Derpykat5

I feel like I've seen a meme of this nature with the exact opposite take on this exact same frame.

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.

Never, hence the air quotes. It's an analogy. I've been over this already with someone else.

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

I'll drop the analogies since they're clearly confusing you.

You also seem to have lost the plot here. We're talking about the proper way to address a table of murderhobos and bring them back in line.

Sure, throwing an unwinnable encounter at your players to punish them for their behavior is potentially a way to do that - but in my experience it's more likely to foster an adversarial relationship between the players and the DM. Even if the players get the message it's possible that they might interpret it as "play my way or else".

If your players are all murderhoboing, there's clearly a disconnect in your expectations for the table. The best way to address these kinds of disconnects is through open communication. If you pause things to make it clear that people aren't playing in the way you'd prefer, you can have a genuine discussion about how to roleplay that can take as long as it needs to. You can come to compromises or draw attention to things much easier than if you just throw an unwinnable scenario at them to humble them. If your players are all murderhoboing and all want to murderhobo, maybe you're the odd one out and you need to change your expectations. Or find a new table. But you won't know for sure until you have that discussion on a level that a super-NPC can't get you.

It's just an analogy. Here; let me try one more time.

If you're playing a horde shooter and your friend reveals they can just spawn a boss on top of you at any time, it kind of kills your desire to keep playing - at least with them.

No offense, but you seem overly fixated on all the wrong things.