Greetings D&D Beyond and Community,

I had an idea for a Character, and was planning to have their Nightmares be a big part of their backstory, and was looking at which deity was in charge of Dreams/Nightmares, and I find... there is not one listed in the PHB Appendix B: Gods of the Multiverse.

I did a Google search and saw in a Reddit that one person stated that Sehanine Moonbow was a God of dreams, but it doesn't say so in the PHB.

Do any of you know of a God that deals in Dreams or Nightmares that is not listed in the PHB?

Let me know... Cheers!

Not in the core books of 5th edition no such deity is listed.

However, DMs are free to create one, the ones in the books are only examples, not an exhaustive list.

PHB does also say you can use other pantheons like the Greek pantheon. While not explicitly listed, again it's just examples because Greek pantheon is very big. In Greek myth, Hypnos is God of Sleep and Morpheus is God of Dreams. 

I think that's a good question.  I can't think of any specific dream gods, but it's been like three editions since I've been really into the various pantheons.  

One thing to consider, is that the PHB is outlining gods with domains that map to clerical domains.  In the present ruleset there isn't a "dream" domain.  Like maybe Twilight Domain could do in a pinch, but I think your question of no specific dream god points to the lack of a dream domain for Clerics to serve in.  I'm sure there's some homebrew stuff, but I can't think of a time where "dream magic" was a niche to any class in any edition (though I could see possible cool Bard Colleges, and maybe a divine domain or Warlock pact, or a Druid circle).

tl;dr I think there isn't because of the way clerical magic is designed so there's no "dream logic" for the mechanics, so to speak.

Tangentially, if you can find old issues of MCDM's Arcadia, I remember a really cool article presenting some dream/sleep based species.  One was kinda a phantasmagoric "weird looking" being, another was constituted by sleep sand, and third had more cosmic qualities.  There was some pretty inspirational ideas in the write ups, and maybe some of their features could get ported over to a Dream Domain cleric, and the Cleric's God.

Quote from MidnightPlat >>

I can't think of a time where "dream magic" was a niche to any class in any edition (though I could see possible cool Bard Colleges, and maybe a divine domain or Warlock pact, or a Druid circle).

Are you maybe thinking of the Circle of Dreams, perhaps?

As for finding a deity for OP's character, focus on a specific element of dreaming that fits and find one via that route. A god/dess of prophesy or divination would make sense for a character whose nightmares are warning of future events, while a deity of illusion might fit if your character has fantastical/horrific visions in their nightmares that they use to power their magic. That sort of thing.

Right, Circle of Dreams (never ran or played alongside taking that and completely forgot about it).  

Another thing, it may simply be DMsGuild extrapolation, but I think I've seen more than one DMsGuild author talk of a "dreamlands" that relates to the Prime Material plane in the same manner as the Feywild and Shadowfell (some call these three "echo planes").  Is that older edition lore I never picked up? Seems odd more than one author would come up with this unless they were recycling older lore.  And maybe if dreams have an origin in "dreamlands" maybe D&D gods are therefore 'hand off', whereas a Circle of Dreams Druid observes the connection between the prime and dream world.  Make cool head canon at least. 

Quote from MidnightPlat >>

Right, Circle of Dreams (never ran or played alongside taking that and completely forgot about it).  

Another thing, it may simply be DMsGuild extrapolation, but I think I've seen more than one DMsGuild author talk of a "dreamlands" that relates to the Prime Material plane in the same manner as the Feywild and Shadowfell (some call these three "echo planes").  Is that older edition lore I never picked up? Seems odd more than one author would come up with this unless they were recycling older lore.  And maybe if dreams have an origin in "dreamlands" maybe D&D gods are therefore 'hand off', whereas a Circle of Dreams Druid observes the connection between the prime and dream world.  Make cool head canon at least. 

Maybe older edition. Sounds like the Astral Plane. The Astral Plane is the plane of thought, ideas and dreams. Storms there are psychic winds, denizens there never age and often develop psychic potential. It's a plane that connects to all others and often used as a means of travel - and one of the few means of such that cannot be blocked by deities. In fact gods who lose all followers can be slain there - their bodies end up as fragmented parts in the astral sea, unbound from any other realms, as forgotten memories. 

