My old table played with a very simply philosophy: "If it is in the book, it's all in play"
Suffice to say, there are quite a few books that are allowed, and a few that aren't allowed, however we allowed the entire book as a consequence of this. We did this because it is a simpler way of remembering what is and isn't acceptable. Simple enough right?
Yes and no. We allowed Complete Divine. A very common enough book to allow that most tables would accept as a fairly good book because of the resources it adds for divine characters. In Complete Divine (as an example among other sources), you had the Ur-Priest, and Divine Metamagic in addition to the Sacred Exorcist, the Contemplative, and several other sources. Most notably Rapid Spell. Now, Rapid Spell, by itself isn't THAT powerful, but it is an inadvertent buff to the Conjurer. You've also introduced Lesser Vigor to the game which has a reputation of more or less invalidating out of combat healing if it is persistent (It can't be in this case because Complete Arcane isn't explicitly allowed, but hypothetically, it can be).
Furthermore, players are awarded their GP as appropriate for an adventure or encounter or whatever and, provided there is a means to convert it into whatever resource you'd like (either buying it, or crafting it yourself), you can absolutely make use of it assuming you are willing to expend the resources to do so. Did we allow custom magic items? Absolutely. You pay for it, you can get it. The custom magic items obviously not being too much of an issue because the counter response was that the player could absolutely get whacked with a Disjunction if they weren't careful enough at high levels.
So to answer your question of who was giving these players their various festival of immunities? The players were giving it to themselves. This post in particular is deeply fascinating to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
RNightstalker
High-level play requires more preparation on the players and DM. Knowing your character and NPC's will make the game flow, no matter how you run or what style of play. The game I'm currently in is low 20's and due to the Incantatrix persisting all of the cleric's buffs, it requires a lot more effort for me as the DM to come up with something challenging that actually stands a chance...if the PC's can't die, there's no point. Not that I'm going for the TPK, but I don't want to waste my time either.
Mostly because it does not necessarily require that the players be at level 20 to do so. An assistant buffing Incantatrix can be as low as 7th level to achieve their desired effect with their assistant buffing Cleric.