Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
Yes, it's used as the "weapon of first resort", exactly like numerical modifiers are in earlier editions.No. What I mean is, Advantage and Disadvantage was used as the weapon of first resort. As in, it was THE go-to thing for functionally EVERY possible "here's a benefit" mechanic they gave to players.
You give a pretty good description of why you don't like it to be that, and I don't disagree with anything you said. But you also describe how throwing in numerical bonuses breaks the design principles which is the other part I had alluded to.
It's not insolvable, but takes introducing another bonus/penalty mechanic to use first that satisfies the design principles of 5e which includes bounded accuracy so no stacking +/- modifiers and minimal to no changing of the highest and lowest DCs possible. That non-stacking aspect I think makes whatever solution have the same problems you have with Advantage/Disadvantage, except now there's two ways a rule or GM can modify something which might be "good enough".
SOME different design should have applied, so that GMs weren't saddled with such a high frequency of situations where they have so few tools to help them do their job, especially in an edition that is so eager to push everything onto the GM's shoulders.
I played for well over a decade with a DM who bemoaned how much power AD&D 2nd took from the DM by codifying so much compared to AD&D. 5e only pushes things onto GM's shoulders in that it recognizes there's a diminishing return for specificity of rules so asks for rulings for corner cases. Many pull forward "Rule 0" from earlier editions which does not exist in 5e and believe 5e asks the GM for more than it does, but if you read the fairly short portion of the DMG about rulings and such, it really doesn't.
Rule 0 put more load on GMs for 3ed and 3.5, and 4e absolutely put more load on GMs for anything outside combat. Again, reading the DMG (Master of Rule, pg 5), it puts the least on the GM for any WotC's edition of D&D, and definitely less than early TSR editions. All it's done is specifiy where it wants the GM to step up, as opposed to leaving it nebulous and therefore having less consistancy between individual GMs.