Compared to 4e...

3.PF do not have nearly as much active battlefield control, and it’s all magic

Both Pathfinder and 3.5 before it lack 4e’s emphasis on positioning in combat. There are very, very few abilities that push or pull enemies, and basically all “zones” are magical in nature (though they are frequently very potent).

Battlefield control is typically done best by Wizards and Druids. Clerics can be pretty good at it too, and have a more martial bent. For Pathfinder-specific classes, the Summoner can be quite solid at it as well. Witches tend to be more about debuffing, targeting foes directly, and the Magus is largely about direct-damage.

The only real mundane options are Tripping, and Grappling.

I’m ignoring Bull Rush (Barbarians are just so obviously better, plus it just doesn’t help much in 3.PF), Disarm (locked gauntlets shut that down too hard), and Sunder (hard to do, destroys potentially-valuable loot) as tactics that aren’t worth even considering.

Tripping

Tripping was a fairly solid tactic in 3.5, though it still paled in comparison to what magic could do. Pathfinder nerfed it drastically, but it’s still just about the best option available to mundane characters.

The typical trip-lockdown build focuses on attacks of opportunity and reach. The idea is to stand in the enemies’ way, with too large a threatened area to go around, so that they have to take an Attack of Opportunity from you. You then Trip on the Attack of Opportunity, and success means you get another attack to try for some damage too. Getting up on their next turn provokes another Attack of Opportunity (you cannot trip them again, however), and burns a Move action, so they either have to stay put or use their Standard to move, leaving them no actions with which to do something. This is a pretty effective tactic, so long as you can actually bar their way and succeed on the trip check.

Because Attacks of Opportunity are so important, Combat Reflexes (and reasonable Dex) is a must. Because you need to use tripping a lot, you obviously need Improved Trip, which usually means Combat Expertise (and Int 13). In 3.5, that would be enough. In Pathfinder, you also need Greater Trip, and you’ll burn a ton of Attacks of Opportunity (i.e. you’ll need a lot more Dex) since Greater Trip’s attack requires an AoO unlike 3.5-Improved Trip’s completely-free attack.

Grappling

Grappling relies on Improved Grapple (and thus requires Improved Unarmed Strike), which are easy for a Monk, but is impossible to use on creatures more than two size categories larger than you and spellcasters can easily avoid it once they have 4th-level spells thanks to freedom of movement and dimension door. As a tactic, at best it only stops one enemy, and a lot of monsters are just going to be much better at it than you are. And at high levels, any Combat Manuever is very difficult to use against anyone, due to how CMB and CMD are calculated in Pathfinder.

3.PF are not balanced, and the Monk class particularly so

Another thing you’ll have to get used to, coming from 4e, is that neither 3.5 nor Pathfinder are at all balanced, and magic dominates everything. The Monk class, in particular, is very weak (see “Optimizing a D&D 3.5 Monk” and “Does Pathfinder significantly fix known problems with the Monk class?” for more details). That fact basically sets the tenor of this entire answer.

3.PF do not let you “catch up” if you start a magic career late

Particularly Pathfinder. Unfortunately, a lot of Pathfinder’s changes, relative to 3.5, are geared towards disincentivizing multiclassing. Paizo felt that 3.5 encouraged far too much multiclassing. In 3.5, you could do, say, Fighter 2/Barbarian 2/Ranger 2/Horizon Walker 6 (the so-called “Horizon Tripper” build), which is pretty solid at mostly-mundane battlefield control, but Paizo really disliked that kind of crazy mish-mash of classes. Thus, you are strongly encouraged by the rules of Pathfinder to stay in one class, and most prestige classes are fairly poor. Ultimately, though, it’s difficult, even in 3.5, to start a magic career late. Pathfinder heightened that.

Getting away from Monk

Basically, to sum up, to get good battlefield control you need magic, but multiclassing into a magical class late tends to work poorly. The Monk class is very poor, though, so it may be for the best, particularly if there aren’t a lot of levels wasted in Monk.

Cleric class: an option, but best as a replacement

So multiclassing into Cleric now is not a great idea. It can work OK if you have only a few (say, 3 at the most) Monk levels, but literally every Monk level you have detracts from your overall power as a Cleric.

Instead, using just the Cleric class to make a “monkish” character tends to work much better than actually using the Monk class. Just take Improved Unarmed Strike, and go to town. The Monk’s Belt item can get you Wis to AC, too.

