It would be fine having lights instanced even if they have different measurements.
You can scale individual lights - which may be a solution in some cases (albeit not all).
that’s what I’m doing at the moment…
It’s not quite the same thing but 3dsmax has the option of instancing a controller - if you have a light selected and open up the track view, the multiplier of a light (for example) will have an animation controller. You can right click and copy this controller and then right click > paste on to another light’s multiplier - it’ll give you the option of copy or instance and if you choose instance, the two of these are linked. You could also drive a load of lights in one go by instancing a vray colour map into the texture slot and use this to control all of their colour and multiplier?