Help incorporating Kalashtar in "standard" D&D 5e

[Mandrake]

Hello forum,

I am about to run some games for my gf and her girl friends that have no experience with D&D. We were looking at all the existing races on D&D Beyond and one of them fell in love with the Kalashtar. I don't know anything about Eberron.

Mainly, my question relates to the Plane of Dreams -- where can I find some information on the plane of dreams in "standard" D&D 5e? I find nothing in the DMG. Am I missing something? Also, I don't want to have to include Dal Quor and quori and stuff like that (again, I know nothing about this), so does anyone have any ideas about what might be the entity in the Plane of Dreams with which this Kalashtar would be engaging? Any directions, previous experiences, or ideas are welcome.

Thanks.

[KyleG]

I dont know anything about the realm of dreams but I flavour the kalashtar as like a trill. A spirit essence group consciousness but it can have A more significant aspect of its choosing, giving that individual access to its collective knowledge.

[Evaar]

Other settings don’t really have a Plane of Dreams. Check in to see if that’s what they’re interested in with regard to the race (as opposed to the character abilities).

If it is, couple options:
1) Learn about Eberron. It’s a really great setting with a gazillion story hooks and lots of flexibility. You may find you want to run a game set there.
2) Port them to another setting, make the Plane of Dreams a previously unknown part of the Far Realm. Psionics in most settings come from there, in Eberron it’s Dal Quor and Xoriat (the plane of madness, which is basically the Far Realm). So you can just merge the two into the Far Realm and bring as much of the story as you want. Are they humans who were possessed by relatively benevolent Great Old Ones? Are they a sect of monks whose meditative techniques tread along the edge of madness? Weigh in with your players to see how you can best adapt them while retaining the core fantasy that caught their interest.

[Unoriginal]

Hello forum,

I am about to run some games for my gf and her girl friends that have no experience with D&D. We were looking at all the existing races on D&D Beyond and one of them fell in love with the Kalashtar. I don't know anything about Eberron.

Mainly, my question relates to the Plane of Dreams -- where can I find some information on the plane of dreams in "standard" D&D 5e? I find nothing in the DMG. Am I missing something? Also, I don't want to have to include Dal Quor and quori and stuff like that (again, I know nothing about this), so does anyone have any ideas about what might be the entity in the Plane of Dreams with which this Kalashtar would be engaging? Any directions, previous experiences, or ideas are welcome.

Thanks.

Sounds like it could be a demiplane of the Astral Sea.

[JackPhoenix]

You're not missing anything, there's no (demi)Plane of Dreams in the default 5e setting. You can find some mentions of it in previous editions, but it was scattered and not really detailed.

[Millstone85]

And idea I had was to replace the quori with vestiges.


Vestiges are deities who have lost nearly all their worshipers and are considered dead, from a mortal perspective. Esoteric rituals can sometimes contact these beings and draw on their latent power.
The Astral Plane is the realm of thought and dream
Visitors occasionally stumble upon the petrified corpse of a dead god or other chunks of rock drifting forever in the silvery void.A kalashtar could be someone who is linked in dream with such a sleeping astral colossus.

[Sception]

The core aspect of the Kalashtar is that their souls are (usually) voluntary hosts for a (usually) benevolent non-corporeal extraplanar refugee. Trill from star trek is a good comparison, except without the physical slug body, and with the added narrative hook that hanging out inside the souls of mortals isn't a natural part of their biology but rather is a result of them hiding from an enemy that drove them out of their home dimension.

In adapting them to a more standard D&D setting like Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk you have a few options. You could port over the realm of Dreams as is as a demi-plane, probably bordering between the Astral Sea and the Far Realm (which is basically equivalent to Eberron's realm of Madness), and have the Kalashtar end up in mortal souls after fleeing a hostile incursion from the Far Realm, or else perhaps rival spirits from the Realm of Dreams itself. Either way, you'd probably just port over the the Quori and the Dreaming Dark as well. Alternatively, you could have the Kalashtar be relatively benign natives of the Far Realm itself, and seek mortal hosts to escape enemies or predators there, again probably bringing along the Quori as well.

Or you could go for a more extensive re-write. Maybe the Kalashtar spirits were once mortals themselves, a civilization that sought enlightenment and immortality through a great psionic ritual that merged their souls with their astral bodies, leaving their mortal bodies behind. The ritual worked, but eventually they made enemies in the astral plane or attracted the attention of unknown astral predators, forcing them to flee back to physical reality in search of mortal hosts willing to shelter them. Maybe they're hunted by the Gith, who sense some kinship between the Kalashtar's new, psionic, semi-parasitic nature and the Mind Flayers. Or maybe there's a new type of Far Realm creature that finds the Kalashtar's psychic astral souls particularly nourishing as a food source, in which case again you probably bring port the Quori over as well.


