A character can become exhausted in one of two ways:

If a character ever drops below one hit point on the hit point tracker.

If, at the beginning of a round, a player cannot play two cards from his or her hand (because they have one card or no cards in his or her hand) and also cannot rest (because they have one card or no cards in their discard pile).

Exhaustion due to insufficient cards does not affect a character’s current hit point total.

In either case, all ability cards are placed in the characters lost pile, the character’s figure is removed from the map, and the character can no longer participate in the scenario in any way.

There is no coming back from being exhausted during a scenario, and thus it should be avoided at all costs.

If all characters become exhausted during a scenario, the scenario is lost.

Even if a character is exhausted, as long as the scenario was successfully completed, that character can still complete his or her battle goal, earn scenario rewards, and keep all the money and experience he or she collected before becoming exhausted. There is no penalty for becoming exhausted.