New Races: Alternate Continuity I, The Mannekin

I love alternate continuity stuff. "Elseworlds" or "What If" stories, talk of alternate dimensions, that sort of thing. I even have an alternate history of Azeroth I might use some day for a game setting. With one of the characters from our most recent Pathfinder game being a dimensional traveler, I thought I'd drum up some races inspired by alternate continuity themselves. These can easily be inserted into a game as dimensional travelers, or even altered to be a similar circumstance in your own world. I tried not to go too off the rails with these, hopefully they're something you can include in a game without some sort of massive rewrite. I tried to stick close to how Pathfinder writes its racial fluff, but frankly sometimes a category will feel pretty irrelevant, so when that happens I'll be leaving it out. In this case, it was relations.

Mechanics-wise, I'm going as close to the advanced race guide as possible, but you'll see a place or two I needed to fudge it. I've tried not to go over 15 race points, but in the future I may need a little leeway with that as well.

I was going to include several races in this post, but frankly? It's either post one full, well developed race or skimp to include more. This is longer than I expected it'd be. Expect more in the future.

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Mannekin


There exists a version of Eberron where the Warforged were never created. House Cannith was not in a position to create living constructs until after the Last War had ended, and thus their plan was wildly different: Instead of constructs bent toward war, a race of servants, craftsmen and entertainers were created.

The Mannekin were wildly popular at first, filling a vacuum of manpower created by the Last War. It became popular with the aristocracy to use Mannekin for as many things as possible, from entertainment to nannies to simply including them in your entourage as a status symbol. Cannith also created and used many of them on their own in manufactories. After all, they don't eat, sleep, or complain.

Rumors of the Mannekin being spies abounded. It was an obvious concern. Sinister plots would only come to light years later when adventurers hired by House Kundarak would uncover the Mannekin's true purpose: Not as spies, but as secret sleeper agents. Once House Cannith gave the signal, the Mannekin would go berserk, killing their owners and destabilizing the five kingdoms.

The threat was solved without much violence. The ritual magic needed to 'activate' the Mannekin and turn them to violence was never performed. Cannith simply was not ready, and unable to perform the ritual even as retaliation. In the Treaty of Hidden Knives, Cannith was sanctioned severely and all Mannekin were declared free persons. House Cannith was also prevented from making any more.

Now that their former position as sleeper assassins was a well known fact, Mannekin were turned out onto the streets in droves. They live as gypsies would, being viewed with suspicion and distrust. They remain gregarious, friendly, and ingratiating, their history as servants and entertainers never truly forgotten.

Physical Description:  Mannekin are usually between five and six feet tall, and while their frames vary, most are slender and elegant. They are a clockwork race, made of varying metals but usually lacquered steel plates hiding complex brass internals. These external shaped plates shift and slide against one another to provide a full range of movement and facial expressions.

Mannekin usually have outlandish and varied appearances, with some of them even appearing as anthropomorphic animals such as foxes or cats. They are normally painted white, but other colors are not unheard of, with light pastels being most popular. Synthetic hair of wildly varying or bright colors is sometimes used, but it's just as common to see a mannekin with steel molding meant to look like a hairdo, or even a permanently attached hat or other head covering. In terms of clothing, Mannequin frequently wear bright colors to contrast with their white paint, and most Mannequin today are dressed as outlandishly as possible, attracted to the dramatic and gaudy. Still, sometimes you will still see Mannequin dressed in the simple black craftsmen's outfits they were sold in.

Mannekin normally have an agile, erudite elegance to their movements and actions. Mannekin who have gone berserk due to magical interference or emotional trauma are wildly different. They shudder and twitch, they hang like marionettes and switch randomly between lurching and moving with amazing speed. Their normally beautiful appearance distends and distorts as their internals go haywire. Commonly their mouths distend into a gaping jaw full of razor teeth or grinding gears. Just as often claws or blades are also seen. A berserk Mannekin can be calmed down and repaired, but just as often they're seen as monsters and destroyed.

Society: Being constructs, Mannekin have no real society. They do share a sense of camaraderie in being outcast, however, and frequently band together to protect each other. Mistrusted at best in many areas, they get by on temporary work and entertainment. Most of the land's theater troupes and bands have one or several Mannekin in them. Many have also bitterly turned to crime, working for thieves guilds or acting as freelance assassins. Mannekin are largely seen as mechanical gypsies, marginalized and pushed to the fringes of society.