A mix is best done with only a single level of Monk; this grants you a couple of feats, Wis to AC without/before you can afford a Monk’s Belt, and some may feel better about calling themselves a “monk” if the Monk class is to be found on their character sheet. Ultimately, I’d strongly suggest not doing so. In 3.5, the Sacred Fist prestige class from Complete Divine makes a single level of Monk (for early Stunning Fist) a much more valuable option, but Pathfinder doesn’t have that.

Single-level Cleric dip: very useful in general, but not particularly here

Finally, note that Cleric, in particular, makes an excellent single-level dip for almost anyone. This costs more in Pathfinder than it did in 3.5, and 3.5 also had some notable options (Cloistered Cleric, divine feats, devotion feats especially Travel Devotion) that made it better. Still, you can get a lot of stuff from a single level by picking your Domains right, and the Channeling feature is often used as a requirement for things; some of those may be useful. So anyone could consider a level in Cleric. But so far as I know it does not directly help battlefield control.

Fighter or Barbarian

Both of these classes are much better at the best form of mundane battlefield control, trip-lockdown, than is the Monk, as I’ll get to in a minute. Unfortunately, switching here is awkward; most of the reasons that Fighters or Barbarians are better come from more efficient use of ability scores, but you can only take advantage of that as a Monk/Fighter or Monk/Barbarian if you ignore some or all of your Monk features, which then begs the question of why you have them in the first place. Barbarian has the added problem of alignment conflict; you can change alignment, but it may be difficult to do so naturally and fluidly within the narrative.

Still, if she has no more than 4 Monk levels, she could benefit from these classes simply because they have full BAB. That means she only lost one BAB from taking Monk, and that will help with some of the problems she could face.

I’m not going into more detail because then this would turn into an answer about Fighter or Barbarian, not the Monk.

Unfortunately, Monk class features give her no particular skill at battlefield control

Nothing about “having levels in the Monk class” makes her particularly good at doing this. She has some ability at Combat Maneuvers, and Tripping is a fairly good way to achieve battlefield control,¹ but the myriad problems of the Monk class itself prevent her from doing so as effectively as, say, a Barbarian or Fighter.

Alternatively, she could try Grappling. Monks do have some things that improve Grappling, at least so long as she takes the correct archetype, but Grappling itself is not a great tactic.

Low AC and HP

First, she is not good at handling the attention she would draw to herself as a battlefield controller. Battlefield control is a major problem for the enemy, and something they want to get rid of. When battlefield control is coming from a Barbarian or Fighter, that represents a somewhat difficult-to-remove threat. Those classes have lots of HP and high AC; she does not. Magic makes them suffer, and her high saves and touch AC provide some protection from that, but not enough.² Meanwhile physical bruisers will force her to retreat, or die, quickly, while they’ll have a hard time contending with a Barbarian or Fighter.

The reasons for this are simple: she has a d8 HD, and cannot wear armor. She gets Wis to AC, but considering your typical heavy armor is giving between +6 and +9 AC before magic even enters into the equation, that’s a lot of Wisdom she’d need to keep up. Realistically, it’ll take both Dex and Wis, which is extremely expensive. Meanwhile, if she does have a lot of Wisdom (or a decent chunk of both Dex and Wis), then her Constitution suffers – and then her HP is looking very, very low compared to the d10 or d12 HD of Fighters and Barbarians, who, let’s not forget, also have good Constitution most of the time because they don’t need more than a little Dex, and don’t need Wis for much of anything.

Monk Weapons are bad for this

She also suffers since no Monk weapon is particularly good at trip-lockdown. The gold standard here is the Guisarme, since it has Reach and Trip, which Monks don’t have proficiency in, and none of the Monk weapons have that combination of Reach and Trip unless she expends Exotic Weapon Proficiency in the Kusari-Gama or Double-chained Kama. But she’ll probably have to do that, because she really does need Reach to do trip-lockdown. In fact, she needs Reach and then she also needs to figure out a way to get size increases, if she can (Pathfinder makes this quite difficult compared to 3.5, sadly).

The alternative, Grapple, is better, but not great. Grapple doesn’t often get to use Reach, so she won’t be worse off in that regard, and Unarmed Strike’s damage is used for Grappling no matter what she does. Unfortunately, Grappling is just a weaker tactic all around.

