Step 2: Disregard Step 1.
Okay, here is some advice:
- Take a template to make yourself Large. There are two good templates for that, costing you only +1 LA each -
Half-Ogre and even better
Half-minotaur (if you take latter consider taking
Yuan-Ti Broodguard template at LA 0, which gets you qualified for Multiattack. Broodguard generally is fun thing, giving you Rage 1/day, every Monk's wet dream, which also allows you to take Extra Rage and then go into certain PrC otherwise closed for Monks)
- if you don't go into Enlighted Fist, Sacred Fist or Psionic Fist (and each of these is awesome in it's own way), take Fist of The Forest - it's only 3 levels and it's wonderful, giving you your own variation of rage, increased unarmed Strike, Constitution to AC and other things. Also, if you have 4 Monk levels, you get alternate Untamed Strike, which allows you to punch incoropteral creatures.
Wizard: Stand aside, only a master of magic can defeat the Spectre of...
<You punch the Spectre in the face>
Wizard:...Musashi, did I told you how much I hate you today?
- Remember to have good equipment. Monk's Belt is your friend, so is Periapt of Wisdom, Amulet of Health, Belt of Giant's Strength and Amulet of Natural Armor. May require crafting items combinign things for one slot.
- You may think of changing race. Humans are cool, but Water orc is pretty good for Monks in his own right. Or...
- Half-Orc has a little nice thing called Half-Orc Paragon. Which can give you Rage 1/day. With this, Broodguard template or abbnadonnig your monk after few levels for Barbarian you can get into Bear Warrior. Half-Orc Paragon 3/Monk 4/Fist of the Forest 3 + Bear Warrior mixed with Warshaper = KUNG FU BEAR!
Or replace Paragon with barbarian (only you take him after Monk) and take some more levels = even more pissed off Kung Fu Bear.
Or Broodguard Monk 4/ Fist of the Forest 3 if you want to avoid those combinations (allows for more free levels to play with Mixing Bear Warrior and Warshaper)
- Kensai fix a lot of Monk problems. Try to get into it. You may even try combining it with Vow of Poverty, you can get basically all weapon enchancments you'll ever want or need.
- One issue of Dragon magazine has feat that allows to tie Paladin's Charisma-Based abilities to Wisdom. Take it and 2 levels of Paladin and you won't fail a save until it's natural 1. Later there is Argent Fist PrC clearly intended for Monk/Paladin multiclassing or other PrC for both (Kensai comes to mind)
- Tashhalatora was mentioned, but I personally think that Psychic Warrior mix is just too easy and really more a build for PsyWar with Monk dip. Try some other build with it, to quote somebody who knows more about it than me:
- if you preffer Psionic Fist over Tash, like I do, try this: Monk 6/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 10/ Warshaper 2. Or, how they call it, Ultimate Monk. There is however one thing you need to consider first. Strenght of this build is based on Combining Expansion and Shapechange to turn youself into enlarged version of powerful creature. the rules for those two power are written in a way that is abigious if that's legal (Shapechange doesn't specify if you count as enlarged if you change into larger creature or if your base size changes for the duration of shapechange) so remember to run this with your DM first.
- Probably this is also possible with Enlighted and/or Sacred Fist but I haven't seen builds for that.
-
Here is a list of Monk PrCs, try to find something for you there.