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Ah, the "Star Trek Transporter disintegrates YOU and creates a perfect copy that IS NOT YOU" postulate. Not to worry. This is MAGIC and a definable essence called a soul. So sure, in that situation where you go to sleep in one body and awake in another, better body (that is YOU because...

Actually they are you, as if by ... magic. Your soul, memories, abilities and personality all inhabit the cloned body. A body which is a clone of your original at its' current or younger age. I would certainly take a clone of my 25 year old body today if this complete transference occurred...

Perhaps a good vs evil divide here as well? We've seen some good-aligned liches at times in D&D but the archetype is definitively evil. The use of sacrificed souls to sustain themselves is a fundamentally evil act in most circumstances. There's nothing particular evil about creating some...

It's a cinematic trope. If the good guy could do Blazing Murder Fist all the time, why didn't he use it on the first hundred mooks that attacked him instead of saving it for the BBG? Because drama! Or, also, in D&D, because balance since spamming a special effect makes that effect ... not...

Well, after 66 pages this issue appears to finally be reconciled. Now, who's going to start the World Peace thread?

All good ideas. Liches don't get away scot-free, though, as they do need to sacrifice souls to their phylactry from time to time.

And if they're not in their lair? Why do all dragons have the same stock Legendary Actions? A bit of differentiation would be nice and add more flavor to all encounters, not just those involving a lair.

Insanity is an option. Though many iconic lich's stand out as repeat characters that last over decades vs a Bond Villain's one-time, throw-away utility. Or perhaps Lichdom is the ultimate expression of necromancy, a demonstration of power that enables existence beyond life and therefore...

Much agreed. Interesting that most of D&D's iconic evil mages chose the Lich route over serial-cloning because the seduction of flesh over eternity has it's own allures.

That seems like a personality disorder rather than a reasoned decision made by a genius intellect. True, undeath has some advantages but it has significant disadvantages as well. A phylactry offers high security from permadeath, but so does hiding a large number of backup clones.

True dat. That's the nature of the game when you're appealing to a broad audience. We'll see what the XGtE changes bring.

Dragon Legendary Actions are boring and need to be spiced up, in my opinion. Every type of dragon should not have the same copy-paste options. That said, Wing Attack is awesome because it allows the dragon to prone out all adjacent and get into the air where those pesky GWMs can't hack it to...

Why would a powerful mage choose lichdom over having a living, breathing, younger clone to transfer into upon death?

One strawman argument is that WotC somehow owes the community a fully balanced economics system that works with gold and magic items in all styles of games. The truth is there ain't no such critter. At least not for the whole or even majority of the community. Different games and groups will...

Other than organized play, which has item regulation ostensibly as a method of balancing various tiers of play (with hit-and-miss success IMHO), I don't see any implied bad-wrong-fun implication. The models provided by WotC are suggestions that go along with their idea of bounded accuracy...

After years of working with Bounded Accuracy I find that more compelling than the gotta-level-my-gear hamster wheel model.

Pretty much. Often we wound up with not-quite-the-thing we were looking for custom magic items that were flavorful enough to tempt us and usually with some sort of flaw, too. It gave the DM a chance to magic-craft and put interesting unique items into the players' hands. Some balance issues...

The first game I recall having a magic shop in was somewhere in the early '80 somewhere in Greyhawk. The DM would roll a few dice, consult the treasure tables and determine what was available at that time at Ye Olde Magik Shoppe. There would be some amount of bantering to see what sort of...

I started with 1st Ed AD&D and there wasn't what I consider to be a full magic item vending/creation system there, either. Some modules would mention magic shoppes in some towns and their items/prices sometimes but it was an add-on and not a full mechanic. It wasn't until 3e that magic was...

Sorry, that's what I'm saying. Take it or leave it. There is a camp of D&D players who have had issues with how they adhere to 'official' products since the beginning. I've never been one to see an official product as any more than a template for me as the DM to tell the story. The final...