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One can talk about IRL battles being morale-based, etc; that touches on the "combat as war" vs " combat as sport" mindsets. Modern DnD lends itself much more to Combat as Sport, though obviously you can go against type. But anyway, both behaviors can be desirable: You want the party to let...

Yes, to both. But players are risk-averse, they want to succeed- if a bad guy lieutenant escapes, the player is probably thinking that it'll make things more difficult for them later on. That might be correct, or it might not. It doesn't often occur to them that if they killed this lieutenant...

The gods can't enter Sigil, supposedly because of the Lady- but maybe he did some finagling there.

Enemies retreating: the players never want to let them do so, and if it's DnD the mechanics are working against the baddies trying to retreat. A retreating enemy means either 1. they're going to alert other enemies nearby, 2. it's an enemy that might come back for you another day, or 3. they'll...

Ah yes, fair, considerations of word count... but isn't that always the case?

You've been a player at such tables- have you been a DM for such mixed tables? Players can be sensitive to the needs of others at the table, but usually as a DM it's almost required to try to challenge the party as a whole.. that means challenging the optimized characters, without murk'ing the...

"It sucks, but you gotta do you! You're always welcome back of course!" Priorities change. It's like any other circumstance where a friend is gonna be spending less time with you... but yeah, if the main mode of hanging out is DnD, well that's gonna mean goodbye. I guess one thing you can try...

5e adventures could do with a lot more sidebars from the designers talking directly to you, the GM, about why they designed this and that for what reason, what came up during playtesting, and how you might handle different circumstances. Earlier editions' adventures, particularly in 3e, had such...

Is there a transcript floating about?

Yup. My big two issues are 1. challenging said mixed party, where some are "standard effectiveness" and others are Very Optimized.. and 2. breaking the verisimilitude/expectations of the setting when, for example, a single character becomes capable of soloing something they should have no...

2e had race abilities, class abilities.. it even had backgrounds, kits, and there was even movement and action possibilities. ASIs didn't increase by PC choice, though, you're correct. I did note that 5e had more built-in features, but once you choose your kit path, you're set.

And yet if you toss out the optional rules like feats and multiclassing, 5e was very much like 2e (albeit with more built-in features). But... well... players really like options and builds. I can't fault them.

I always point to, and try to use, 13th Age's Flee/Retreat rule. From their (new) second edition draft: From 13A 1e:

It can be a pain if you have a mixture of optimizer and non-optimizer players at the table.

As others have said, it can also be problematic when trying to challenge the party properly. Using too much, challenging the optimized characters, results in the other characters getting thrashed. Using too little means the encounters are cakewalks.

From the Eberron Campaign Setting (3e)

Can you elaborate on that?

Of note is, ofc, the attunement requirements. Since we did mention a wand, I believe most (all?) wands require the user to be a spellcaster (having the spellcasting feature)... familiars aren't going to fit that bill.