Most competitive games have some sort of high skill cap class or character that, in the hands of the right person, is an absolute menace that provides a stupid amount of value for the team if played right but fully takes the L HARD when not. Even more devious games give this class a particular ability kit or equipment to further differentiate them from everyone else, making the unique value incredibly apparent when applied correctly.
In Space Station 13, everyone has a job on the station, from basic assistants to cargo technicians, all the way to virologists. All of them have varying degrees of responsibility and access to different parts of the station depending on their role so that different hierarchies can get where they need to in order to do their jobs.
Enter: The Clown. The clown is different.
The clown is expected to be the actual station jokester, providing morale to the station or just generally being obnoxious by doing things like slipping people so they fall over, or telling bad jokes, or spraying them with their trick spraying flower. Oftentimes, this also means that they'll attempt to break into other areas of the station, or simply request an enhanced level of access to bother everyone else.
Another difficult point for clowns is that, as the clown, the station generally condones using you as a punching bag; no one's going to outright kill you unless you do something, but they might slip you back or hit you with a stun baton.
However.
GOOD clowns are a force to be reckoned with. SS13 allows a LOT of latitude in the actions you can take, and this is magnified by the nature of the clown. Your PDA communicator can slip people, meaning that if someone steps on it, they fall over. Falling over in SS13 means you get the shit kicked out of you in combat. Additionally, other tools (like your spray flower) can be filled with things that are lethal to enemies; imagine a clown with giant honking shoes runs up to you, says a dumb joke, then sprays you in the face with corrosive acid. It's possible!
Moreover, the nature of the clown means no one can expect what you're up to, not without seeing it themselves. You COULD be the bumbling idiot, or you could be the deadliest member of the crew, able to hack doorlocks, pickpocket command access IDs and tripping people to throw them in a locker, welding them in and throwing them into the vacuum of space.
Space Station 13 is, in effect, the diametric opposite of Among Us in complexity, but has the same core design ethos, meaning there are, in fact, antagonists. Namely, there are traitors, and with them traitor versions of each class. If you're a traitor and you have a specific class, you can purchase items that are specific to your class.
The clown's items? An actual clown car, a trick gun, and chameleon bombs.
Chameleon bombs are effectively pipebombs that you can disguise as items, and when picked up explode after a time. Then there's the trick revolver; ordinarily, clowns cannot use firearms. They will fail or miss horribly, EXCEPT for the trick revolver, which works perfectly in the clown's hands but if used by anyone else, blows the head off of the attempted user. Finally, the clown car. Traitor clowns will only use this at the last moment as having one makes you an obvious traitor, but you can knock people unconscious/run them over and stuff them in the clown car trunk, and there's no limit to how many you can carry. If you manage to crash the clown car with a lot of people in the trunk, they have a HIGH likelihood of straight up dying (though some servers frown on this).
The clown generally has a lot of flexibility in how their actions are perceived, depending on how strict the server is; if the station is about to be taken over by nuclear operatives looking to blow up the station, then they generally have a lot more lenience if they, say, cause a singularity to run loose that consumes most of the station, but also kills the nukies.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Space Station 13 is a special game to me that I love dearly, and I believe it's a master class in a game that almost entirely advocates for player agency and thus, emergent narrative.