In 5th edition, the Astral Plane is the world of dreams.

Sandman! I mean he's not D&D, or anything. But he's a cool god of dreams.

Wow, thank you all for the great responses!

You all gave me some really good ideas and inspiration that I had not thought about yet.

Big Love to all of you :)

Cheers!

I definitely agree or see that logic, but I'm sure it wasn't it because the specific cosmology I'm thinking of _also_ has an Astral Plane/Sea.  I'll have to give it a look at come back to this thread with it to with a better representation as to how this "dream echo plane" works.

I'm really glad Sandman had been mentioned.

I honestly prefer to make up my own gods and pantheons or use some from mythology. Maybe the idea was that dreams are more of a tool used by all gods and not a specific god's domain. It does feel like a huge oversight though. 

If you want inspiration for your own dream god, definitely look into the Sandman by Neil Gaiman. The Sandman by Hoffman might also be helpful. Morpheus, Hypnos, and Phantasos were all dream gods and Somnus was a god of sleep who had a thousand sons. Far Darrig was the leprechaun's evil cousin who fed on fear and gave people nightmares. Ahbcan was a dwaven poet of the Tuatha De Denann. He was able to send people into a magical slumber before sailing away on a ship with tin sails, which sounds pretty dream-like to me. 

Quote from The_Summoning_Dark >>

If you want inspiration for your own dream god, definitely look into the Sandman by Neil Gaiman. The Sandman by Hoffman might also be helpful. Morpheus, Hypnos, and Phantasos were all dream gods and Somnus was a god of sleep who had a thousand sons. 

 
I assume you're referring to the books not real myth? In real myth Hypnos is the Greek god of sleep, not dreams. Somnus is the Roman god of sleep. They're the same god, given different names due to Roman myth incorporating Greek myth as part of their Interpretatio Romana - taking and renaming deities from other cultures into their own.

Quote from Cyb3rM1nd >>

Quote from The_Summoning_Dark >>

If you want inspiration for your own dream god, definitely look into the Sandman by Neil Gaiman. The Sandman by Hoffman might also be helpful. Morpheus, Hypnos, and Phantasos were all dream gods and Somnus was a god of sleep who had a thousand sons. 

 
I assume you're referring to the books not real myth? In real myth Hypnos is the Greek god of sleep, not dreams. Somnus is the Roman god of sleep. They're the same god, given different names due to Roman myth incorporating Greek myth as part of their Interpretatio Romana - taking and renaming deities from other cultures into their own.

 I figured I had probably repeated the Roman and Greek counterparts but I was just going from memory and couldn’t remember which was which. Besides, the Romans had some different interpretations of the same gods so researching both might come up with different results.

You can also look at The Black Ballad by Storytellers Forge. They actually create several new domains with Dream being one of them. There are a few new deities and suggestions for where these new Domains would fit for existing gods.

For what it is worth, I've always felt that dreams (in D&D and fantasy in general) work as a really great avenue for communication between deities and their followers.  Prophets, seers, holy folks, etc, might be visited by a god or angelic messenger in their dreams.  Also, the idea that dreams might offer a character some glimpse into the Astral or Ethereal Planes as they slumber is really cool as a plot device.  Something else to consider is the idea that (in some lore) Elves do not dream, at least not until near the ends of their lives.

All this, to me, makes the idea of there being a Deity of Dreams (or an entity attempting to become a Deity of Dreams) really fertile ground for writing stories, settings, or pantheons in D&D.  What I'd want to see addressed (as a player) would be -

If there is a deity of Dreams, does that mean other deities can't or don't communicate via dreams to their followers?
What is this deity's relationship with living beings that don't/can't dream?
What *are dreams in a world where there is a deity that governs them? Do they always have significance or meaning?
Are nightmares the same as dreams, in this instance, and if so, what do they signify (if anything)?
Do gods dream?

Those sorts of lines of thought and inquiry could lead to some really fun places!

You can either pick a deity that has some relation to it, so changing an already existing deity to make it so that in the end the deity can also have the domain of Dreams.

Another option is to homebrew it with any IRL deity or even making one yourself.