Meho, you're telling me Scribus is not for me.
I produce a monthly 8 page newsletter that has at least one drop cap in each article, and I settle for bad typography because most of my readers don't notice it (even though I do). I use drop caps because I want to avoid the look of monotonous text. I don't fine tune because I don't have time; I'm an unpaid volunteer well into what's conventionally called retirement.
I'm not setting a book. I would agree that when you're setting a book, the content is fixed before you set it and you can apply styling without worrying about changing the content. A book does use drop caps sparingly; one to begin each chapter, perhaps; no more. Monotonous looking text is not something to avoid because the content must speak for itself. A monthly newsletter is a different animal altogether.
Incidentally, if you're concerned about bad typography, I can see only two logical alternatives. One is to arrange for automatic drop caps to respect kerning and take account of the parameters of each font so that the drop cap is correctly positioned without manual fine tuning. The other is not to provide automatic drop caps at all, as in some older DTP apps I've used, and let the user put the drop cap in its own frame separate from the text. What Scribus does, providing some but not all of the features of an automatic drop cap, satisfies the needs of neither bad typographers nor good ones.