Creating a virtual machine from an existing virtual machine directly

Is it possible to create a virtual machine from an existing virtual machine without the use of snapshots? Assume the existing virtual machine is offline.

I see that I can create a template from a virtual machine, and then a virtual machine from the template.

I am also unable to find any good documentation that explains things like the long term performance costs of a snapshot based VM or what happens if I create a snap clone of a VM that was a snap clone of another VM, etc.

Thanks,

Paul