I was incredibly happy when I learned that Pathfinder let monks wear cesti to deal "unarmed" damage, and incredibly sad to learn that, no, it didn't work that way.
But, after some thought, I came to agree with that assessment. After all, it's basically doubling the monk's crit range and offering an extra damage type with no downsides. So, instead, I offer this houserule.
When a monk, brawler, or other class with natural bonuses to unarmed damage utilizes a cestus, he or she may choose to use his or her unarmed damage rather than the weapon's normal damage. However, when doing so, he or she loses all the normal advantages of ki strike, brawler's strike, or any other such class abilities that would normally bypass damage reduction.
The way I see it, this gives the monk (or monk-equivalent) concrete incentives to go bare-handed rather than automatically stick to cesti no matter what. Thoughts?
Just realized that this limitation is basically incompatible for my favorite monk archetype, the martial artist. Cuss.