Aesthetically pleasing design

[Koeh]

I'm trying to make a monster manual and homebew handbook for my favorite system thats been dead for a while ( rule of cools Legend for anyone interested) I'm mostly done at around 250 pages, but I'm having trouble getting the text, images and formatting in a way that looks good to me. Right now I'm only using basic tools, Word, Google docs etc, but after all the work I've put into this project I kind of wanted to print it out to bring to my groups table.

Does anyone have any suggestions for programs that you use to format your homebrew to make it look, I guess more professionally made? (SideNote, it will not be sold in any way shape or form, I just want it to look good) Ideally something where I could at least transfer the text I've already written, perhaps with superscripts in tact? My Google fu brings up too many options and wanted to get some opinions.

[notXanathar]

The ones that immediately spring to mind are GM binder and the Homebrewery. You can just plonk the text in, and, with a little formatting, it will look really good. It will, on the other hand, require some getting used to, and may be guite time consuming given how much detail you say you have. It will also make it look like the D&D players handbook, so it that's not what you want, then you may have to try elsewhere.

[Bjarkmundur]

I'm having a similar problem, although not as severe.

Any tips on fonts would already be a huge improvement.

[Segev]

Ariel and cambri seem to be the most common general fonts. As to layout, you can spend a great deal of money on it. For something fairly basic, look back to the old 2e AD&D Monstrous Manual: block, two-column text with a set-aside square in one column for an image. It's older and not in the "modern" style, but it worked and it looks decent.

The modern style of having images with irregular edges and text hugging the curves is just not really doable without a lot of time and effort.