I decided to houserule the monk AC bonus feature into giving +3 AC instead of 0 at first level, and increase +1 at every 4th level. This way my player can make a less MAD monk by investing less in DEX, since he will be effectively wearing studded leather as long as he is unencunbered and unarmored. Now, do you guys think there will be any unwanted consequences to this house rule? Is there a more elegant way of making the monk less MAD?
I think you could probably just give the player a higher point buy. if you're worried about the Monk's AC then dropping some potions of Mage Armor into early adventures might help out too.
It's basically way better than studded leather because now the monk gets a +3 ontop of adding their Wisdom bonus to AC and getting a scaling bonus. Assuming he has a 14 Wisdom (fairly standard for a MAD class), he'll get a +5 from this class feature alone, as good as medium armor without any of the downsides. I think having it start as a +1 would be a better idea.
The wizard could just cast mage armor on him (this is a team game, after all). The monk should be getting most of the buffs anyway. If he's an unchained monk, he doesn't need a Strength higher than 16. He could take Power Attack right away and have most of his damage come from that. You could also let him take Deadly Agility, the most balanced approach to Dex-to-damage.
There's a lot of ways to make the monk less MAD without having to change how the game works.
I dont think AC is where the monk need help. In my house rules monks have full bab and 1d10 HP as well as a few more ki options.
in a 15 point buy game a monk is hard to make work without dumping a few stats. But IMOP the MAD of the monk is really not the main issue of the class.