Alignment and Religion: Simply put, most Mannekin are not religious. Being effectively immortal, they do not have strong thoughts about an afterlife. In addition, their mechanical nature leads them to being rather pragmatic about their roles or "purpose". You would be hard pressed to convince the average Mannekin that any God had smiled upon them. Morality-wise, they often adopt a live-and-let-live philosophy which guides them toward true neutral in alignment. Being put-upon and mistrusted wears on many of them, however, and they sometimes turn to selfishness and crime to get by.


Mannekin Racial Traits


+2 Dexterity, +2 Charisma, -2 Strength: Mannekin are nimble, gregarious and self-sure, but their construction does not lend itself to physical labor.

Living Construct: While Mannekin are constructs, they are powered by strong life magics that give them several distinct differences to traditional constructs.

- Mannekin have a CON score and do not possess darkvision or low-light vision.

- Mannekin are NOT immune to mind-affecting spells and abilities.

- Mannekin are immune to poison, disease, sleep effects, paralysis, bleed, nausea, fatigue, exhaustion, sickened, and energy drain.

- Mannekin do not heal naturally. A DC 20 Craft(Mechanical) or other appropriate craft skill will repair 1D6 damage, plus 1D6 for every 5 points of the check result above 20.

- Unlike other constructs, Mannekin are NOT immune to critical hits, non-lethal damage, stunning, ability damage, ability drain, death effects and necromancy.

- As living constructs, Mannekin can be affected by spells that target living creatures as well as those that target constructs.

- A Mannekin takes damage from spells such as Heat Metal or Shocking Grasp as if they were wearing metal armor.

- Mannekin do not need to eat, sleep or breathe but can still benefit from consumable items.

- Mannekin can be resurrected or raised. The mannekin's corpse does not decay, and can be repaired to count as a whole and intact body. Raise Dead's time limit still applies.


Built to Serve: Mannekin receive a +2 racial bonus to all Craft and Perform checks.


Elegant Armor:  A Mannekin's tough construction and steel plates provide a +1 natural armor bonus.


Alternate Racial Traits


Liars and Thieves: Some Mannekin embrace the stereotype they have been saddled with. They receive a +2 racial bonus to Bluff and Stealth checks. This trait replaces Built to Serve.

Elegance of Learning: Some Mannekin were employed as sages or library helpers and developed a thirst for knowledge. They receive a +2 racial bonus to Linguistics and a single Knowledge skill of their choice. This trait replaces Built to Serve.

Berserk: Mannekin will often teach themselves how to activate their latent defenses, using anger or other severe emotions. These mannekin can choose either a bite attack which deals 1D6 damage or two claw attacks which deal 1D4. These modifications are only visible when the Mannekin is using them. This modification ruins the placement and arrangement of their protective plates, however, and they lose the Elegant Armor trait.

Consummate Entertainer: Mannekin were sometimes further enchanted for entertaining children. These Mannekin are able to use Prestidigitation at will, as well as Silent Image and Ventriloquism once a day. This trait replaces Built to Serve.

Luck of the Downtrodden: Many Mannekin rely on luck more than pragmatism. These Mannekin gain a +1 luck bonus to all saving throws. This trait replaces Elegant Armor.


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Inspirations

OKAY, OKAY before we go any further, YES they were somewhat inspired by Five Nights at Freddy's, more specifically Circus Baby and Ballora. Don't sidle up to me grinning and poking me like you figured out some big secret. Anyway, there are several other places this came from. I used to always joke about a hippy Warforged Druid who called himself a Peaceforged, but I decided to take that idea in a more logical direction and ask what Warforged would be like if they weren't made for war.

They're clockwork because I've always had a soft spot for clockwork beings like Orianna from League of Legends or those evil aristocratic French robots in Doctor Who. I also wanted to draw a clear line between them and Warforged: Warforged were made from hearty materials to be as tough as possible, because they were soldiers. Mannekin are built to be elegant and pretty, and not to get in a fight. Even if the ritual to 'activate' them as sleeper agents would have been performed, it would've been a lot of attacking from ambush or killing sleeping aristocrats.

As for their position as untrusted former sleeper agents, there's two major reasons. One is that there needed to be a reason private individuals were giving up their property because I didn't really want heavy themes of slavery here. This way, I could draw a parallel to Gypsy stereotypes without being offensive. I also love the idea of a dangerously broken machine, lurching and hanging like a broken puppet, flailing dangerously. Like I presume Warforged are treated, Mannekin are too because of this, mistrusted because of the potential for violence. The fact that some of them DO flip out and bite you probably doesn't help.