Class Features just don’t help tripping

Furthermore, her class features do not help her overly much with trip-lockdown-style battlefield control. Because of everyone else’s speed limits, it’s rare that she’ll need to actually use her Fast Movement to reposition. Abundant step is nice, but extremely limited. Since she desperately needs Reach, you aren’t using her Unarmed Strike damage. And so on and so forth.

Monk class features do improve Grappling. It’s just not a very good tactic.

Difficulty qualifying for feats

Monks in Pathfinder still have medium BAB. While they do get to treat their BAB as full for the purposes of Flurry of Blows and Combat Maneuvers, they don’t get to do so for the purposes of feat requirements, most notably the BAB +6 requirement of Greater Trip. This is a very serious problem that will plague the Monk for her entire career.

Feats aren’t a great solution to core problems anyway

There are a number of feats, Monk-specific or at least that a Monk can easily qualify for, that help out. mxyzplk lists several, for example, and there are more. These can definitely help. The problem is, and the reason I don’t list them out, is simply because they don’t do enough, or put another way, you don’t get enough feats. Feats are an extremely valuable resource, and you only get a limited number of them. Burning multiple feats to try to fix the various problems is playing a game of catch-up that you’ll never win.

It’s probably worth doing if you’re sticking it out as a Monk, but ultimately it’s not enough to make my advice anything other than “minimize the amount of Monk in your game.”

Multiple Ability Dependency

As already pointed out, she has small HD and a strong need for Wisdom that other classes lack. She needs at least 13 Int for Combat Expertise, so you cannot get extra ability points by dumping that. Tripping relies on Strength, but she can’t ignore Dex either because her Wis isn’t actually going to make up for your lack of armor. As a result, her Trip checks are lower, her HP is dramatically less, and her armored AC is very poor. This makes her very bad at controlling the battlefield and protecting, well, anything. It actually is a major reason why the Monk class is one of the weakest in 3.PF.

This affects Grappling as much as it does Trip. She’ll possibly dump Dex since you lose it while Grappling anyway, and she doesn’t need Combat Expertise so she doesn’t need so much Int, but that still leaves a very difficult split between Str, Con, and Wis. Compared to a Barbarian who can use just Str and Con, and gets bonuses to those, and has much larger HD to begin with... that doesn’t work out very well.

Footnotes

¹ For a mundane character, anyway. Compared to the magical battlefield control that’s available, it’s pretty pathetic.

² Note that smart spellcasters can do things that entirely ignore your saves or touch AC. Even if it’s just summoning up something bigger or nastier, or casting spells on themselves or their allies to make them bigger and nastier.

First, it must be said: monk is a weak class. The best number of monk levels you can have is zero, and unarmed swordsage would be literally strictly-superior. I am assuming, per the question, that the first two monk levels are set in stone, but if they are not, I would strongly consider alternatives.

For a quick run-down...

Monk 1 is a fairly solid level

You get two bonus feats (Improved Unarmed Strike and one other), great saves, and Wis-to-AC. The HP, BAB, skills, and proficiencies are all mediocre, but oh well, they’re not exactly atrocious either. Flurry of Blows... well, it’s optional, so you can always opt to not use it.

Two bonus feats in one level is worth a fair bit, so cool.

Monk 2 is... OK enough

Evasion is pretty good, another level of all-good saves is solid, and hey, yet another bonus feat. You can do better but it’s not awful. If you aren’t using sane multiclassing rules for BAB (read: fractional), the BAB’s also as good as you’re gonna get. So yay.

Monk 3 and 4 are just bad

Still Mind is a small bonus to saves against only a single school of magic. It doesn’t even cover all mind-affecting things. There’s a reasonably good chance that you will forget you have this bonus when the time comes to roll a save it works on.

Fast Movement is a little better; you’ll probably remember you have it, anyway. But it’s still not great; it is not something that’s going to be particularly relevant most days, since you typically want to stay with your party and rarely are going to need more than 30 but less than 45 feet of movement in combat.

Ki Strike is OK enough, except you need magic bonuses to your unarmed strikes anyway. So you are going to have an item that obviates this class feature. The better option is necklace of natural attacks^SS; a +1 amulet of mighty fists is ridiculously overpriced, but will cover your need for magic damage.

Slow Fall is just insulting.

The unarmed strike damage improvement works out to an average of +1 damage. You can do better.

