A Guardian Acorn is a tiny magical item that doesn’t require attunement.
It bestows two benefits.
First of all, you get one extra turn each round (actions, reactions, and bonus actions, but not movement) for each Guardian Acorn you have.
Second of all, you can spend a charge from the acorn when you are reduced to 0 hp to wake up to full HP. (You still need to do a lingering injury roll, for groups that use those optional rules.) Each acorn has one charge, which reset at dawn.
Each acorn eats a share of xp. So if you have three acorns and you would get 200 xp in a solo game, instead you get 50 xp. If you are three people and one of you has an acorn, you’d also get 50 xp each.
Obv this is so you can have cool campaigns when you have fewer players. Inspired by Kevin’s Scarlet Heroes game.
Like a Conan kinda guy on his own or with his best friend vs a horde of skeletons and robots!
I used this for a while, after giving up on the two player XP (which in many ways worked better) but now I use sidekick NPCs instead.