Mechanics wise, you'll see I had to do some fudging. Mannekin are probably somewhere between 12 and 16 race points, depending on how many points you feel Living Construct is worth. I would say it costs ten points for similarities to the Plant type, but I admit it could be lower due to the drawbacks inherent to it. I also quietly put aside some of the drawbacks of the traditional warforged such as not being able to wear armor. After all, the whole point of buying a Mannekin would be to dress it in fine clothing, so they're built with that in mind. I also backed off on the Warforged penalty to healing, because the Repair Construct spells don't exist in Pathfinder and not everyone would appreciate porting a whole line of spells into their game just for a single race. They also lack the inability to resurrect the Warforged, because that's pointless and dumb. I had to alter the Berserk trait a bit from what the book recommends, since for some reason it severely overvalues bite attacks. I made it work identically to Maw or Claw for Tieflings, which is also a 2 RP trait since it replaces a spell ability. I did want to give them a few racial feats, but frankly I couldn't think of any, and a lot of the Warforged feats simply don't apply. Maybe in a future post.

Oh yeah, and the name is a really obvious pun. I hope you enjoyed that. See you next week with another race.

The Ninja Problem

"Are you watching, Neji? I was saving this ace-in-the-hole to use against you. See what you have to look forward to?"


You know, I really didn't expect to have so many of these. Hell, after I wrote about Paladins I sort of thought that was the end of it. It turns out that there are a lot of classes or character concepts out there that bring baggage along, though. I don't think any of them are bad, really. As you've seen, a lot of this stuff comes from misunderstanding, or even poor writing on the part of game designers. With Paladin, most of the problem is that we carry around a lot of notions about what a Paladin is supposed to be. If there's a single concept that has this problem even worse, it's the Ninja. forgive today's funky format a little, because we're talking about a character concept that not only spans game editions, but even game settings and rulesets. Ninjas exist in a metric ton of games, including ones like Legend of the Five Rings which are all ABOUT the concept.

Our big trumped-up and "false" ideas of ninjas actually come from a long fucking time ago. The eighteenth century, to be exact. Mercenaries and spies became popular in Japan during a period of unrest in the 15th century. By the time Japan was unified by the Tokugawa Shogunate in the 17th century, most of these "Shinobi" had faded into obscurity. However, the legend was so compelling that it stuck around, embellished with stories of superhuman abilities like invisibility or walking on water. Just like most "Medieval torture devices" like the Iron Maiden were invented in the Victorian age to shock people and not for real use, the concept of Ninja were largely invented after the fact too.

You can see why. Ninja survive as a concept because they're so fucking cool. Agile dudes with hidden weapons and neat tricks, fighting with shadow and magic. Even the whole black pajama look is kinda cool. So naturally, we want to play them. Developers want to include them. Here's...sort of where our first problem lies.

When something is included in a game, it's largely because that concept can't easily be emulated somewhere else. Take PF's Swashbuckler for instance. Without that class, how would you be able to play a charismatic fighter who uses agility and a single weapon? You could play a bard or rogue and not use several of your abilities. You could play fighter and give up the benefit of your off hand. You could multiclass. None of those options are exactly good ones, so Swashbuckler exists, with special abilities themed toward the concept.

Everything we know of ninjas, from reasonable, realistic abilities to the fantastical magic ones can be emulated by classes that already existed in 3e. However, people expect cool ninja shit beyond simple equipment and feats, so 3e added several. The first was a bizarre and arguably overpowered prestige class in Oriental Adventures called Ninja Spy. It wasn't hard to get into and sought to cram as many iconic abilities as possible into ten levels. It gave you a ton of utility but slowed down your sneak attack progression. The same book also has Shadow Scout, which is another version of Ninja expressed as a prestige class. The kindest thing I can say about this class is that it exists. There's virtually nothing it provides that you can't get easier somewhere else. Oriental Adventures also has ninja weapons and  several iconic pieces of ninja gear like flash paper and eggshell grenades.