Once you have an adapted back story in place, it's easy to slot the Kalashtar themselves into any setting. Kalashtar do have a homeland in Eberron, but they look like normal humans (or even normal individuals of other races - a strong case for Tasha's style race trait swapping), recognize each other psychically rather than through physical signs, and outside of their homeland in Adar they mostly live in hiding, passing off their settlements as normal examples of the mortal hosts they're inhabiting. You could port Adar into other settings as well, which would take more effort, but you don't have to.
As with Changelings, any random village could be a Kalashtar village, and any larger city might include a small Kalashtar community within it, and the party would only ever know if one or more of them happened to be Kalashtar themselves.

[HappyDaze]

Hello forum,

I am about to run some games for my gf and her girl friends that have no experience with D&D. We were looking at all the existing races on D&D Beyond and one of them fell in love with the Kalashtar. I don't know anything about Eberron.

Mainly, my question relates to the Plane of Dreams -- where can I find some information on the plane of dreams in "standard" D&D 5e? I find nothing in the DMG. Am I missing something? Also, I don't want to have to include Dal Quor and quori and stuff like that (again, I know nothing about this), so does anyone have any ideas about what might be the entity in the Plane of Dreams with which this Kalashtar would be engaging? Any directions, previous experiences, or ideas are welcome.

Thanks.

What made you fall in love with the Kalashtar?

In all seriousness, if you strip out the parts about their origins and connections, what is really left?

[Chaosmancer]

Hello forum,

I am about to run some games for my gf and her girl friends that have no experience with D&D. We were looking at all the existing races on D&D Beyond and one of them fell in love with the Kalashtar. I don't know anything about Eberron.

Mainly, my question relates to the Plane of Dreams -- where can I find some information on the plane of dreams in "standard" D&D 5e? I find nothing in the DMG. Am I missing something? Also, I don't want to have to include Dal Quor and quori and stuff like that (again, I know nothing about this), so does anyone have any ideas about what might be the entity in the Plane of Dreams with which this Kalashtar would be engaging? Any directions, previous experiences, or ideas are welcome.

Thanks.

If you strip out the Quori and the Dal Quor plot, then all you are really left with is a person bonded through their bloodline to a psychic spirit.

There is no Realm of Dreams in the rest of DnD, but like other have said you could find this spirit in the Astral Sea or from the Far Realms or maybe even just have it be a psychic being from the material plane.

That said, researching into Eberron is worth it. I'm playing in a game set in the home of the Kalashatar, and the entire plot revolves around the struggle with Dal Quor and the Inspired (the Kalashatar's dark reflections) and I find it beyond fascinating.

[Luccan]

My adaptation for 3.5 (a silly idea I had using only free and legal material for PC creation and monsters) involved making the Plane of Dreams largely inaccessible and cut off outside of sleeping individuals, but its inhabitants were exceptionally curious, rather than being refugees. In a move I later realized was very similar to the trill, I decided the spirits would bond to many individuals over time and collect that knowledge, eventually returning it to their fellows. This also made the plane itself a desirable location for gathering information, even though it would be very hard for even powerful mages to actually get to.

[Naanomi]

Historically the great wheel cosmology has either a Demiplane of dreams or a ‘dream realm’ in the Astral somewhere... I don’t think 5e has referenced it yet but I *think* there is reference to the realm of nightmares (traditionally part of that dream place) in some of the monster entries... I’ll have to dig later

[GentlemanVoodoo]

Hello forum,

I am about to run some games for my gf and her girl friends that have no experience with D&D. We were looking at all the existing races on D&D Beyond and one of them fell in love with the Kalashtar. I don't know anything about Eberron.

Mainly, my question relates to the Plane of Dreams -- where can I find some information on the plane of dreams in "standard" D&D 5e? I find nothing in the DMG. Am I missing something? Also, I don't want to have to include Dal Quor and quori and stuff like that (again, I know nothing about this), so does anyone have any ideas about what might be the entity in the Plane of Dreams with which this Kalashtar would be engaging? Any directions, previous experiences, or ideas are welcome.

Thanks.

Well you could just say the Plane of Dreams are another realm connected to your setting much has how the Fey Wild, Astral Sea, etc. is.

But in simplistic terms, the easiest incorporation is just to make them more evolved humans. If looking at older D&D lore, they could be substituted in as the Forgotten Realm Spirit Folk or if your going more psionic elements in your setting then make them as like the Elan. But without knowing more about the setting your going for, evolved humans is probably the easiest catch all to incorporate them.