One tweek I've used on occasion is to make Monk's weapon selections reflect real-world martial arts styles a bit more. I've posted it a few times here on ENWorld:
Weapon Proficiencies: The Martial Artist is proficient in all simple weapons, PLUS choose one of the following groups as the PC's Melee Martial Arts Weapons and additional Ranged weapons:
1) 1 One-handed and 2 Light Martial weapons + 1 Martial Ranged Weapon
2) 3 Exotic Light weapons + 1 Martial or Exotic Ranged Weapon
3) 1 Exotic Light Weapon + 1 Exotic One-handed weapon + 1 Martial Ranged Weapon
4) 1 Martial or Exotic 2 handed weapon + 1 Martial or Exotic Ranged Weapon
5) Any 5 Simple weapons +1 Martial or Exotic Ranged weapon
These Melee Martial arts weapons may be used with Flurry of Blows
That way you get a monk build that can support a wider variety of martial artists, like Shao-Lin monks who use spears and other pole-arms to keep their foes at range, the Capoirist who can fight with manacles, an Escrima fighter who can use twin clubs, Vietnamese chain fighters, Indian Urimi warriors, and so forth.
One thing this does is fold into one class one of the more common changes involved in some of the variant base class monks that WotC has published- many have alternative or expanded weapons lists...such as the one in Oriental Adventures.
In addition, this tweek minimizes the need for the various feats that are used to expand the monk's weapon list (see my database or check out Secrets of Sharlona, DCv1, or PHB2)- essentially saving this feat-hungry class at least one if not 2 feats (or more) while increasing damage output (with certain selections) and style.