You'd expect that from a book called Oriental Adventures so I'm going to forgive that. Then later, there's even more of it in Complete Adventurer, including a Ninja base class which reads like an alternate rogue. Their version of Sneak Attack, called Sudden Strike, even removes sneak attack's ability to use while flanking, cementing their position as ambush strikers and also incidentally making the class completely worthless when compared to rogue. Finally, in Book of Nine Swords, one of the (blessedly wider-themed) classes includes Shadow Hand techniques, which are even more ninja crap.

You probably see where I'm going with this, but in case you don't, another problem is that a big pile of weird ninja shit is immediately included in every game which has even the barest hint of Asian content. You want to play a ninja, and immediately you're drowning in crap you feel like you should take even when you could play a ninja quite well just taking bard, rogue, or even wizard.

It guides us toward ridiculousness and silly behavior in a lot of ways, two things that are ironically quite against actual ninjitsu. There's a lot of very silly stuff out there themed toward ninjas, like the Mamukigama in Rokugan D20's Way of the Ninja splat. In case you didn't know, that's a long chain with a Kama attached to one end, and a live snake tied to the other. You whip it at people and it bites them. Normally I forgive Rokugan since it's a setting where ninja and ninjitsu are extremely important, but I'm never gonna forget that one.

So you want to play a ninja without being an absurd cartoon character whose antics annoy the rest of the group. All you need is a healthy understanding of what a ninja is supposed to be at its core, which you can then embellish with all the fantastic magic or cool gear you can find. I thought what I'd do is go over the four major things Ninja were used for in the 16th century and give play advice based on that. Yes, I'm using wikipedia. If someone can find me a copy of the Bansenshukai I'd totally use that instead, but wikipedia says it was written in 1676 so I'm not holding my breath.

Espionage and Sabotage. This is going to be 90% of your ninja, just like playing a rogue. A ninja's bread and butter is deception and information, even moreso than a rogue. They were mercenaries, meaning the theme of your character shies away from your typical party rogue, even if you can fill that role just fine. Costumes and cover identities will always be a part of a ninja, since to have been noticed is to have failed, even if you did your job. A rogue wearing black leather armor will probably never have the information gathering ability of someone wearing a secretly armored kimono or artisan's outfit and saying they're a simple painter. You can get into and out of a lot of places simply by looking like you're not important, and ninja thrive on this.

Assassination. Being mercenaries during a time of unrest, they were called upon to do things a military would need. Not much to say here, other than your average ninja is going to be a little more hardlined than a thieves' guild style rogue and willing to do whatever it takes.

Countermeasures. This is another interesting paramilitary thing they were called on to do, one that I don't think a typical fantasy thieves' guild gets into. They were hired out to counter other ninjas, so you could easily work a perceptive, defensive nature into a character as well.


With that out of the way, let's get down to the root. There's one major problem with ninja: The silly shit. The silly weapons, the silly equipment, the silly black pajamas and the silly notions about how you should be acting. I'm gonna try to solve this with an analogy to much-maligned Anime, Naruto.

I bet a lot of people left like, right after that line.

Anyway, first off we have to sort of forgive the show for being mostly about fighting, because it's a shonen anime. However, if you actually watch some of the show, you can see the seeds of how ninja should be acting everywhere. The winners in a fight frequently use deception or secrets to their advantage. During the Chuunin exams, Naruto wins against Neji(a much better fighter than him, let's be real) by repeatedly faking him out, ending in a "wounded gazelle" gambit with a shadow clone that knocks Neji out cold. When Rock Lee fights Gaara, Rock Lee nearly triumphs over an essentially invincible opponent because he knows secret, forbidden techniques he's only allowed to use in defense of his personal philosophy.

Before I make my point, let's move momentarily over to Ruroni Kenshin and the character Hannya. Through the entire anime, he uses disguises and subterfuge to manipulate events. When forced to fight, his final secret is that the tattoos along his arms are an optical illusion, making it seem like his arms are bending and stretching. He nearly wins against Kenshin until the samurai thinks to use his sword to measure Hannya's arms.


What am I getting at? What's the key to all of these ninja I discussed? You sure can get away with a lot of silly shit if you remember the core of the character: Deception. Be subtle with motives and actions, use deception and cleverness to get ahead and the rest basically doesn't matter. You can approach this concept from so many places and use so many classes or builds: that's why it's so compelling. All you need to do to turn an eyerolling concept into a cool one is to be subtle and wield deception as your weapon. This works great in a group willing to let the rogue do planning. Hell, I never advocate deceiving your friends OOCly, but you don't HAVE to tell them you're a ninja. See how far you can go describing and playing your character before they get it.

