What's New: Homebrew Subspecies, Species Spells, and Proficiency Control

Your homebrew toolkit just leveled up.

This week, we're shipping three features that give you way more control over species design, innate magic, and edge-case mechanics. If you've been building custom worlds, these are the tools you've been waiting for.

Let's break down what's new.

🧬 Homebrew Subspecies: Build Your Own Subraces

You've always been able to create custom species in ICE5e. Now you can create custom subspecies (subraces) with the same depth and flexibility.

In official D&D, subspecies add nuance. A Hill Dwarf plays differently from a Mountain Dwarf. A Wood Elf has different strengths than a High Elf. But what if your campaign has Ash Elves who survived a volcanic apocalypse? Or Tundra Dwarves adapted to frozen peaks?

Now you can build them properly.

• Ability Score Increases — +2/+1 or +1/+1/+1 (2024 style), or fixed bonuses (2014 style)
• Speed adjustments — subspecies that are faster or slower than their parent species
• Darkvision ranges — because not all elves see equally far in the dark
• Weapon and armor proficiencies — cultural training reflected mechanically
• Tool and skill proficiencies — subspecies expertise (e.g., Mountain Dwarves with smith's tools)
• Damage resistances — fiery bloodlines, cold adaptation, necrotic tolerance
• Languages — cultural or regional tongues
• Innate spells (yes, this ties into the next feature)
• Special traits and mechanics using the improved Mechanics Editor

Your custom subspecies will appear in the Species Selection step during character creation, nested under the parent species just like official subraces.

• Worldbuilding DMs running homebrew settings with unique cultures
• Players who want a mechanically distinct version of an existing species
• Campaign-specific variants (e.g., "Shadowfell-Touched Halflings" for a dark campaign)

✨ Species Spells: Innate Magic, Done Right

Here's the big one: species and subspecies can now grant spells with full spellcasting support.

Previously, if you wanted to give a homebrew species innate magic (like Tieflings get Thaumaturgy or Drow get Faerie Fire), you had to hack it with traits or tell players to track it manually.

Not anymore.

• Species spells are granted automatically during character creation
• Spellcasting ability selection — choose Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma (just like official innate spellcasters)
• Spell save DC and attack bonus are calculated and displayed on the character sheet
• Level-gated spells — grant spells at specific levels (e.g., Misty Step at 3rd level, Fireball at 5th)
• Spells appear in the Spells section with proper tracking (uses per day, spell slots, etc.)

When creating or editing a homebrew species/subspecies:

When a player selects that species during character creation:

• The spells are automatically added to their character
• Save DC and spell attack bonus are calculated based on the chosen ability
• The spells appear in the Spells section with the "(Species)" tag

• Elemental-themed species (fire genasi with Burning Hands, air genasi with Feather Fall)
• Fey-touched lineages (Charm Person, Entangle, nature magic)
• Divine heritage (aasimar variants with healing or radiant spells)
• Psionic species (homebrewed mind flayer spawn with Detect Thoughts and Levitate)
• Campaign-specific magic (all elves in your world know Prestidigitation because reasons)

🎯 Proficiency Bonus Adjustment: For the Edge Cases

This one's niche, but if you need it, you really need it.

Some homebrew features, magic items, or house rules adjust proficiency bonus in ways that don't fit the standard leveling curve. Maybe your DM gave you a cursed item that reduces your proficiency bonus by 1. Maybe you're playing with a custom feat that grants +1 proficiency for specific checks.

Now you can manually adjust your proficiency bonus in the Combat section.

• Open the Combat section of your character sheet
• Next to your Proficiency Bonus, you'll see a small adjustment input
• Set a modifier (e.g., -1, +1, +2)
• Your proficiency bonus updates across the entire sheet — skills, saves, attacks, spell DCs, everything

• Exports to PDF (so your printed sheets are accurate)
• Syncs to Foundry VTT (if you're using that integration)
• Updates dynamically as you level (the adjustment is applied on top of your level-based bonus)

• Magic items or curses that modify proficiency
• Homebrew class features with unusual proficiency scaling
• House rules that tweak proficiency for specific campaigns
• Testing build optimizations with temporary bonuses

🛠️ Under the Hood: Better Data Handling

We also made some technical improvements that you might not see directly, but they make everything smoother:

• Homebrew subspecies spells are extracted and applied correctly during character creation
• Species spellcasting ability is stored with the character and respects multiclassing rules
• Proficiency bonus adjustments thread through all calculation functions (skills, saves, attacks, DCs)
• Test coverage for subspecies spells and proficiency adjustments (so bugs are caught before they hit production)

🎉 Try It This Weekend

All of these features are live right now. Head to https://ice5e.com and:

And if you've been sitting on homebrew ideas because the tools weren't quite there yet — now they are.

What's Next?

We're continuing to expand the homebrew toolkit. Coming soon:

• Homebrew subclass improvements (better progression tracking, level-gated features)
• Party-wide homebrew sharing (DMs can push custom content to their players)
• Species traits library (pre-built mechanics you can drag-and-drop into custom species)
• Import/export for homebrew (share your creations with the community)

Happy rolling. 🎲