Not Used: Monk abilities as feats for shapeshifters

I love playing Shifters, yet a necessary evil for playing a Shifter, or even just a Druid, is taking a level of Monk in order to make the shifted forms more useful. This is more true for Druids than Shifters, as the Druid forms all have natural attacks, while the more useful Shifter forms are armed. In addition, the forms all have terrible AC IMO, and I think you need the Monk's Wis AC bonus to even make them bearable. Not only do I take the Monk level, I also take Improved Expertise for another +10 AC, and I still die a lot here. Going around with only 20 or so AC just doesn't cut it.

What I would like to suggest is turning one or two of the Monk abilities into feats. Druids and Shifters have a lot of free feat slots open, so they could easily take them. In turn, they could pass up the Monk level altogether, thereby passing up the LN alignment, and even passing up human form, making Druids and Shifters more diverse in nature (hehe). Arcanists might also make use of the feats, and if the Werewolf semi-class is considered unarmored when shifted, it too could do so.

Here are my suggestions:

Zen Defense

Pre-req: none

This feat allows a character to add their Wisdom modifier to improve their AC. The character must not be wearing armor to make use of this.

[This duplicates the Monk ability. If it seems too powerful as a stand-alone feat, you could take it down a peg by having it add Wis or Dex, instead of Wis and Dex. The no armor requirement means it could be useful to Wizards and possibly Werewolves, as mentioned above.]


Superior Natural Attack

Pre-req: none

This feat allows any creature making natural attacks, to use the Monk's superior unarmed attack progression.

[This could also be given to animals and other critters to make them deadlier.]


In addition, while not a Monk ability, there's a third idea I have for a feat and / or possible magic item.

Improved Natural Strike

Pre-req: none

This gives a creature the benefits of Weapon Focus: Creature, Weapon Specialization: Creature, and Improved Critical: Creature.

[The armed Shifter forms tend to make the unarmed shapes less desirable, since they can carry over the special properties of magic weapons the PC has. The hand slot doesn't carry over, so Monk gloves or the like don't help the unarmed forms. I think this would help the unarmed forms be slightly more desirable, and would help the Druid forms a lot.]

Not going to use these suggestions, mostly because of the difficulty and time needed to basically change all the polymorphs a shifter may use, plus try to get hardcoded monk abilites to work for temporary alternate forms.