Alternatives

So, what to take instead of those levels of monk?

Cleric

Cleric is almost-certainly the best single-level dip in the game. Won’t improve your HP or BAB, but it will give you fairly-good saves, and more importantly a couple of spells and the right to pick a couple of Domains. This is a big deal.

The best choice for you is to take the Travel Domain, and then swap it for Travel Devotion.^CC This just about instantly solves your mobility issues, as it allows swift-action movement for a whole minute each day, with additional minutes gained by burning Turn Undead uses. A Cha of 12 is sufficient to get 3 minutes of this every day. If you have low Charisma, or just want to make sure you always have enough Turn Undead uses, you could just take the Undeath Domain to get Extra Turning.

Other solid options include the fantastic Time Domain, for Improved Initiative, a solid feat in its own right that is also often required for things. Along those lines, the Darkness or Shadow Domains get Blind-Fight, which is kind of mediocre but is another common requirement. War gives Weapon Focus, and deities who favor unarmed strikes exist, but I would only do that if I were eyeing some things that require Weapon Focus, as the feat is quite poor.

For non-feat options, you could do a whole lot worse than the Magic Domain; a single level in cleric paired with the Magic Domain means you get to use every single cleric and sorcerer/wizard wand in the game, with no Use Magic Device check. That is really nice, particularly on a character that isn’t going to get UMD in-class or have high Charisma.

Other meaningful Devotions^CC include Animal (flight! limited, sure, but still!), Law (attack bonuses; you need them), and Knowledge (you probably won’t have great Int, but it’s a minimum of +1 to attack and damage no matter what you roll, and it’s not super-hard to get +2 or +3). Knowledge Devotion is so good that it’s worth considering being a cloistered cleric^UA just to get it. Under fractional BAB, Monk 2/Cloistered Cleric 1 has +2.0 BAB, making it a good time to start taking +1.0 BAB classes.

Paladin

Two levels of paladin gets you Divine Grace, which you shouldn’t care about in the least since you should have minimal Charisma, but the Serenity feat^DC allows you to switch Divine Grace to Wisdom, and then all of a sudden it matters a whole lot. It also swaps other paladin class features; Smite Evil 1/day isn’t impressive, but you’ll have it and it will use Wisdom instead of Charisma.

Really, I only recommend this route if you’re going high-Wisdom, which your question indicates you are not. If you change that, I also recommend Intuitive Attack^BoED as that will reduce your need for Strength; it functions like Weapon Finesse, but for Wisdom instead of Dexterity and for simple weapons (including unarmed strikes) rather than light ones.

And the problem with this is that you already need two feats (Great Fortitude and Power Attack) by 5th level in order to qualify for fist of the forest, and paladin wants another two feats. Non-humans only get two feats by 5th unless they have flaws,^UA which means you can’t actually take Intuitive Attack and Serenity until later. Being human helps (you can get one of them) and flaws eliminate the problem, but if those aren’t options, those paladin levels don’t do a lot for you until 6th or even 9th.

Psychic Warrior^XPH

Another ¾ BAB class, sadly, but this one is a powerhouse. The first two levels have bonus feats from the fighter list, or any Psionic feat, so that’s a ton of options. More importantly, you get some powers, including the excellent expansion, and if you really want to, you can take Monastic Training^EbCS (psychic warrior) and Tashalatora^SoS to have psychic warrior progress your various monk class features. In fact, since neither feat requires levels in monk, you could replace monk entirely with this class.

Ranger

Fist of the Forest requires a fair few skills, and they’re kind of ranger-y. Ranger has full BAB and 6+Int skills. It’s boring, but it’s thematic and it will help you out. I wouldn’t bother with more than one level, though. I’d try to avoid even that if I could.

Warblade^ToB

OK, now we’re getting somewhere. Warblade has d12 HD, 4+Int skills, and a few maneuvers – which do excellent things for your mobility and versatility. Diamond Mind is excellent, as it is based on Concentration (which, obviously, uses Constitution), and Stone Dragon can do great things for that whole survivability thing. In particular, knowledge of a Strone Dragon maneuver can let you take Stone Power^ToB instead of Power Attack, trading attack penalties for temp HP every round. That can seriously extend your HP, as you keep regaining temp HP.

