Some of my player characters have a race from a template but without monster hit dice (like half-orc) and others have a race from a template with monster hit dice (like ogre). Now in the back of Monster Manual I there are some monster feats, like Awesome Blow. It says these are available to monsters so I guess the half-orc character cannot select these, but what about the ogre character? It does have monster hit dice after all.
[RPG] Can player characters pick monster feats
character-templatesdnd-3.5efeatsmonsters
Related Solutions
That's Not The Intention
The intention of monsters having a block of stats like characters do is so a DM has stats to use when they look up the monster. If I want to put a Bodak into play, I don't want to have to create stats for it every single time. That's what those stats are for - they greatly speed up DM preparation (and improv if things suddenly change mid session and we need monsters we hadn't planned for).
Those monster stats could be changed, if I for example advance the monster using the rules to do that. But they serve as a good base.
The ones you're intended to be able to play as a PC have the "Monster as Character" section.
But...
Spells like Polymorph let you become most of the monsters. Masters of Many Form can Wild Shape into almost anything. Shapechange lets you change into all kinds of things. etc, etc.
On top of that, you could just ask your DM and say "Can I play as this cool monster?" Your DM can make anything happen, no matter how wacky.
Will they? Quite possibly not, as some monsters can be really hard to integrate into a campaign when other people are playing Dwarves. But it's not outside of what a DM can do if they want to.
A friend of mine and I Once came up with a character concept for a two-headed Ogre. We'd each play a head. We had different character sheets, and even different classes. Each turn, we'd decide what we wanted to do. If they didn't match, we'd flip a coin to determine which head gets to act.
Totally not within the core rules, as written. Totally awesome if your DM & table are cool with it. :)
Up front, let me just suggest that this character is offensively devastating, but is frighteningly vulnerable (LA does that), and useless outside of combat. Moreover, these low levels are very much the best time to be playing this character. Depending on the pace of the game, it may be best to let him just enjoy it while it lasts. Unfortunately, it likely won’t last long. See an earlier answer about an overly strong barbarian.
But I think we can do better than you have here. You see, being devastating offensively, but shockingly vulnerable and useless out of combat, does cause a lot of problems. LA causes a lot of problems, but the biggest one is exactly this: skew.
A simple improvement, in both directions, by suggesting the LA +1 goliath from Races of Stone—less LA, less power, and the character is less skewed and causes fewer problems. The goliath isn’t Large, but has powerful build that lets them count as Large in many ways—and then the goliath barbarian substitution level, also in Races of Stone, offers mountain rage, and truly-Large size for a limited amount of time per day. Having the player use the goliath’s stats, despite being a “half-ogre,” would be a straightforward solution with WotC support.
But really, I think we can do even better than that. The goliath isn’t a half-ogre, and powerful build isn’t Large size, and while mountain rage can cover most uses, it still isn’t quite the same. And in my experience, having played, played alongside, or run games for goliath barbarians in the past... the goliath doesn’t really earn its LA either, even with mountain rage. So what I propose is an LA +0 half-ogre. True Large size, while very very good, might be possible on an LA +0 race.
Therefore, I present an LA +0, Large size, half-ogre race. Races are relatively simple parts of the game, and I have designed races professionally for 3.5e and Pathfinder; I am reasonably confident in my design here. It goes off the established rails some (LA +0 Large size is verboten under WotC design guidelines, and even powerful build always came with LA +1), but I’m going to build in a lot of downside. Moreover, I have played (with) plenty of characters that were Large—it isn’t that big a deal. Even in gestalt games where the LA could all be put on one side (greatly mitigating the effect of the LA and making half-ogre et al. far cheaper to use), the Large size was only “good,” not “broken.” (The large ability score adjustments were far more problematic.) I am confident that the drawbacks of this race are at least as costly as the effort expended by those characters in becoming Large.
Half-Ogre Racial Traits
Starting Ability Score Adjustment: +2 Str, −2 Dex, −2 Int, −2 Cha.
Large: As Large creatures, half-ogres have a −1 penalty to Armor Class and a −1 penalty on all attack rolls. They also have a reach of 10 feet.
Speed: Half-ogre land speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision: Half-ogres have darkvision with a range of 60 feet.
Giant Blood: For all special abilities and effects, a half-ogre is considered a giant. Half-ogres can use giant weapons and magic items with racially-specific giant powers as if they were giants.
Automatic Languages: Giant and Common. Bonus Languages: Draconic, Gnoll, Goblin, Orc, and Abyssal.
Favored Class: Barbarian.
Level Adjustment: +0.
By drastically reducing the ability score bonuses and removing the natural armor, we reduce a lot of the skew in the character. And because the ability score adjustments turn out sharply negative, and the race really doesn’t have much of anything else going on, we attach some very heavy drawbacks on the Large size. I considered losing the darkvision (after all, ogres have both that and low-light vision, and Savage Species saw fit to toss out the low-light vision), but in my experience darkvision is minor in most cases, and the race block just looked bare without it. But it might be a target if you want to remove more.
Ultimately, this race ends up being very, very good for a barbarian, and several other classes (the lack of Wisdom penalty opens up interesting opportunities for, say, psychic warrior), but it doesn’t end up being necessarily the best option every time. That is, it joins the top tier of race options for melee characters, but it doesn’t establish an entirely new tier over and above a few of the best existing options. Dragonborn, human (and human variants), warforged, water orc are each competitive, for examples. A dragonborn half-ogre could be a problem (since you keep the best thing about half-ogre and then get real racial features from dragonborn), but no more so than a dragonborn warforged—so you should probably just ban both of those combinations (or allow both, but recognize that they start to look like the only reasonable melee options).
Best Answer
The Monster Manual feats aren't limited to monsters
A feat can be taken by any creature that qualifies for the feat based on the feat's type (for example, the most common type of feat is general, but the Player's Handbook also includes the feat types item creation and metamagic) and that meets the feat's prerequisites and that fulfills any conditions explained in the feat's description, benefit, special, or note (if any).
So, while the Monster Manual feats are "typically used only by monsters" (MM 303), if a PC meets the requirements for taking such feats, nothing technically prevents the PC from taking feats from the Monster Manual.
The DM can always say No
If the DM—for whatever reason—doesn't want a feat in the campaign, the DM can make a house rule saying that feat is excluded from the campaign. As an aside, while it's usually easier to say, "No feats from this book," it's often better to ask a player's plan for his character instead then assess feat choices individually. Usually, a particular book has a mix of strong and weak feats, and banning a book means eliminating both reasonable and unreasonable choices.