Tome of Battle has eight chapters and an introduction. The book accomplishes this via three revised melee classes, each equipped with versatile combat maneuvers and stances that can be expended in the same way that magic users expend spells. Mechanically, the purpose of the book is to increase the viability of melee combatants in the game to be comparable to magic user characters in high-level play. The book summarized this concept as: ' Tome of Battle isn't your parents' D&D - it's bigger, bolder, and more fantastic than ever before.' The book notes the success and acceptance of Eastern fantasy in the west - characterized by the acceptance of games like Final Fantasy and movies like Kill Bill - and attempts to capture this by incorporating elements of martial arts into a D&D campaign.

Tome of Battle was written to give players a chance to play characters ' the genres of Far East action games and the 'typical' D&D game world,' in contrast to the standard 'knights and castles and dragons' that most of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e was focused on. The book chronicles the rise and fall of the fictional Temple of Nine Swords within the D&D universe and introduces an entirely new 'initiator' subsystem that gives greater flexibility. Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords is an official supplement for the 3.5 edition of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2006.

3.5e warblade