Best way for a Solar martial artist to block lethal damage barehanded?

Question

My Solar is our only unarmed martial artist at the moment. We had generally just assumed that a Solar martial artist would have little difficulty blocking attacks barehanded or at a minimum that defensive charms like Iron Arm Block (DB, 304) would cover blocking barehanded, and my character almost always uses Iron Arm Block when blocking anyway.

But after needing to look something up and re-reading the rules, that may not be the case. The rules do say of course that characters can stunt to deflect lethal attacks barehanded even without magic, but it is not always easy to come up with a stunt that allows someone to block some attacks without relying on some form of magic.

So, the fundamental question is what is the best way for an unarmed Solar Martial Artist to semi-consistently be able to block against armed opponents?

Obviously, if our initial belief that an Exalted Martial Artist could do it was correct this isn't an issue. But re-reading the rules seems to suggest that may have been an assumption we made rather than something that was in there. It seems like charms like Iron Arm Block might be able to do it and it even mentions "divert her attacker's weapons", but that is also a little unclear especially in regard to things like maces that are hard to divert meaningfully.

One obvious answer is to take the Fists of Iron Technique which literally has that as one of its two functions, but Firsts of Iron Technique is a Brawl Charm. Would I have to rely on calculating parry with brawl (1 dot) instead of MA (5 dots) if using Fists of Iron?

Answer 1

There doesn't seem to be a canon way

Funnily enough, it seems Solars are the only ones that can't gain universal lethal damage parrying on their unarmed martial arts. I checked and Lunars, DBs and Sidereals can all get that effect with their native Charms. Which is probably also why none of the Martial Arts I checked include that effect, assuming you'll get it from your native Charmset.

But while Solars do have a Brawl Charm to do it as well, as you noticed, as a Brawl Charm it is not compatible with a MA-based Parry.

If there was a MA-Charm to give that effect, you could combine it with any other MA to block lethal damage, but I couldn't find any to that effect.

Fists of Iron and Iron Arm Block

Would I have to rely on calculating parry with brawl (1 dot) instead of MA (5 dots) if using Iron Arm Block?

You could not apply both of those Charms to the same defense at all. You have to chose between Iron Arm Block and Fists of Iron. If you calculate your defense with Brawl, you can only apply Brawl Charms to it (and Evocations, etc.), but no Martial Arts Charms. if you calculate your defense with Martial Arts, you can't apply Brawl Charms to it, the same way you can't apply a Dodge Charm to your Parry, or a Melee Charm to an Archery Attack.

See

Reflexive Charms which enhance static values may generally only enhance static values deriving from their governing Ability, unless otherwise indicated. For example, Dipping Swallow Defense will only remove penalties from a Melee-based Parry attempt.

Alternatives

I checked quite a few books and couldn't find anything that does what you want. The best alternatives I can think of:

Get very good at stunts

Depending on how permissive your ST is, you could always try to rely on the stunt exception, but that's not a very satisfying solution.

Use a weapon

Almost all Martial Arts have Form Weapons beyond unarmed strikes (and the one I am aware of that only allows unarmed strikes heavily favors Evasion/Dodge, and so seems to be intentional), so you could always bring along a mundane weapon to parry with. Or use various Charms, Evocations and Spells to Summon Weapons, store them Elsewhere until needed, etc.

Light homebrew

As I mentioned above, Lunars, Dragonblooded and Sidereals all have easy ways in their Charmsets to parry lethal damage unarmed using Martial Arts. Given that, it seems like an unintentional oversight than anything else. You could talk to your ST and convince them to let you apply Fist of Iron's defensive benefit when parrying with Martial Arts. Or invent a spell that turns your hands iron, or an evocations to do something in that vein, etc.