In normal mode, one draws in the font and places that in the Map. In Tilemode you draw the tiles and place that in the map.
Isn't there a need for an option to draw a bigger area also in the normal mode? Let's say my game is in normal/non-tile mode and I would like to draw a bigger object. Here an editor such as the tile editor would be helpful, wouldn't it? Let's say I want to draw an object and there would be a function where I could draw an object of arbitrary size. The chars would be placed in the font and the object would be possible to paste into the game map.
(As always, downplaying the amount of work needed to do something is a lot easier if you don't have to do it yourself, but I'm here thinking that you already have the tile editor, so that part of such a function is already done).