Is a toad necessary with a small motor home?

You don’t NEED a toad perhaps, and for the first few years we did not tow. A lot depends on how much stuff you have to put away when you want to go the five miles for a quart of milk. (Just an example). Many areas have local rental cars, ride share options, etc but not always where you want to be. The event we incurred causing us to start towing was a breakdown at a local state park close to us. Fortunately the wife had followed me to the CG with her car so as the tow truck went left we went home to the right. Had we been hundreds of miles from home we would have had a big problem.

Simple answer. No

I’m my mind, and experience, the whole point of a shorter C is you are basically a cube van and you can go anywhere a cube van can go, which is pretty much everywhere. I even go through some drive thru’s.

I park in normal parking spaces as long as there’s a little space or a boulevard or something behind me. If not a short stroll of a few hundred feet won’t kill me either.

When I do want a car I can have a rental delivered to me, or take an Uber for less than the extra gas (and hassle) of dragging a towed around.

We have managed quite well without a toad. Don't really feel it has limited us that much in most situations. Have rented a car from Enterprise numerous times, if staying in a spot where we want to do some exploring of the area. No problem.

We had a Thor 22e and took it cross country 3 times without a toad. We rent an auto when we find the need. We now have a Jayco 26XD and are leaving in early June for a 4 month cross country trip. Massachusetts to the 4 corners region, then poke around out there till we get to Montana then head back. Again no toad. We found all that's needed is to plan ahead. It's just the 2 of us though. I think if we had kids along, a toad would be very handy...

There are 2 basic groups of RVers in our opinion. Destinationers and Tourers. Destionationers, drive to a park and plop for the duration. Tourers, may have a particular destination in mind, but generally take longer to get there than the time spent there. We are in the later group. We do not have a toad with our 26' Class C. We do however have e-bikes. We rarely are in any one park more than 3 nights and generally use the e-bikes to tour the park and riding enjoyment. Our sight seeing is mostly between stops.
If we were destinationers, a toad would be of value. If we stay at an area such as Destin, FL or such for any time, we do rent a car though.

It’s surprising the # of Sprinter Vans I see dragging a small car along with them...good for a chuckle. We are at the stage where we’ll setup a dry base camp for a week and explore in the toad. If staying put for more than a week we’ll start out conserving water, otherwise we don’t have to cutback on anything.

I’ll take the shade with the windows open.

The same here ... we don't need or want the expense and hassle of dragging a toad along.

With our 24 foot non-slide Class C, not using a toad offers the flexibility to make spur of the moment decisions to camp at spots like this:

We take our Toad almost always. Shopping, sight seeing, etc.

It’s an individual choice. I’ve always taken a toad until I switched to TTs. Hard to explore in a C.