Personal Suggestion

Dragon of the Stony Path

Assuming fractional BAB,

Monk 2/Warblade 1/Cloistered Cleric 1/Warblade +1/Fist of the Forest

Cloistered Cleric should definitely get Travel Devotion and Knowledge Devotion. For the third Domain, Magic and Time are strong contenders, as is Law Devotion. But Undeath Domain is probably the best choice, not because it’s particularly amazing, but because Extra Turning means you can dump Charisma and get 4 uses out of Travel Devotion in a day. Travel Devotion is fantastic.

Warblade is more interesting. That first level, I’d probably take stone bones, considering your goals, and sapphire nightmare blade to give your Constitution some offensive use. Douse the flames or leading the attack are my picks for the third maneuver, but either works. The stance is a toss-up too, but I favor bolstering voice or leading the charge.

Then, because you have a Stone Dragon maneuver, you can pick up Stone Power at 3rd level. This meets fist of the forest’s Power Attack requirement, and is decidedly more survival-oriented. It’s also just better when you aren’t wielding a two-handed weapon.

For the second warblade level, your Initiator Level is 3 or more, so you can take a 2nd-level maneuver. Plenty are good, but mountain hammer is more-or-less definitively the one you want to take. It’s good in combat, and great out of combat. Seriously, get mountain hammer.

Worth noting, if you have the flexibility to change the order of your classes, 1st level has some special features (maximized HD, quadrupled skill points) that monk does not make good usage of. Either of the other classes is better; warblade for HP or cleric for skills.

Zen Knight

Monk 2/Paladin 2/Warblade 1/Fist of the Forest

Using Serenity and Intuitive Attack to add Wisdom to all saving throws (twice to Will!) and to your attack rolls, as well as your AC of course. Warblade either at 3rd, so you can take Stone Power, or at 5th, so you can take mountain hammer. If retraining is allowed so you can swap out Power Attack for Stone Power once you have your warblade level, it’s far better at 5th. If not... ugh, that’s an unpleasant choice.

Remember the problems brought up in the paladin section about actually taking Intuitive Attack and Serenity while qualifying for fist of the forest.

But this basically isn’t worth it unless you are going all-in on your Wisdom score. Paladin does not add very much – not nearly as much as cleric, swordsage, or warblade – other than the opportunity to use Wisdom for almost everything you do.

Note that unarmed swordsage is so much better than monk here. It’s always true, but especially so in this case. Swordsages get Wis-to-AC, but can still wear light armor. It would also get you a bunch of maneuvers, potentially helping with the mobility issues you have because you don’t have Travel Devotion.

On which note, Monk 1/Cloistered Cleric 1 (assuming fractional BAB) is far better than Monk 2, and maybe even than Swordsage 2: you get Travel Devotion.

Monk 1/Paladin 4/Fist of the Forest

Only worth noting because Serenity means that Paladin 4’s Turn Undead is 3+Wis uses per day instead of 3+Cha uses. Then you can take Travel Devotion as a regular feat. Don’t really think it’s worth it, myself, unless you cannot use fractional BAB. Particularly since you already have issues getting all the feats together.

SAD Wisdom-sensei

Unarmed Swordsage 1/Paladin 2/Unarmed Swordsage +3/Fist of the Forest

Note that this build qualifies to take fist of the forest at 6, but doesn’t because Divine Grace and Insightful Strikes are yummy.

Intuitive Attack and Serenity are assumed. Again, accomplishing that as a non-human without flaws is problematic. At least here you can delay Great Fortitude until 6th, that helps. Also, swordsages really want Adaptive Style^ToB...

This build gets Wisdom to AC (even while wearing light armor), all saves (twice to Will!), attack (with Intuitive Attack), and damage (when using a strike from the discipline chosen for Discipline Focus). Stone Dragon is a decent choice for Discipline Focus, as it will give you Weapon Focus (unarmed strike) as well as be a discipline you want to use often, but note that Stone Dragon has the unfortunate limitation of only being usable while standing on the ground. This becomes a serious problem at higher levels, when it becomes so crucial to get flying in order to engage foes.

Sources

• ^BoED – Book of Exalted Deeds
• ^CC – Complete Champion
• ^DC – Dragon Compendium
• ^EbCS – Eberron Campaign Setting
• ^SoS – Secrets of Sarlona
• ^SS – Savage Species
• ^ToB – Tome of Battle
• ^UA – Unearthed Arcana
• ^XPH – Expanded Psionics Handbook