I remember offhand it being 50 GP per level of the spell you want to cast, though I can't say where in the PHB I read that.

It's 3000 GP just for the material components, plus another 400 to pay the caster. At one gold piece a day (the amount a skilled artisan earns) it'd take 11.5 years to earn a clone with a poor lifestyle (2 SP per day).

So you're living a poor lifestyle for basically half your professional life, just to earn the ability to repeat your professional life and spend another 11.5 years of it earning the ability to repeat your professional life just to spend 11.5 years of it earning the ability to... you get the idea. You'd also need to find a caster capable of casting an 8th level spell, which is rare.

Possible? Yes. Popular? I doubt it.

A clearer way to phrase it might be "there are no rules for the genre of fantasy". An individual world needs self-contained rules, yes, but just because Tolkien's Dwarves have beards regardless of gender doesn't mean that your Dwarves need to be the same.

... and now you're making wild assumptions just to discredit my point of view instead of making any actual counterargument.

I guess even if you were right (and you aren't) I'll never learn. Not with people like you around who refuse to explain their side of the debate.

If that's the expectation that's been set up for the table, sure. But jumping straight from murderhobo shenanigans to "Ok here's a god to stop you, roll initiative" isn't the way I'd handle people playing the game in a way I don't like. I've been over this all already with another poster; it causes problems and might not even solve the ones you're using it to solve.

Do you understand the context of the discussion?

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but to me I'd consider throwing a god-level NPC at your players explicitly to punish them for their behavior to fall pretty squarely under "screwing them over". Not to say players should be allowed to do whatever they want, but I'd expect a smoother escalation than that.

I guess I should stop using analogies then.

The point isn't whether the players are competing with the DM. The point is that there's two people playing a game and one person can just screw over the other whenever they feel like it. Painting that in a competitive setting hits closer to home for a lot of people since they're more likely to have experienced that themselves. It wasn't meant to be indicative of how I perceive a good player/DM relationship.

I'm sorry, I had no idea it would confuse so many people so badly.

Wild magic Sorcerer: I do not control the Lobsters (they just kind of showed up)

That's better communicated through... communication.

I don't know about you, but if I were playing a game to win and my "opponent" reveals that they can just cheat and instakill me whenever they feel like, I'm more likely to just stop playing the game than to try to play it for fun. Even if I did try to play it for fun, it would be hard to really enjoy it when I know that any encounter can just be a big middle finger.

If you don't explicitly tell people what they're doing wrong and how to fix it, it's unlikely that they'll figure it out on their own.

You check the label and realize it actually says "Tenser's floating Dikc", but the salesman is already gone.

Arcane Dye - for when you don't want to worry about mixing your whites with your reds.

Healing Ward - blocks all heal effects on the target.

Heap Metal - for when you don't feel like paying a hireling to collect the gear of that bandit camp you just slaughtered.

Antilife Spell - wait, I guess that's just Power Word Kill...

Burning Lands - when Fireball just isn't Fireball-y enough for you.

Chromatic Orc - summons an orc ally. A different color each time you cast the spell.

Control Hater - a more powerful version of Command that only works on things that are currently hostile to you.

Fire Stork - that wizard must have really hated storks. Incinerates the nearest stork.

Fig Cloud - an alternative to Hero's Feast for vegan parties.

Glyph of Barding - acts as armor for your horses.

Prismatic Ball - hold on, I've been notified this was just a mistranslation of Chromatic Orb. Never mind.

Rope Brick - this is what you get when you let the Barbarian make spells.

Sheep - conjures a sheep.

Stonespin - does what it says on the tin.

Runbeam - force the target to move their full speed every turn.

Rime Stop - I was kicked from a table after bringing this into a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign.

Wash - why would you spend a 9th level spell on Prestidigitation?

In my eyes, the Rule of Cool is best used as the opposite of the Air Bud Clause. (For those who don't know; the "Air Bud Clause" refers to a rule in basketball that basically says "it's not allowed just because there's no rule against it".) TTRPGs are imperfect systems, and you are going to run into a scenario that isn't covered in the rules. Rule of Cool is best used here, rather than to bypass rules that do exist.

But also; some systems can be really crunchy, and a lot of the time it can be more fun for everyone involved if you just say "you know what, that's cool, let's do it" than to pause for five minutes to leaf through some rulebook (because seriously; you can't always know the entire rulebook by heart) trying to determine if and why they can't.

Of course, doing this too much is dangerous. Hence "in moderation".