You can just press and hold the power button to shut a Macbook off. I assume this is a hardware level interrupt as I’ve never seen it fail. Granted not quite as satisfying as physically pulling the plug!
When they had power buttons you could
They still do, it just also does Touch ID now. Source: Have one.
It should not be too hard to build in a hardware-switch. Sure, it would take some time but think I would prefer that over always being stationary.
Pulling the plug is a bit extreme. Perhaps you might consider logging on from another computer to troubleshoot?