i bileve the max stat you can get at the beginning is 18 [could be wrong though]
Depends on racial and
other ability score bonuses.
The half-dragon, half-demon, half-illithid, half-farspawn, half-celestial, half-giant, half-fey, half-troll, spectral creature, death knight, ulitharid, phrenic, demilich, races of (element), hound archon hero and (dire animal) lycanthorpe templates give some nifty bonuses to starting ability scores. That's in addition to all the other freebies one gets with these templates.
Paragon, demilich and "pseudonatural creature" templates give
ridiculous (+15 for all of a paragon's ability scores!!
) bonuses to starting scores. Of course, you'll need to play a monster character or a PC with potential in a "transitional" prestige class to get some of the templates here.
Then there's the races of numerous "monsters" themselves, as well as two noteworthy player races: githzerai and githyanki, as well as oni, rakshasa, orcish varieties, giant types, goblinoids, fey, "blue" races (usually have a +2 or +4 to intelligence), illithid types, elementals, outsiders, (intelligent) oozes, (intelligent) plants, werecritters and, of course...
dragons.Why you'd want to play as a dragon (since they get hit dice per age category and are likely near-impossible to level as characters during an advanced or 'epic' campaign) as opposed to taking one as a cohort with the leadership feat, is beyond me. A few DMs probably allow it on odd occasion, though.
One thing about your character:
dwarven monk? That's an odd and out-of-character thing to have in a campaign. Why not just use a Deep Gnome or Githzerai for a monk, instead? Those two player races are practically built for monk characters.