The semi-arrogant reveal of your plan is a really fun one, and subtlety, preplanning and deception let you pull that out a lot. If you want another example of this, I'll paraphrase the story of where the black ninja outfit came from. I'm not entirely sure if it's truly where the concept came from, but it's such a neat story that I'll believe it anyway.

If you don't know what Noh theater is, it's a kind of traditional Japanese stage play. It often has helpers wearing all black against a black background who are assisting with the visuals of the play: like stage hands but in plain sight. There was a Noh play once where a character was killed in the final act by one of these stage hands: Or rather, someone the audience THOUGHT was a stage hand. They saw him and dismissed him. They didn't believe he was part of the play until he acted.


I think I'll leave you with that as today's best piece of advice. A ninja's victims only know the truth when it's far too late. Keep that in mind and you can probably use all the eggshell pepper grenades, poison blow-pipes and floating shoes you want.

Self-Sacrifice and Roleplay

"It'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

Aw, what the heck, I'll laugh anyway."


I was totally working on another post right after Ivory Tower Design, something unrelated that's been bumping around in my head a lot. Well, my buddy Chris suggested a topic that dovetails really nicely with last week's post. I looked down at the one I was working on, all 3/4ths finished, and I was completely ready to just blow him off. This one's almost done! I'd already talked about his suggestion a little, even. It could wait! But then, it came up three or four more times when talking about the post. Chris is right, this really does bear discussing right now.

There's a certain attitude among a certain type of roleplayer. They firmly believe that being willing to sacrifice their character's effectiveness for "roleplay" or theming makes them a better roleplayer than someone who built a mechanically effective character. This can infect the way the people around them think, because if they really believe this, they'll probably go out of their way to point it out when they've done it. They might even try to advise others to do the same or berate people who haven't.

Before I go any further...We're gonna talk about the Paizo forums a bit today. If you're coming from there? Sorry, but I mean everything I'm about to say. Try to take it as constructive criticism and look inside yourself to see if you need to improve how you play Pathfinder. Don't look to others to tell you how to feel or to validate your opinion. Think for yourself.

Ahem. Paizo's official forums are, in general, a preposterous little echo chamber full of bad ideas. Forums in general can easily fall prey to this, because people tend to collect where they all agree and push others out. Nobody on the internet really ever seems to want intelligent discourse. So, Paizo's forums and other similar places are why this otherwise preposterous idea still has legs.

I'm not going to put words in anyone's mouth, but I'm going to try and explain why people think this way before going over why it's wrong. Basically, a lot of RPers see themselves as superior because they're willing to make a sacrifice and the "power gamers" aren't. Basically, they see a willingness to play a substandard character such as an orc wizard or dwarf sorcerer as meaning they care more about roleplay than someone who played a powerful combo, like an orc barbarian or dwarf cleric.


I want to be super clear here.


This wildly prevalent attitude is one of the worst ideas in modern gaming.


This is an awful way to think and will only serve to cause strife in your group.


Period.


Ahem. Now that I'm done being dramatic, let's talk about it. We'll start with the whys first. After all, I need to back up my statement with facts, so here we go. I'm sure this concept has a technical term, but I'm calling it false sacrifice. Yes, false. A lot of the people I've met insist that the mechanics are less important than the roleplaying and character building of the game, then try to insist they're a better RPer for making this sacrifice. This is a minor contradiction. Essentially, they've sacrificed something they don't care about and are insisting that's significant.

People do this a lot in real life too. They want someone to sweat about something so they'll trump up how big a deal it is. It's because they want something, even if it's attention. Even if it's to demean someone else. That's precisely what's happening here. Whether these people are jealous of the skill someone has with a system or of their effort, whether they have a false notion of how the game "should be played" or whether they just want attention, it's always the same. Throw away something that doesn't matter to you, and then crow about how you threw it away.

No, something that might legitimately set people apart as roleplayers would be to accept a challenge. Playing out of type, or playing someone with a mental or physical disability. Playing someone who's mute has no bearing on your effectiveness (most of the time, sorry casters) but it sure as hell is challenging to play. Being willing to accept a challenge sure would set people apart, but how often do you think I've seen these self-sacrificing RPers do that?

If you guessed never, you win the golden banana award. Just don't eat it, that gold metallic paint is toxic.

