It sounds like you’re very very close and don’t really need a tutorial to me (sorry I don’t know of one anyway). I’m not sure what you find clumsy about clip plugins, but I think they offer you the most options. You can save and load plugin chains, and you also have track and montage master plugins as options. As far as saving DSP, that’s one of the things Super Clips are good for. In your clip that has clip plugins, right-click in the upper half of the clip and select “create super clip” (internal sub montage). That will render the clip in place with effects, so will free your DSP. If you need to modify the plugin settings or anything else about the clip later, right-click in the lower half of the clip, and select “edit submontage”. That will bring up the clip with all your original plugins available for modification.
You can render selected clips with effects in the Master Section render dialog, but the Super Clip thing makes much more sense for your context.