I really like the book myself.
I personally believe that the most powerful sub class is the Shaper. Not in offensive capabilities, however, but is a great one if you love to use your imagination. It's a wonderful thing to be able to create items out of thin air, even if they don't last forever.
The Shaper is a sub class of the Psion.
It uses Metacrative powers:
- Astral Construct A: Creates astral construct to fight for you.
Minor Creation, Psionic: Creates one cloth or wood object.
- Psionic Repair Damage A: Repairs construct of 3d8 hit points +1 hp/level.
- Concealing Amorpha, Greater: Quasi-real membrane grants you total concealment.
Ectoplasmic Cocoon A: You encapsulate a foe so it can’t move.
- Fabricate, Psionic: Transforms raw goods to finished items.
Quintessence: You collapse a bit of time into a physical substance.
- Hail of Crystals A: A crystal explodes in an area, dealing 9d4 slashing damage.
- Crystallize: Turn subject permanently to crystal.
Fabricate, Greater Psionic: Transforms a lot of raw goods to finished items.
- Ectoplasmic Cocoon, Mass A: You encapsulate all foes in a 20-ft. radius.
- Astral Seed: You plant the seed of your rebirth from the Astral Plane.
- Genesis X: You instigate a new demiplane on the Astral Plane.
True Creation X: As psionic major creation, except items are completely real.
From:
Power List :: d20srd.org
The Hypertext d20 SRD (v3.5 d20 System Reference Document) :: d20srd.org
Now, here's an example of what I mean by being very powerful:
Take Minor Creation:
Minor Creation
Conjuration (Creation)
Level:
Sor/Wiz 4 Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: 0 ft.
Effect: Unattended, non magical object of nonliving plant matter, up to 1 cu. ft./level
Duration: 1 hour/level (D)
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
You create a non magical, unattended object of nonliving, vegetable matter. The volume of the item created cannot exceed 1 cubic foot per caster level. You must succeed on an appropriate
skill check to make a complex item.
Attempting to use any created object as a material component causes the spell to fail.
And with this you can make many different things.
For example, rubber comes from trees, and how many things can you make from rubber?
When rubber cures, it is a nonliving vegetable matter. At least as far as I know.
And you can actually have a ready source of income.
Amber is also non-living vegetable matter as well, when you think of it.
Another thing is too you can use plant materials to form healing medicines.
Then you can also get MAJOR CREATION which does:
This spell functions like minor creation, except that you can also create an object of mineral nature: stone, crystal, metal, or the like. The duration of the created item varies with its relative hardness and rarity, as indicated on the following table.
And that opens up even further worlds of possibilities.
But the thing with this is though you pretty much have to separate character knowledge from player knowledge. Because a medieval character is not likely to know about things like rubber gloves and copper wiring or things like that.
But still, imagine being able to create mystical metals out of thin air.
At tenth level, that's roughly one hundred cubic foot of material. Imagine a hundred cubic foot that is one solid piece of diamonds.
And that could actually help ruin an economy.
Imagine a hundred cubic foot of sticky tar on a surface which would be large enough to entangle a huge amount of people. imagine it being flammable then you've got a huge fireball. Imagine a hundred cubic foot of Greek fire.
You could make a small fortress out of steel with a hundred cubic foot of material.
But the thing is though, this kind of character would be very dangerous to other countries and nations. And some would send assassins to go and kill him because he could create these kinds of things.