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Like I said: it's up to you. I would advise against it on plausibility grounds.

That's something else entirely.

Again, the rules are written expecting PC adventurers who are earning XP through adventuring. They're not intended to simulate circumstances like three hundred years of intense study -- that's stuff for NPCs or perhaps backstory. So if you get into those circumstances as a DM, you have to decide...

Look again.

Only languages and tools, actually. Skills, weapons, and armor are conspicuously absent from those rules -- notwithstanding that the illustration in XGtE depicts a wizard trying to shoot a bow. IMC, I allow downtime training in everything. But that's not what's in the book.

Such study would constitute taking a level of fighter or a weapon training feat. If the player doesn't take one of those options, they're saying the wizard was actually doing something else with his time. Or, possibly, that he failed.

Per the rules, language proficiencies can be taught with downtime training but weapon and armor proficiencies cannot. Per what seems reasonable to me, there are some things in which animals can't be trained. For instance, even though tool proficiencies can also be taught with downtime training...

Common sense. An ape doesn't have those proficiencies.

The actual ape stat block is no more an exhaustive listing of everything an ape can do than the beast of the earth stat block is. WotC is clearly testing these beast spells as a way of simplifying summoning magic so you don't have to page through the MM to find a particular stat block every time...

If you break down the math, the orc has a proficiency bonus included in its attack. Almost every monster with a weapon in its stat block is proficient with the weapon (though there are, interestingly, a few monsters who aren't proficient with their own natural weapons). Much the same goes for...

This is a question I had to field surprisingly often in 3.5 (or maybe not so surprisingly, given, y'know, druids). What's true there is even more true in 5E: The creature does not have any weapon or armor proficiencies. The rules do not have any provisions for giving it weapon or armor...

We're talking about whether or not the flavor of the champion is the best fit for some characters. If you give this player a different class and then have to reflavor it to get it to fit the character, you have conceded that the flavor of the champion would have been a better fit.

More like "You automatically have a decent spell for a situation." You aren't tossing out a lot of max-level fireballs, but what you can spam is better than an ordinary firebolt. Perhaps some sort of at-will blast of magical energy, eldritch even... "To assign some arbitrary numbers to this...

You are wrong about whom the name was chosen specifically to refer to. I can say this with certainty: I'm the one who chose it. My exact words were, and you can go back and check this, "Alice wants a simple fighter". I did not specify why, because there are lots of possible reasons why, and...

You continue to argue in defense of this subclass supposedly for new/inexperienced/apathetic players using optimization logic and optional rules for character decision points. Are the experienced players, who are not responsible for reminding the newbie to use their class features, responsible...

Minotaurs have the dual advantage of being horned and of theologically suspect origins. Strangely, so do tieflings. Use minotaurs if you want to play up the Varangians as bruisers, or tieflings if you want to play them as shrewd political operators of uncertain loyalty. Or subvert expectations...

David Drake's Belisarius series is also fun if somewhat hagiographic.

First thought: It's not a Byzantine setting without gangs of chariot-team hoodlums being a major force in imperial politics that can shut down the city with riots or even oust the emperor.

Thank you for finally acknowledging that the break-even point is way up there. Feats are optional. The classes are supposed to be balanced in a featless environment. If a class only achieves power when it takes a specific feat, it is underpowered. This is doubly true when the feat is GWM...

What does the idiom "elephant in the room" mean to you?