Armor Ointment

[wjsilver]

"This thick lubricant makes the joints of armor move more freely.
Applying the ointment takes 1 minute and reduces your armor’s
armor check penalty by 1 (to a minimum of –1) for 8 hours." - Ultimate Equipment

Minimum of -1? Really?

Sorry if this has been addressed. Didn't see a link in a google search.

[Avianfoo]

It doesn't reduce the penalty to 0. The best you can hope for using this ointment is to reduce the penalty to -1.

So an armor that normally gives an armor check penalty of -2 will have its penalty reduced to -1. However, this oinkment will have no effect on armor that gives an armor check penalty of -1 already. The acp will remain at -1.

So yes. Really.

[wjsilver]

Oh!

Sorry, the minus sign confused me. I thought of acp as being a positive number subtracted from my skill check, rather than a negative number added to my skill check. And of course subtracting a negative penalty would give you an armor check bonus to skills.

Which seems like a mistake.

Explaining my incredulity.

Now I have to go look at everything to make sure this hasn't popped up anywhere before that I missed...

I leave you my thanks for clearing that up.

[Kazaan]

Yeah, even if you did use it on an armor that only gave -1, you can't lower it anymore because of fundamental limits on your joints. Now, if you weren't wearing any armor and you injected the ointment directly into all the movable joints of your body...