I used to use pandoc for my bachelors papers, which needed to be submitted as word documents. I never used templates but had a rather large "one-liner" pandoc command to convert my markdown files.
At the time I'd not got round to understanding the yaml front matter etc. I even user Zettlr for a while [0].
I then discovered quarto [1] and this changed everything. Much nicer experience. I used this for my masters papers.
I think the tooling around pandoc is what makes it such a good tool. I remember attempting restructured text and latex and having a right hard time.