Look up #define STEPSIZE here
https://github.com/id-Software/Quake/blob/master/WinQuake/sv_move.c
The height for climbing a step is applied equally for both players and monsters. But one of the differences is how smoothly the movement is applied. A player moving at 360 units per second on a modern computer would have that movement split up into 72 segments of length 5. Each movement can climb one step, so the player can comfortably manage many steps close together.
In contrast, a monster moving forwards at 360 units per second would move in just 10 segments of 36 units each. And the movement is all or nothing - if the monster would need to climb TWO steps to reach the end point, it will collide with the second step and the entire movement is aborted.
So putting more horizontal spaces between the steps will help a lot. Monsters will also never go off a ledge with drop a of more than 1 step using walkmove or movetogoal - you have to give them velocity movement if you want them to really fall. Be careful, it's easy to turn see that feature turn into an exploit as your monsters can now be lured into pit traps and completely bypassed.