamscape, she wakes immediately with a hammering heart but is otherwise unharmed. A dreamer or dreamwalker pulled slain in the Dreamheart also dies on the Material Plane. Worse, their spirits are snared forever at the heart of the Dream World, so Raise Dead and Resurrection spells don't work.

Dreamscapes
Many dreamscapes are small-no more than two or three rooms in a drab building, a small clearing in a stormwracked forest, or a mist-shrouded rural crossroads. Other dreamscapes extend for miles and contain all manner of oddities, architecture, and inhabitants. However, all dreamscapes share one feature: the dreamer.

The dreamer's unconscious mind forms the dreamscape, which the dreamer then moves through, usually unconscious of the fact that he is dreaming at all. The dreamer alters large or small aspects of his personal dreamscape, though he never does so consciously unless trained in Lucid Dreaming. Dreamscapes usually burst when the dreamer awakens, although occasionally dreamscapes linger or survive permanently under unusual circumstances or magic.

In extremely rare cases, a dreamscape ruptures, sending its pieces and visitors into other dreamscapes or onto the Material Plane. Objects from ruptured dreamscapes usually last 1d% hours on the Material Plane, but 1% of them achieve permanent reality.

The Dreamheart
The dreamscapes, in all their infinite numbers, are only the edge of the Dream World. They border the Dreamheart, a realm where dreamers can die. The Dreamheart is a roiling boil of dream-born landscapes that melt, burn, grow, and dissolve without any rhyme or reason. Balls of fire, pockets of air, chunks of earth, and waves of water battle against each other. Amid the chaos, half-melted dreamscapes drift—lakes, buildings, streets, strange creatures, and small islands. Some provide shelter against the tempest, but others are open to its deadly effects. These are dreamscapes that have been pulled into the Dreamheart, usually after their dreamers have awakened.

Waking up in the Dreamheart is more difficult, requiring a Wisdom check (DC 18). In the Dreamheart, a random flare of fire, electricity, or flood can take the life of a dreamwalker at any moment. Likewise, a dream-born creature can swoop out of the chaos and eat an inexperienced traveler. When death comes in the Dreamheart, it affects the physical body as well.

Dreamheart Tempest: Unless sheltered by a solid dreamscape, exposure to the tempest deals 25 points of damage each round: 5 points each of sonic, electricity, cold, fire, and acid damage. Like any storm, the tempest of the Dreamheart has an eye. If there is any mind, deity, or purpose in the Plane of Dreams, it can be found in the Eye of the Dreamheart Tempest. But each character who visits it comes away with a completely different understanding of what lives in the eye—some meet deities, others find long-dead loved ones, and others achieve unparalleled personal power or insight. No one account can accurately encompass the Dreamheart, much as no dreamer can completely understand all dreams.