But I'm not done debunking this. I've proved that it's still stupid even if you take it to be true that a mechanical sacrifice would mean something, but the problem is...this is a very faulty premise. Let me ask you something to get you thinking about it: How much does your stats have to do with your character's background, personality, or in-game facts?

It's certainly not NOTHING. I mean, you can play someone who's a scientist, but without ranks in a science skill, you'd have to justify how he's just plain-ass not good at the job or something. You can't play a famous singer without some Perform...even people legendarily bad at performing have some skill they worked at or even learned along the way. In general you need to justify what your character HAS done with what he's ABLE to do. However, other than that? The two are fairly removed. There's a lot you can justify regardless of your stats, and even more you can justify after even four ranks of something, or one feat.

So imagine writing down your character: their personality, their physical description, their background, everything. Imagine taking that to someone who's never heard of pen and paper gaming and asking them to judge your character. To compare them to another, or several characters. Obviously they'd judge them based on what their given, they'd tell you maybe the idea of an orc bard is neat. Maybe they think it's dumb.

Okay. Now imagine trying to explain your point of view to them. Imagine telling them "I built my character with the personality in mind first and his mechanical effectiveness second." Imagine telling them "No, my character sucks and that means he's better."

Imagine the response you'd get. If you were doing this with my mom, you'd get something between a blank stare, a "so what" and a vague insult for being an idiot. Most people wouldn't care.

Was that a fair scenario? Nope! But why do you think a non-player would need to know how your mechanics work to judge your character? The rest is easily understood and judged. That's because mechanics and character are judged separately. They always will be, and insisting otherwise is a deliberate attempt to unnaturally support your point of view.

No, we know what this is about, don't we? They have a grudge against "power gamers" and are casting about for a way to put themselves above these people. In other words, it's arrogant, rude, and pointless. It's an obvious coping mechanism. What's worse, they'll declare anyone who cares about the game's mechanics is a power gamer. Anyone who put care into their character is a munchkin. And THOSE are BAD.

I already talked about Socialist Gaming. This intersects. Everyone should build the best character they possibly can, and deliberately building a bad one makes things worse on the GM. That makes things worse on everyone else, and the proud peacock preening about your shitty character isn't helping either.

Maybe I should try to clear up a misconception about "power gaming" even though I already did. It's not a fucking crime to enjoy the mechanics and systems of pen and paper gaming. It's half of the fucking game. Insisting we need to turn away and never mention its name reminds me of, at best, Voldemort.

And for the record, the fact that the adults in the series didn't like it when you said his name was an indication they didn't want to solve the problem, they wanted it to just go away and be forgotten. So, when I make that comparison, don't you ever go telling me his name had some sort of power.

Ahem. When people carefully craft their character mechanically, it's because they enjoy doing it. It's like tuning a car to get as much horsepower as you can out of it, and not necessarily about being the big man on the block. No, if someone has THAT sort of attitude, I promise you it'll come out over anything, not just a game's mechanics. Most of us simply enjoy doing it, and telling us that it's "backwards" or "not as important" is just as wrong as the reverse argument, telling someone that RP is for people who suck at the game. And yes, I HAVE heard that one.

This is maybe something you didn't know. We don't go into a system trying to make the most powerful character possible. What we do is that we take a concept and try to make it work as well as possible. We're not worried about being mega-strong, we want to take a cool concept and make it as good as possible. If your game has a "power gamer" and he's always coming up with weird concepts or wacky ways to build his character, maybe you don't really have a power gamer. Watch for people who are always building the same shit, or using build guides they found on the internet. If his concepts are always arcanist, magus, magus, arcanist, magus you might have a problem.

Being interested in the mechanics of PNP gaming and building interesting characters doesn't say anything bad about someone...and even if it did, Pen and Paper games are all about getting together with friends and collaborating. Everyone enjoying each other's company and building a story together. Telling someone they're playing wrong over something as trivial as being concerned with their character's effectiveness is against the spirit of the hobby.

So don't tell people how to enjoy things. In fact, don't EVER do that, not just in the context of gaming. If you really want to test your limits as a roleplayer, there are so many better things you can do instead of building a shitty character on purpose. Play against type by crafting a personality you would normally never play. Make someone with a mental disorder, whether or not you're getting bonus points for doing it. Pick a race or class you hate, play a physical deformity, or play a quirk you know is going to make your character look foolish. There's millions of ways you can test your limits and "prove" you're a good RPer that don't involve shitting on someone else or making the GM's job harder.