my attempt at fixing the martial-caster divide; I present... "spells" for martials!

tl;dr (I wrote, or rather rewrote, a book): new but straightforward "spellcasting" mechanics for martials, a unified "Initiator/Martial Adept" category for all martial and half-martial classes, 9 martial schools with 20+ maneuvers in each one resulting in nearly 200 new abilities that ALL martial classes can have access to, and a comprehensive set of rules and guidelines which will help DM's easily implement all of these into into their own D&D 5e games

Link to the homebrew: Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords (5e Conversion)

wall of text below:

Yes, yes, they exist and they're called maneuvers, I know, but what I have here probably isn't what you would normally have in mind. It's a bit more literal

To explain myself, for as long as I've been playing D&D 5e and joining in the community discourse, the martial-caster divide has always been a topic of never-ending discussion and hot takes, and for a good reason.

Personally, I love my martials as they are; simple and effective. I can understand why these classes were designed this way, especially when taking into account new players' experience and the gargantuan amount of core rules and mechanics they're faced with when entering the hobby. Now imagine them playing a full spellcasting class for their first time and having to read up and decide on a long list of cantrips and level-appropriate spells on top of trying to keep up with their character sheet and game rules.

So I, like many others, certainly don't want to take away or replace these aspects of martial classes, or the game itself for that matter. What I do want is to offer experienced players the tools and options to create more interesting, versatile, and most of all, fun, martial characters without breaking the game. And, yes, I do know about the thing with Battlemaster maneuvers and how they should be an option for all Fighters/Martials, etc. and well... this module is basically that, but multiplied by like a hundred.

For older D&D edition players, or for those familiar with anything 3.5e, the link attached this post probably gave you flashbacks (or PTSD). It's a particularly famous, or maybe more in-famous(?), supplement book that basically codified shonen anime characters as martial classes into D&D 3.5e. And while I hope I'm not just redoing that same song and dance, a lot of the ideas that the book ("Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords") presented was actually— dare I say— pretty cool.

So for the past month, I've taken it upon myself to perform this herculean and borderline psychoapthic work to rewrite, revise, and revamp this two-decade old supplement book in the language and mechanics of D&D 5th edition :D

Now...

Do I honestly think this is going to fix, or address, the martial-caster divide in any meaningful way? Not really, no.

I'm definitely not the first to have, and execute, this idea, and I probably won't be the last. To be frank, this book has barely even been playtested, save for a couple of combats in my own D&D group's table and a whole lot of white room number crunching. So if this looks like a 50-page book of bad ideas, I don't blame you.

However, I have been playing D&D 5e for nearly a decade now and a DM for half that time. During that span I've come across a myriad of homebrews from multiple DM's and players alike (including myself), gave my players homebrew items, feats, and abilities, took away my player's homebrew items, feats, and abilities*,* and written essentially hundreds of pages worth of homebrew in my time. If I'm confident in anything, it's my ability to write (semi)balanced homebrew.

This book isn't just a reapplication of the original Tome of Battle, where only the new classes presented in the book have these maneuvers. Rather, it's an entirely new system that allows any martial, or even half-martial (Paladin, Ranger), class the access to the nearly 200 abilities/maneuvers found within the module to mix-and-match as they wish (with some limitations of course).

What I will say about this book is that while it's definitely not the fix to the martial-caster divide (probably not even a good fix at all in general), what it has done for me and my group has allowed us to make martial characters and npc's that are so much more versatile, flavorful, impactful, and most important of all, just way more fun to play.

So while I don't actually think this book will do anything to change the discourse around the topic, if this all leads to even just a couple more D&D groups and tables being able to enjoy creating and playing martial classes just a little bit more than what the game offers now, there's not really more I can ask for. So if the contents of this book looks cool to you and makes you want to try it out in your own games, thank you! Or if you have any opinions or suggestions about this conversion module or any of its contents, by all means! I'd love to hear all about them :)