[RPG] Can the 5th-level spell Dream contact a petrified creature

conditionsdnd-5espells

A player would like to cast the 'Dream' spell on an ancient statue of a petrified hero. Thematically this is wonderful, sure – but does it work by RAW?

Here are possible answers we discussed / lacking backing:

  1. Rule of Cool: A creative and fun use of the spell! Advances the plot. Not abusable. Why not? Find out if statues dream of stone sheep

  2. Incapacitated people sleep… why not statues?: As 5e lists 'petrification' as being incapacitated ('no actions / reactions') and is 'not aware of the space around them'. Sleep = 'unaware of time's passage'. Thus all petrified creatures default to a place resembling sleep. Besides, the Dream spell is powerful magic – this isn't just shaping biological dreams, it is providing a telepathic uplink between 2-3 creatures for an eight hour span.

  3. Bricks Do Not Dream! One cannot attain REM-state nor entertain any neurobiological capacity whilst granite. As solid stone, one is not Han in carbonate! Just like an elf that can not sleep, neither can a statue. Even if you successfully cast a Sleep spell on such a person-statue, such a creature cannot even entertain this rest-state unless Greater Restoration is used.

We are sure that that the first answer is by FAR the most magical, thematic and/or fun (R.A.F.). As a DM, I also fear that the last answer is most logical and/or closest to 'R.A.W.' Still, we would like your collective perspective on this, with thanks.

Long story short:
Is there any ruling, be that a tweet from Mr. Crawford (or other such source), that might suggest that Dream can be used on petrified creatures?

Best Answer

In general, this is not possible (RAW)

Dream only works on a creature that is asleep. Nothing in the petrified condition says that the petrified creature falls asleep - in fact, it is not even unconscious (the game condition).

Therefore, the petrified condition alone is not sufficient for the dream spell to contact a creature.

However, by RAW petrification also does not make the target immune to sleep. This means that Dream could still work if there were some additional effect that caused the (petrified) target to count as sleeping. This could be achieved in one of several ways:

  1. If the petrified creature was asleep at the moment it was petrified, one could argue that it should still be asleep and thus casting Dream on it should work as expected.
  2. You could also first target the petrified creature with the Sleep spell. If it is affected by the spell (depending on its hp), it explicitly falls asleep. The same holds for other spells causing a creature to fall asleep.
  3. In fact, the petrified condition does not even say that the creature stops needing sleep, so by one (very strict) reading of RAW, you could argue that the petrified creatures still follows the normal sleep cycle. Note: I would not recommend doing this in an actual game.

As a final note, the target of Dream does not have to be asleep - it only has to be a creature that can sleep. So you could target the petrified creature (unless it is e.g. an elf) in any case. However, if it is not currently sleeping, the only effect would be that you (or your messenger) falls into a trance until you decide to end the spell.

That said, the DM could allow it anyway

Petrified is a strange condition in 5e, in several ways less restrictive than one would expect and its mechanical effects seem incomplete to cover or model typical narrative aspects of "thousand-year-old statue of petrified hero". Personally (and independent of RAW), I probably would not allow Dream to work in this situation, at least not without some further complications (research, a personal item of the hero, an Arcana check, ...) and only if it makes sense for the story. In any case, I would certainly not allow the circumvention of such a house-rule via any of the arguments listed above.

If your DM rules that Dream does not work, you could also try Detect Thoughts instead, which seems more clear-cut in that it works on petrified creatures. The question of what the thoughts of a statue might look like after a thousand years is left to the reader.

Related Topic