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I love monks and monk weapons, but after a few levels, monk weapons are almost useless. Maybe a homebrewed feat could help. What do you guys think?
Strength of my Hand-Feat-When you strike with a weapon, its almost like you hit with your fists-When you use a weapon with which you are proficient, you may choose to use your unarmed damage instead of the weapons damage. In addition, you may apply any effects that both the weapon and your unarmed attack, but you may only apply the higher magic bonus for the your unarmed attack or the weapon.
Thoughts?
Homebrew =
I would just let the monk treat his hand as a normal weapon.
At higher level, enchant it, give it + Bonus effects, etc. Like any other magic weapon. Each hand / foot, would be treated as a different weapon.
Monk can have a few problem by Raw, but they should not have any problem in a Homebrew campaign setting.
It really depends what you looking for in a monk weapon. A temple sword is 1d8 19-20/x2. Even at level 11 a monk's fist is only 1d10 x2 - in which case I'll take the higher crit-range of the temple sword any day.
From level 12, at 2d6 fists, the thinking gets a bit harder - but the sword will almost definitely have 1 level higher enchantment on it; so comparing a +3 sword with a +2 amulet, I'd still rather take the 1d8+3 19-20/x2 over the 2d6+2 x2. That means all the levels until level 15 are covered with a viable monk weapon.
Now admittedly, a kama or other low-damage monk weapon doesn't really compete well with that directly. But if you are willing to play a Weapon Adept (archetype), you get Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization as a bonus - which easily are worth two size categories; thus move a 1d4 weapon up to a 1d8 equivalent, and thus comparable with the temple sword - which ultimately means the weapon-monk is - without compromise - viable up to at least level 15.
Also, if you're willing to try the monk of the empty hand - he gets the ability to spend ki to make any weapon he wields deal damage as his unarmed strikes would (and incidentally he can flurry anything). (And as a hidden bonus, from level 11 onward he can spend ki to add weapon special abilities to the weapons - which means he can add the bane enhancement on the fly, similar to an inquisitor's bane ability.