It is a glitch, but the glitch is that re-entering the character creation screen in that way causes the game to pull from the debug statlines instead of giving you random stats that add up to 12. Reducing attributes like that has no effect on it, as can be seen in the runs that get the SUPRAMAN statline that don't do that.

When the stat glitch was first discovered, there wasn't much understanding of how it worked, and timing was changed to include character creation. This possibly made sense when the glitch was thought to be based on some sort of overflow, but after some research I have determined that it's pulling from debug mode statlines at random. You can see the full list of debug statlines in the following screenshot of the debug mode new game screen, and the list corresponds exactly to the possible statlines you can get from the glitch:

In light of this, I believe that timing should start when the runner hits "Begin", as it was initially. As it stands, including character creation in timing introduces a tedious degree amount of RNG-induced resets at the beginning of the run, for something that doesn't actually involve any sort of interesting or difficult execution. If this change is made I am willing to retime the existing runs to match the new timing.

Anyway, I know that the rules for when to start timing just got changed, but in light of this info I think they should get changed back to when you hit "begin". As it is, including character creation in timing just adds unnecessary RNG and resets at the beginning of the run.

I think I've figured out how stat glitch works, and it isn't an overflow. Rather, by going to the pause menu and starting a new game while in character creation, you put the game into a glitched state where the character builder screen loads a random (as far as I can tell) character build from memory instead of a randomized statline, which includes the three archetypes you can select from on the new game screen, as well as some that aren't selectable but are in the code.

If you open up the game process in cheat engine, you can find names and statlines for these. The one you want to get is "Supraman", there's also "Potent Man" (6 in all stats but without the bonus levels in skills), "Peony" (1 in all stats), and some others that seem like they could've been intended as legitimate options that they decided not to make selectable in the end. EDIT: I did some code diving and it looks like there's 10 different ones it picks from.

The practical upshot is that the glitch is faster to perform than previously shown - go to build your character, exit to menu, start a new game again, and if you go to the character builder and don't get the one you want, try again.

Timing from when you first hit New Game makes everything clear, no complaints here. I've been doing some routing on my own without stat glitch, and I find it interesting enough in terms of avoiding/mitigating RNG that I might put time into it as a subcategory anyway whether there's a separate board for it or not, but first I gotta get an actual run up!

Wait, are you thinking of the glitch in this video?

The current ruleset says that runs need to be from a fresh boot of the game, it's a bit fuzzy whether this would violate that rule but it seems significant enough to be a different category either way.

The current timing rules are, "Timing starts on pressing begin after character creation and ends when the credits start playing." In previous versions of the game, credits started playing right when you hit "End" on the final dialogue sequence of the game, but with The Final Cut, there's a long animation that plays before going to credits. Since there's no player input after pressing end, I'd suggest that the timing rules should be, "Timing starts on pressing begin after character creation and ends on pressing end after the final dialogue sequence." None of the old runs would have to be retimed, since it's only a relevant difference on current versions of the game.

Nothing's banned under the rules aside from common-sense stuff like editing saves or tampering with RAM, and I can't think of anything that would need to be. The only stat glitch I know of is the permanent Physique boost from Goracy's Brew, which shouldn't affect the run to the point of needing a ban or category split.