Quote Originally Posted by Ozreth View Post
I am still stuck on this as well. My group has a monk for the first time in more years than I can remember. We are early in the campaign so I can't make any serious calls on issues yet, but I'm well aware enough of the issues that do crop up around monk. My group have been playing for many years but never got into any level of optimization, rarely multi-class and still find enjoyment out of all the options in the PHB, so I am trying to keep this in mind when making any changes that scale power up. The only complaint the monk has had so far is that their play feels a little plain (this is someone who usually plays casters), and many of Fizbans fixes would remedy this. It is the AC that I am stuck on. I'm of the opinion that they probably need more, but not sold on how much. But I love much of the rest of his document and opinions so much that I am convinced he must be right about this too
Monks are kind of in a strange place base monk out of the gate is pretty bad and yet some super unoptimized groups will swear its the most broken class and not allow it in their games. Yet in a group with decent optimization standard monk tends to fall behind pretty quick. With that said even in the standard game, gishing with kung fu genius wizard enlightened fist and abjurant champion is pretty powerful, so is tashalatora into psychic warrior or other psionic classes, going cleric/monk/sacred fist or fist of the forest are other good choices, the real issue is base monk is a bit derpy and dysfunctional.

If you are wanting to play around with more AC I would suggest using the defense bonus and armor to DR alternate rules. across the board I think that is a better system than standard armor.